Advent IV C _ Dec 20, 2009 St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA The Rev. Brian McHugh +
Have I shared with you the moment I consider my “conversion event”? I can date it to the place and hour - 6:00pm on the Feast of all Saints at St. Thomas’ Anglican Church, Huron Street, Toronto, November 1st, 1965. I was a university student then. Nine years later, I was to become an Associate Priest there. The church shimmered in candlelight. The procession of acolytes, choir vested in black cassocks and crisp floor-length white Anglican surplices, and clergy in gold Eucharistic vestments was moving down the center aisle as we sang the glorious hymn, “For all the saints who from the labors rest”. The air was dense and redolent with clouds of incense – at St. Thomas we always had two thurifers on major feasts. Walter McNutt (known to us as "Bunny") was at the organ console, a little tipsy on Scotch as usual, which was in a teacup on the console. It only made his playing more powerful. Just as the gold processional cross, held high by the crucifer, passed by me, swirled in glinting candlelight and incense, the organ thundering, we sang the wonderful words, “And yet there breaks a yet more glorious day / the saints triumphant rise in bright array / The King of Glory passes on His way / Alleluia, Alleluia!”
I identify that moment as my “Mary and Elizabeth” moment. That was the moment that the inner truth that lies in the encounter between Mary and her cousin Elizabeth became a spiritual truth for me. It was a moment not of the intellect but of the heart, aided by the music and light and color and smells and drama of the Liturgy. Just as John leapt in the womb of Elizabeth when Jesus entered in the womb of Mary, it was as if Jesus passing on the cross, radiating His unswerving love, caused the John the Baptist that was waiting in me to leap in recognition of the great Mystery that is God.
That same moment of recognition, with the same power, happens in the Eucharist when we come to receive the Body and Blood of Christ. Perhaps not always, but certainly when we have prepared ourselves to meet Him, when we come with the expectation so heightened by the Advent season. This moment, when we recognize God in the simple bread and wine, not with the mind but with the heart, is meant to be a pattern for our Christian life. God is present in all of Life, in persons, in Nature, in events, in experiences and feelings, in quietness, in all things. This expectation of meeting God is the character of Advent, the character of being a Christian. It is what we train ourselves for by our religious practice.
The language of faith is not essentially a language of the mind, though we do bring our minds to the thoughtful examination of Faith. The language of faith is a language of the heart, because it is essentially about love and will. Christ dying on the cross may seem irrational to us, until His gaze meets ours and we are moved by the great love of God that led Him there.
The language of Faith is the language of Mystery and of Wonder. Seen only on the level of literalism, the story of Mary and Elizabeth can easily be questioned and belittled. But heard in the tongue of Wonder, it beautifully illustrates the Gospel truth that God can be encountered at any moment of our daily lives. Elizabeth and John are you and I searching for God, waiting for God to touch us. Mary and Jesus is an icon of God touching us in our pain, our bewilderment, our sorrow, our quiet joy, our hopes and our dreams. In four days, we will celebrate the birth of God among us in human form. Our minds may reel, but our hearts say “Ah!”, as mine did when that shining cross passed by me so many years ago. The older I get, the more I experience the World as Mary with the infant Jesus in her womb, bringing God into connection with our waiting hearts.
Advent is now at an end. You and I have been shaped yet again by our yearly liturgical cycle in the principles of Christian Life - in the character of the reign of God, in the healing work that God has done in freeing us from the power of sin and death in order to liberate us for the life of love. Now we start the journey again, week by week drawn by the Liturgy into the Mystery of Divine Love and the frail beauty of human possibility.
If I kind of squinch up my inner eye, I can catch a glimpse of the meaning of the extraordinary phrase in the reading from the Letter to the Hebrews today: .. we are made fit for God by the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus. If we are listening, the inner truth of the image of the crucified Christ erupts within. It is not that Jesus’ death relieves us of the necessity of offering ourselves as a sacrifice of love to God. Exactly the opposite. The inner imperative is clear: our inner Christ must be born in us again and delivered to the World by us. This is what Mary’s “Yes” and the Incarnation invite us to.
To the intellect it is a puzzle. But to the intuition, it makes perfect sense. Perfect love is fearless and casts out fear. It is why discerning the character and nature of Love is the primary work of a follower of the Gospel. Bound to Christ, there is only one choice: to live, to trust, to hope. Faith, Hope, and Love, these three things last. They alone will carry us through each earthly day in power and, at that journey’s end, to the shore of the next unknown adventure.
The 13th C theologian and mystic known as Meister Eckhart makes clear for each of us the message of Elizabeth and Mary, and I think I have quoted it before:
“We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of Man is begotten in us.”
Come Christmas, Advent has prepared us for Christ to be born in us once again, and for us to say, with Mary, “Yes”.
