Better bloggers than I (not to mention theologians) have taken on the topic of God’s Justice and Mercy – and with a great deal more scholarship than I would dare attempt.

I really know very little. But my commitment is to write what God gives me to write and so I proceed.

Regular readers may recall that several months ago I wrote a post on The Wrath of God. What I write today is consistent with that article but approaches this great mystery of God from a somewhat different angle.

Perhaps one of my favorite spiritual books is Christ the Eternal Tao, by Heirmonk Damascene. In the discussion below, I will refer to “the Way” (or Tao) which the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu described as “the Way, Path or Pattern of Heaven, the Course that all things follow”, the name of which he did now know (p. 31).

Before going further, however, I think it important to be mindful of what God’s Justice is not. Poor humans that we are, we are confined to our words and the associations we have with them. “Justice” naturally draws our minds to the notions of laws, court systems and punishment.

To our human way of thinking, justice demands that the wrong-doer be punished and that unfairness be corrected. When these things do not happen, we have another word for it: injustice.

Our word “mercy” tends to evoke an opposite association, i.e. a granting of clemency when one could have punished. Hence, one may throw oneself on “the mercy of the court” in hopes of more compassionate and lenient treatment.

There is nothing inherently wrong with these ideas. However, I think we will find ourselves very confused if we try to apply them to the Justice and Mercy of God.

Although it is natural that we tend to think of God as a Being like ourselves only greater, there are significant problems with this – unless, of course, we are considering Christ our Savior.

One of the greatest problems in this manner of thinking is that it gives the impression that God is created rather than Uncreated. God, as Being itself, is eternal and unchanging in His essence. Thus, we must always be mindful that nothing we do changes God.

Our sins do not change God, making Him angry and wanting to punish us. Our prayers for His mercy do not change Him so that His anger relents and He forgives. We are simply not so powerful that we can alter the Source and ground of all Being.

What I would like to propose is that God is His Justice and Mercy – and most certainly in a way that is beyond my ability to comprehend or describe. And I will further posit that, in Him, there is no difference between them.

There can be no tension in God, “Shall I be just or shall I be merciful? Let Me listen to the prayers and then decide.” That sounds ridiculous to our ears if we say it out loud. But sometimes we may find ourselves praying as if this were the case.

Allow me to suggest a different way of thinking about these matters.

Returning to the notion of the Tao, “the Pattern of Heaven, the Course that all things follow”, we might consider that “God as Being Itself” is perfect Being. As Creator, His created beings all have a course or a “Way” which, if followed, enables the perfection of His Being to continue in and through them.

However, if that Way is not followed, there are consequences. Not consequences as in imposed punishment, but consequences as in how perfect Being “works”.

If I carelessly knock over a glass, it breaks. Its brokenness is not a “punishment”; it is simply what happens, based on how things work. Similarly, if I have a lamp that is plugged into an electrical outlet and I unplug lit, the light goes out, another consequence based on how things work.

If I am created pure and holy, yet carelessly “drop” the Way for which I was made, I will end up broken. If I am brought into existence connected to LIght and Life but “unplug” myself from them, I will be in darkness or even death. How could it be otherwise?

This is not the punishment of an angry God. It is how things work. It is what happens when one chooses to live outside of the Way of God’s perfect Being. It is, in a word,  Justice.

What then of Mercy? And why would God create beings capable of stepping outside of the Way of perfect Being, if such terrible consequences result?

Let us begin with the latter of these two questions. Though there is much that we do not understand about God, there is one thing about which we have been given considerable information.

It has been revealed to us that God as perfect Being is Love.

We are told in Scripture that God is love. In Trinity, we are shown that God loves within His own Being. The Creation that surrounds us and is us offers many hints about Love as the ground of Being as well. Even secular science is beginning to see that all living things are connected in some mysterious fashion. Although there is no way to quantify “love” on a biological level, this interconnection certainly suggests something love-like about how life works.

Thus, for God as perfect Being to design creatures capable of the Love which He is, it is inevitable that He create them able to make a choice. They have to be free to step out of the Way in order to choose to stay in the Way. If they are not choosing, it is not a full sharing in His Love.

And, of course, we know the rest of the story. We have stepped out of the Way. Rather than obediently accepting the Way we were given to follow, we wanted to create our own path. Thus, the sin of Adam and Eve.

Our ancestral sin is so deeply ingrained in our cultures that our earth is no longer recognizable as the Paradise in which the Way was the Path all of creation. The brokenness, the darkness, the death of the path we and our ancestors have made is only too clear.

And in them, we see God’s Justice. We see the consequences. But where then is His Mercy?

If God is Love, His Mercy can never be absent.

Indeed, five thousand years after Lao Tzu wrote of the Tao (or “the Way”), the name he did not know became known. For, at that time in history, a man named Jesus was born into the world and announced, “I am the Way”.

Those of us who know Him know that He has always been in the loving unity of Trinity, never having been absent. His coming into our history as one of us occurred so that we might know the Mercy that was always there.

God’s Justice is inherent to the Perfection of His Being. His Mercy is inherent to the nature of His Being. They cannot be separated or at odds with each other. We have come to know this through Christ our Savior, Who is the Way leading us out of darkness and death into the Light of His Love.

But if His Mercy is already given and unchanging, why our unending prayers for mercy, in our repetition of the Jesus prayer or other pleas for mercy?

I am but a poor sinner who knows very little. But this is what I believe: I pray for His mercy both because I need to and because God wants me to.

I need to because it is only in my prayer that I can realize in the depths of my being how very lost I have become.

I need to because it is in my prayer that I choose anew and learn to follow the true Way.

And God wants me to because He is Love. He is not just a fountain of Mercy where I come to drink or bathe. No, He wants me to come to Him in prayer so that He can give me to drink, so that He can wash me clean Himself. He wants me to experience directly and personally His deep, deep love for me…

To Him be glory forever.

Indeed, I am.

When I first learned that this admission of the apostle Paul was also a regular prayer of Orthodox believers, I was puzzled – for we do not say this about ourselves in the western Church.

Perhaps we should.

However, my initial reaction was, “How can everyone in the congregation say this and truly mean it?”

First of all, it is not possible that each of them can be the worst. Only one of a group can be the worst (or the best) with anything, if the grammar of the superlative is kept true.

But furthermore, it would seem unlikely, looking upon the grievous sins committed in the world, that the very worst of sinners would be in attendance at a particular church. If I were Orthodox, I thought at the time of this first encounter, I could not say this prayer. I am a sinner without a doubt, but I could not honestly claim to be the worst of sinners.

However, now, though I remain a Catholic, I can say it quite truly. I am the worst of sinners.

It is hard to explain how I know this and I admit quite honestly that much of the time I do not feel it is true. Much of the time I think that I am not so bad or even better than most. But that is what the enemy wants me to believe. When I am thinking this way, he has the upper hand.

Some time ago, I cannot remember when, God pulled aside a curtain for me – just for a moment. I recall that I was in church during the celebration of the Eucharist. Just for a moment, I was given a glimpse of what was behind the curtain of my soul – behind my delusion of “good person”.

In a word, I was horrified.

Such a glimpse can never be adequately described in words, but it was as though I saw the tremendous goodness of God in all that He had given and done for me – and simultaneously, how I had twisted it all for self-gratification and self-glorification. I could see in that moment how even my seeming “good” deeds were mockeries of His goodness.

Although it was a relief when the curtain was let back down, I have sometimes wished to have another glimpse. It is too easy for me to forget how deep is the disease that afflicts my soul and how good is the God who has come to save me.

While there are many other people who have done bad deeds, their sins are of no consequence to me in light of this vision. I cannot see what they have been given or know what their choices were.

There is only one sinner in my world and it is me.

I am the worst of sinners. Please forgive me, my brothers and sisters.

May God have mercy on me.

An oral reflection for you in celebration of the feast of St. Polycarp:

 

(Quoted excerpts are from “A letter from the Church in Smyrna to the Church in Philomelium”, aka, “The Martyrdom of Polycarp”.)

Often, in my impatience, I have wondered why God does not tell me what He wants me to do.

This is particularly the case with those big life-direction kinds of decisions but it may be true in smaller day-to-day events as well.

I have never thought of God as the micro-managing type to tell us what we are supposed to do in each and every life situation. I confess that I used to think it a rather immature faith when I overheard others speak of praying for God’s will about what job to take or what school to attend. Were they not willing to make their own choices?

Perhaps this was the case for some people, wanting to be told what to do so that they wouldn’t get it wrong. The safe course. While a perspective that could benefit from some stretching, my own immaturity was equally evident in my judgment of them.

They, at least, were ready to be obedient. Was I? Quite probably not.

When I now find myself pondering similar questions, more often than not they come from a nagging sense that there is somewhere I am going but I do not know the destination. I want very much to go there and to make the trip with the One I love.

But it would be so much easier if He gave me the directions and told where to meet Him – instead of making me figure it out for myself. Why doesn’t He tell me these things?

One of the things that has become most clear to me is that God does not tell me what He wants because I seldom ask Him.

If I truly wish to please Him, why is it that I am not asking? Am I afraid that He will not answer? Or perhaps I will not like the answer that He gives?

Just the other day, I found myself mulling over a question in my mind: do I want to do this or do I want to do that? The interesting thing was that, in this particular situation, what I wanted should not have been a subject of interest at all. It wasn’t about me. But, out of habit, I was pondering the options as though it were.

And so I stopped and requested, “Help me to know what to do here, Lord.”

It is the beginning of a new habit. Sometimes in the early evening I become so tired that I feel unable to do anything. When this happens, I say, sometimes aloud, “I am so tired. What would you have me do, Jesus?” (Usually the answer is to get up out of my chair as a beginning.)

Already I have found this new habit yielding some fruitful results.

Perhaps the most important has been that I have been acknowledging that my life is not my own and have been putting it more and more into the hands of God.

Not too long ago, I read how my patron, St. Catherine of Genoa, received instructions in a mystical experience that she was no longer to speak of “I” but only of “we”, in reference to anything she did. No choice or decision was to be made apart from Christ.

How far I am from that! I can imagine that I entrust my life to God, but over and over, I discover the many ways in which I do not.

I am also finding that God does indeed answer. Now I know that these responses would be no proof to my agnostic and atheist friends. But I am beginning to understand that “answers” are not so much the specific instructions (“Do this!”) as they are the loving synergy of God directing and allowing things to occur in my life and my obedient acceptance of them.

It is a dance between the divine Lover and His little creature – He leads and I follow.

Not being an accomplished dancer myself, I know the feeling of being led by a skilled dancer who moves me through a graceful waltz. He does not do this by saying 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, repeatedly in my ear, but rather he simply presses my hand and gently guides with a hand to my waist.

And so it is with the Eternal God, the most accomplished Dancer of them all. He is so humble and gracious a God that He does not make me dance with Him. He waits for me to ask. But no sooner do I utter the words than He takes the lead.

Then it is up to me to follow. And a beautiful, joyous obedience this is.

A priceless thing…

+++

(Reminder: God willing, this Wednesday, 2/10/16, marks the beginning of our online book reflection group at heretopray.wordpress.com. Hope to see you there!)

A note to my dear readers,

God seems to have had me on sabbatical from blog-writing for the last month. I would have forewarned you but I did not know myself that this was going to occur. He does indeed work in mysterious ways.

He continues to be at work in me, for which I am most grateful, and new projects abound (though they do not always get completed!). One of these projects, God willing, will start next week. You are invited.

The plan is to begin an online book reflection group with the book, Orthodox Prayer Life, The Interior Way, by Matthew the Poor. Since this is a book to be prayed rather than simply read, my idea is that we may share it slowly over a longer period of time (how long I do not know).

The starting time is to coincide with the Western Church’s beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday or shortly thereafter. I have noticed that Western and Eastern Church calendars are separated by nearly a month this year. Since the book centers on prayer and not any particular liturgical season, our different calendars should not interfere with how we share the book.

For those not familiar with the author, Matthew the Poor, also known as Father Matta El-Meskeen, began his adult life as a pharmacist who amassed considerable wealth early in life. In 1948, he left the two pharmacies that he owned for the solitary life, spending the next 55 years as a monk in the desert of Egypt. He studied both the Eastern and Western Fathers, revived Egyptian monasticism and wrote 181 books and numerous articles. He died in 2006.

Here is an excerpt from the book’s preface:

“Whenever physical hunger turned cruel against me, I found my gratification in prayer. Whenever the biting cold of winter was unkind to me, I found my warmth in prayer. Whenever people were harsh to me (and their harshness was severe indeed), I found my comfort in prayer. In short, prayer became my food and my drink, my outfit and my armor, whether by night or by day.”

The publisher has graciously given permission for liberal online quoting of the book (but not pages or chapters) so purchase of the book is encouraged. It is available on Amazon (as of this writing) as well as from the publisher. I am setting up a separate site (Here to pray…) for this purpose so that unrelated posts here, should God give me any, do not disrupt the book reflection.

I look forward to sharing this experience, even if there are only a few people. However, please invite anyone that you think might be interested in joining in.

Please pray for me, as I do for you.

On another forum, someone posted this challenge: “Why do you believe in God? … Go ahead. Tell us all why you believe in a God.” I am not sure if this individual was seeking a serious answer but I have decided to write one. What better time than New Year’s Day to review the basis for one’s life commitment?

My belief in God – or perhaps better said, my relationship with God – has gone through many stages and much growth throughout my life and thus the answer to this question is not as simple as it might seem.

The best analogy I can give, though it is inevitably inadequate, would be if someone were to ask you why you loved a particular person in your life (parent, spouse, child). How could you possibly answer? You might try begin by listing the things they had done for you, their fine traits, the experiences you shared – but the response would always fall short of the lived reality of loving them.

The reader might protest at this point that I wasn’t asked why I loved but why I believed. While one who has not had this experience may well assume that belief in God can be summed up by a simple intellectual argument, it cannot be that for me. To me it is a living thing, a relationship. It requires the assent of my intellect but that is only the beginning.

I will come back to this assent in a moment. But first I think it is important to acknowledge that the limited human mind cannot begin to comprehend a God so immensely powerful as to create the universe. Such a God would be unknowable to my mind if He did not want to be known.

That being said, if I believe in Him, if I have come to know Him even a little bit, it is because He has wanted it to be so. It is only through the synergy of my limited human efforts and His revelation of His unknowable self that I can believe. It is not something I can do on my own, unless I just make up stories – something I have never been willing to do.

Now, back to the story of my own belief. When I was a young child, I believed because I was taught religious beliefs by my parents and teachers. I had the faith of a child. There was nothing wrong with that because I was a child. I experienced some profound moments in this faith but it was not enough to sustain me as I got older and began asking deeper questions about life.

“What is the meaning of life?” That was the primary one that hit me as an adolescent, some 45 years ago. “Is there really a God?” followed close behind.

Referring to the “assent” of my mind means that whatever conclusion I drew had to be something that passed the test of intellectual scrutiny. In other words, I wasn’t going to accept something as true simply because it had been taught to me or because it relieved my existential anxiety.

I had to accept God as an intellectually valid possibility – if not probability. While that didn’t make His existence true, it gave me a starting place – to either reject the notion of God or to explore more deeply His possibility.

My high school and early college education gave me a good foundation in the science of genetics and evolutionary theory and, unlike some, I did not find this disruptive to the possibility of God. Probably more difficult for me was comprehending Being on that level – Being that I could not see, Being so vastly beyond my understanding.

If such Being was, how could I know if it did or did not exist? I had no problem with God using evolution to create. The question that nagged me more was whether evolution could bring about the universe in its complexity without there being a God.

This latter, godless scenario, seemed to have two basic holes in it with which I struggled. First was the question of what matter was and from what it originated. Whether the universe Big Banged (or any other theory), how could anything come to be out of nothing? Or how could matter always exist if existing in time? (Yet my mind also wrestled with a similar difficulty in terms of God: how could any Being be eternal?) Both questions have to, in some sense, be accepted as unfathomable to the human mind.

The second “hole” in the godless scenario, for my then 20 year old mind, was the question of consciousness. I found it nearly impossible to conceive of matter, regardless of how it mutated and naturally selected, endowing itself with consciousness. It seemed to me that there needed to be a Source of consciousness that was Itself conscious. This led my mind to its assent to the probability of a God, a Being of higher consciousness, the Source of consciousness.

In the 40 years since I had those thoughts, I have, of course, learned a lot more about the brain and its development and might offer some argument to my younger self. I might ask the question: is consciousness anything more than a highly developed brain, with its frontal lobes and other fancy parts that enable it to think higher thoughts? Evolution could perhaps develop that, given enough time.

However, my 40 years since have also exposed me to a lot of other knowledge and experience that suggests quite strongly to me the probability that human consciousness and its experiences are not solely bound to functioning brain cells.

If consciousness and human “experience” do transcend the biological function of the brain, this would bolster the argument for the God possibility. If we are more than our physical selves, where else could our “spiritual” consciousness come from but from a higher Consciousness?

+++

I’m back. I had to take a little break. I realize that this discussion may not be convincing to anyone but me – but the question was why I believe. I cannot answer why anyone else believes or tell anyone why they should believe.

But as I alluded to earlier, this intellectual assent was really only the beginning. To accept the possibility or probability of a God is not a life-changing experience. Okay, so there may be one. This is really barely a step beyond agnosticism in that it doesn’t claim any particular God nor does it establish any meaningful relationship.

As some of my long-time readers may recall, it was at this stage in my life, this stage of assent, that I prayed into the seeming nothingness, “God, if you exist, help me to know you.”

On the one hand, this was a totally logical thing to do. If there is a God and I want to know Him but cannot do so of my own powers, I should ask to know Him. See if anything happens.

On the other hand, it may seem to be a totally irrational act. If God is the creator of all of the universe – all of the people on earth and possibly intelligent life on other planets in other galaxies – how could my little prayer possibly be heard or make a difference?

That is one of the many obstacles that I have had to work my way through on this believing journey. Though it still feels intuitively “wrong” to me, I have accepted that vastness, i.e. infinity of Being, works both ways: taking in both the majestic grandeur of the billions of stars and the tiniest of subatomic particles. I cannot be too small for God.

This next stage of believing would take an entire book – or more – to try to summarize. And then I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to tell it well.

A simple answer, though surely unsatisfying to the unbeliever, is that God responded to that prayer and has helped me to know Him.

I have been blessed to know some of the most loving and wonderful people who have helped me see God in human form. Of course, I believe that only Christ was truly God in human form. But some of His followers have imitated Him very well.

People have come into my life when I desperately needed them and loved me in ways that I could not have possibly deserved. I have come across websites and books that I was not looking for that have led me to know God at deeper and deeper levels.

“Websites?” you scoff. Well, yes. I was rather surprised by it myself. It is not that I think that God zooms down from the sky and manipulates the Internet. But I have seen how thoughts have come into my mind, I have done a search looking for one thing, stumbled upon another – and had my life changed.

It is really not a great deal different than taking a stroll and, much to  one’s surprise, taking up conversation with a stranger over some incidental thing and finding that they have much to say to your benefit. Only very few people do that sort of thing any more.

I believe because I have experienced God answering my prayers. Often nonbelievers (and sometimes we believers too) can be skeptical of this. “Probably just a coincidence.” Yet I have found that the most astounding examples of this, the most rapidly answered prayers, were the ones that were most for my good and perhaps the least desired by me.

For example, in more recent years, I prayed that God would help me see my sinfulness. It was something that I thought I should have a better look at but I cannot say that I was anxious for a result. Wham, bang! There it was – and it surprised the heck out of me. I had thought I was a pretty good person.

There is wisdom to that saying, “Be careful what you pray for.” 🙂 In actuality, I am quite glad for the prayer and the response because I am learning so much. I am learning about my faults and seeing how much more work I have to do to move toward my soul’s desire – union with God.

So, as useless as this is as an argument, I must say that the primary reason I believe in God is because I know Him, I experience Him – and have for decades. Or, as the song lyrics by Don Gibson say, “My God is real for I can feel him in my soul.” (The Blind Boys of Alabama do an extraordinarily soulful version of this song.)

I acknowledge the possibility that I could be wrong. I might come to the end and find that there is no God and that I have lived a massive delusion my whole life long.

Should that be the case, I will have passed my existence believing that I was unconditionally loved, forgiven and healed. I will have lived my life with a spirit of hope and generosity, striving to love others in the same way that I believed I was loved. And I will have experienced and shared a boundless joy that emerged from some mysterious place within me that could never be explained.

I can think of no better way to live. So be it.

A little something as we leave 2015 and enter 2016. Many blessings to you, dear readers!

 

poem

the year is dwindling.

i look within

and find that i am

out of poems.

no rhythm or rhyme

left behind,

just words and letters

scattered here and there

on a page of leftover

life.

and therein lies

my only hope:

life –

that indefinable

growing that will not

let me stop

until there is

something new,

awake and breathing

in my soul.

I cannot let go

of the germination

hidden in these

final dark moments –

for even as the end

counts itself down

3…2…1…

something

bright and shining and holy

bursts forth –

holier than any

moment that has

ever been before.

it is entirely new.

 it is joy.

all that i have to give –

my gift to you.

amen. amen.

As evening drew near, the air became cooler and brilliant stars began to shine forth in the darkening sky. The sight could not compare with last night’s sky – but then nothing could. Even my mother’s mother said she had never seen anything like that before.

Like so many others, my family had come to Bethlehem for the census. Being faithful Jews, we did not want to come at all but we had little choice. We knew that God did not permit the counting of the people but, at this point, others ruled us without respect for the Law of the Most High.

By the time we arrived, the inn was so full that we had to pitch our tents a short distance from the road, as did many others. This did not bother me in the least because the inn was full of loud and drunken men and, as a young woman, I did not want to be near them. In fact, I was relieved that my father had chosen a spot far from this commotion and closer to the stable where the owner kept his few animals.

I do not want to give the impression, however, that I am the virtuous young woman that I should be at my age. In fact, I have always liked to be out wandering the hillsides like a boy rather than staying at my mother’s side, learning the tasks of a good wife.

I love adventure and watching the clouds and the trees and the sun. I do not mean to be bad.  Yet I am still haunted by a time just months ago when I nearly brought great shame upon my family. My face still burns with humiliation when I think of it.

However, tonight I was not thinking of it. In truth, I was glad our tents were a bit further away from the others because I hoped to slip away from the camp once it became dark. There was something I had to see.

Early this morning, my older brother, Joshua, had been laughing and talking with some of the young shepherds and they had told him the most fantastic story.

It was hard to get the full account because Joshua clearly hadn’t taken the shepherds seriously. “Something about the unusual stars and angels singing and a girl having a baby in the stable,” Joshua had said. “Complete nonsense. You know how shepherds are,” he commented dismissively in that superior tone he sometimes used.

Tonight I planned to go see for myself, to peek into the stable and see if there really was a baby. I knew my mother would scold me if she knew. A young woman my age should be above such curiosity and certain should not be seen going off somewhere alone and at night.

But there was something here more than mere curiosity. Certainly I wanted to see the baby if there was one. What girl wouldn’t? But I felt something deep inside drawing me to go – almost as if God Himself were drawing me to go and see, crazy as that might sound.

When I told Joshua this, he gave me that older brother look of his. But when he saw how intent I was on doing this, he promised to watch out for me, to make sure no harm came to me on the way to the stable.

So when it had grown dark and the cooking fires burned low, I slipped away, with Joshua watching out for me. By the time I reached the stable doors, my heart was pounding wildly and I could barely breathe. What did I expect to find inside? If there was a young family staying there, how would I explain my intrusion?

I almost turned around at this point but again, that feeling of being drawn was so powerful – so sweet – that I gently pushed open one of the doors despite my fear.

When the door inched open, my first reaction was one of immense relief. It was just an ordinary stable. Why had I allowed myself to become worked into such a fright?

And then I heard it. The soft whimpering of a newborn, closely followed by the hummed songs of a mother soothing her infant.

It took my eyes a moment to adjust and make out the layout of the stable but then I saw them. The girl – the mother – appeared only slightly older than me, though there was something about her that made me feel she knew much more than me. A man, a bit older, was with her, and I assumed he was the baby’s father, so protective was he of the two of them.

The door had made a slight creaking noise when I opened it and it seemed only to get louder as I tried to be more careful and quiet. However, when the young couple looked up at me, I felt utterly welcome, almost as though they had been expecting me. The mother’s shy smile beckoned me and I walked over to the stall where they had set up their temporary home.

My eyes searched the darkness until I saw him. The baby. He was properly swaddled and lying in a bed of hay they had made for him in one of the animal’s feeding troughs. Despite the conditions, he appeared quite comfortable and content, all bundled up in the soft clothing.

I looked to the mother, my eyes meeting hers, asking without words. She smiled and nodded. I reached down and gently drew the infant into my arms. I rubbed my face into the downy softness of his head and kissed him. Then, I felt an overwhelming desire to hold this little one to my heart – and so I did.

I do not know how to explain what happened next. I come from a large family and I have held many babies before.  But something very different happened as I embraced this little one. As I held him to my heart, I felt him enter my heart. I know it makes no sense to try to say this in words. But I felt his life come into me and it was like a peace, a joy, a light entered me that I had never known before. Nor had I ever even known that such an experience was possible.

I held him and I did not want to let him go. Tears streamed down my face as so much pain that I had carried in my heart was released and his peace took its place. I did not know I had so much pain within me – disappointment, anger, shame. It all came pouring out as I wept softly, still holding him to my heart.

When I regained my composure, I noticed that the man had stepped back so that the mother, the baby and I could be alone. I was still holding him but now I let him rest in my arms. He appeared sleepy and I rocked him slightly, unable to take my eyes from him.

Finally, I looked up at his mother, wondering what she would think of my odd display over her infant. Her eyes were soft – beautifully soft and full of knowing. And she smiled. Though she never said a word to me, I never lost the feeling that she wanted to share him with me. She obviously loved him – yet she wanted me, a total stranger, to know and love him as she did.

When I finally left the stable, I felt like a different person – a new person, still myself but fresh and new as though I had just been born myself. It would not be an exaggeration to say that my life was never the same after that. All of this I pondered for many years, wondering who this child was to be and what all of this could possibly mean.

Mary, our Mother.

Before I became more drawn to the Theotokos, I had simply thought (if I thought at all) that we were to consider her “mother” because Jesus had given her to John at the foot of the Cross. The words to John, “behold your mother”, I was taught, were meant for the whole Church.

And so they were.

But my reflection did little more than scratch the surface. I do not claim to understand very much more now – yet a bit more was given to me to see.

As we have been reading the narratives of Luke in the past week, I have pondered the appearance of Gabriel to Zachariah and then to Mary. Their responses to the angel have been especially intriguing to me.

Both Zachariah and Mary, like any human beings in such circumstances, where shaken by their visions and asked questions. Prior to this moment in their lives, both were faithful servants of the Lord.

Although I may be wrong, some of my translations give the impression that Zachariah’s questioning held just a bit more doubt than Mary’s. Even when it was explained to him who his son was to be, Zachariah seemed to ask, “Well, how can I be sure of this?”

Not an unreasonable question, from a human perspective. “If I’m going to be put in this position, I want to be sure that this messenger really is from God and that what he is telling me is the truth. I don’t want to be duped.”

But, in my reading, Mary’s response had a different flavor to it. She questioned, but it seemed more like she was seeking instructions, as in, “I don’t know how this will happen since I have not had relations with a man.”

It doesn’t seem so much that she is saying that she wants proof, as much as she seeks understanding. After all, she does not yet know what will need to happen for her to conceive this Child.

Once she is told, her response is seemingly immediate, “May it be done to me…”

Both of these great parents-to-be are given signs to strengthen their faith.

Zachariah is struck dumb. While this sign seems punitive, it was immensely powerful. As priest unable to speak, he had to move inward to listen for the truth. As a prophet, his public silence attested to God’s action in his life.

Mary’s sign was very different, but equally potent. In witnessing the pregnancy of Elizabeth, a barren woman beyond child-bearing years, she was shown that “nothing is impossible with God”. Her own virginity would not prevent God from bringing forth from her the Son of God.

Hence, it does not seem surprising that Mary would then rush off to see Elizabeth – for in Elizabeth was to be her sign.

Yet what we are told transpired there, in the meeting of these two women, is so very important.

Once greeted by Mary, Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and cried out,

“Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.” (Luke 1: 45) (emphasis mine)

What we might have expected in this situation was that the younger woman, Mary, would have come to Elizabeth seeking reassurance, validation of her “sign”, that these astonishing things were really to happen to her.

Instead, holy Elizabeth, inspired, recognizes not only the truth of the coming of the Lord, but that Mary is blessed because she already believes it.

And this is what makes her our Mother.

Though I am much older in years than Mary was when all of this occurred, compared to her, I am but a little child in faith. I am a mere infant with regard to obedience. Humility? I am barely out of the womb.

Perhaps you are further along than me. But I need a mother to “raise” me – a mother deeply rooted in faith, humility and obedience. For was it not these things that Jesus later remarked made a person his mother (or sister or brother)?

The Church is my mother. And my earthly parents provided me with a good upbringing.

And yet I am still so very little.

Oh sometimes I think I’m a grown-up in the faith – and can even convincingly pass as one for short times. But then I stumble and fall. I need only skin my knee, so to speak, and I am crying for myself as though my hurts and needs were of the utmost importance.

I need a mother in faith.

And she is my Mother. A Mother who teaches me to be a mother – a mother of God.

Our mother… Holy Virgin.

Let us walk with her – no, let us ask her to walk with us, during these final pregnant moments of preparation for the Birth, which is, has been and is yet to come.

Amen.

Gaudete!

Rejoice! The Lord is near.

Yesterday, for the Third Sunday of Advent in the Western Church, our priests set aside their penitential purple robes for rose-colored vestments, representing this sense of joy and hope.

Below is a beautiful rendition of the ancient hymn, “Gaudete”.

He is near. He is always near, ready to welcome us into a deeper and more intimate relationship with Him.

Let us prepare ourselves for the great wedding feast. Love awaits us…