Dear Friends,
The Christmas season lasts until January 9th when we celebrate the baptism of Jesus. It’s a bit longer than the “12 days” which would take us to Epiphany on January 6th. I encourage you to continue the season, leave up your decorations and reflect on what it means for God to take on human flesh. Our culture in the US spends too much time in anticipation and not enough time savoring the season.
One of my priest friends said he was rereading W.H. Auden’s long poem For the Time Being during the Christmas season. It is not an easy read, and I complimented my friend on his courage! I am not sure if I ever read the whole thing. Auden divides the poem into nine parts, each of which explores in detail the events surrounding the Nativity. I think his long-range goal was to have it put to music.
In most presentations of Christmas, there is a sense of anticipation and impending victory. They make it seem inappropriate to have any other feeling than joy. The characters saying, “The Messiah is coming, after all. How could you feel anything else?” Auden’s work, however, presents the Nativity as a disruptive and tumultuous event. For the Time Being confronts what it means to be human and explores how the Nativity affects humanity’s relationship with God, both personally and societally.
There are moments of brilliance in the difficult poem. One of them is concerning the story we hear today. Simeon, whom we heard in today’s gospel, normally has very few lines. However, in the poem he has a long philosophical reflection on human living. He concludes with an insight about why he could depart in peace after seeing Jesus:
“And because of His visitation, we may no longer desire God as if He were lacking: our redemption is no longer a question of pursuit but of surrender to Him who is always and everywhere present. Therefore at every moment we pray that, following Him, we may depart from our anxiety into His peace.”
Did you catch that? What we suspect is missing is actually here! When we have God, we can leave our chronic anxiety behind. God is not someplace else, sometime else, with someone else. God is not in the past, when everything was just right and we were never lonely or sick or scared. God is not in the future, when we will be successful and have the perfect, happy family and the promise of a relaxing retirement. God is here, now, with us as we are, far more present to us than we are present to ourselves.
We often say our prayers as though we have to work really hard to conjure up God’s presence, as though God is playing hide and seek with us, and we, by our efforts, are going to find the place where the Divine is hiding and make God come forth. But that is precisely to turn our spirituality into a “pursuit” rather than a “surrender.” God does not need from us any anxious, feverish demands to show his power and to be present to us. God doesn’t need anything at all. God is the fullness of being and life and bliss whose generosity is what sustains us “at every moment” of our existence. As Auden has Simeon say, it is about simply giving ourselves over to God. God may seem hidden to us only through the multitude of things and activities that we put between ourselves and God.
Try surrendering this Christmas season and find the peace only God brings.
Peace,
Fr. Damian