St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA
The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh
2 Sam 11: 1-11,16 Canticle 15 Rom 16: 25-27 Luke 1: 26-38
“Who am I?”
“Who do I wish to be?”
And the third Question must follow as Day follows Night: “What is my heart like?”
I think that these are the questions that all human beings, and certainly all Christians, would do well to meditate on at the beginning of every day. They are the questions that lie at the core of all seeking, all religion, all art.
I have come – that is, I have chosen - to believe that at the heart of the Mystery of Being Human there is a common Story, a Great Myth - by which of course I mean a Story that speaks the deepest Truth about Life. This common Story has taken different forms throughout history. The Great Myth is often held in one simple, all-encompassing, holy Word: “God”. In order to become a complete and whole living being, one must become One with God, with the very essence of Life. This is the core teaching, the core wisdom, of all religious thought. And at the core of all religious practice is the desire to enter into this unity with God.
We disciples of Jesus have our version of the Great Myth. It is a beautiful, charming, powerful ….. and sometimes inevitably a disturbing Story, because it deals with living and dying, hate and love, suffering and joy, enslavement and freedom. Every year, it unfolds as we do our primary spiritual work, our leitourgia, liturgy – “the work of the people”. Every Advent the call goes out: Come to the banks of the Jordan, confront your separation from God, begin to “make straight in the desert a highway for our God”. And the work begins. It is a yearly cycle ….. but it also a daily cycle. Every day is a journey through Advent to Resurrection to new life in the Spirit.
Advent Sunday brought us face to face with the questions, Who am I?” “Who do I wish to be?” On this third Sunday of Advent, here we are, each and all of us, in the figure of Mary. And the answer comes: “You are the Theotokas, the God-bearer. Will you say Yes to God’s request to come and dwell in your heart?” As the Collect for today asks, will the One Who Comes find a “mansion prepared for Himself”?
The 11th C mystic Bernard of Clairvaux captures the urgency of our answering, not only for ourselves but for the whole human community, in words addressed to Mary:
“This is what the whole earth waits for, prostrate at your feet. It is right in doing so, for on your word depends comfort for the wretched, ransom for the captive, freedom for the condemned, indeed salvation for all the children of Adam, the whole of your race. Answer quickly, O Virgin. Reply in haste to the angel, or rather through the angel to the Lord. Answer with a word, receive the word of God. Speak your own word, conceive the divine word. Breathe a passing word, embrace the eternal word.”
In Mary, each of us is charmingly seen in our youth, in our freshness, in the openness of youth to a new adventure despite the challenges hinted at in the fact that she will be stepping outside the accepted ethics of her community as a pregnant unmarried woman. On this journey to union with God, we are all likely to have to face into cultural demands that run counter to our longing for union with the God of Unconditional Love, Justice, Compassion, and Kindness. Bernard recognizes the power of the World, and therefore the urgency to say with Mary, “Let it be to me according to your Will” ….. for in some way, on our Yes depends “salvation for all the children of Adam”.
The importance of living out our Great Myth is spoken to by Rob McCall, the editor of the Awanadjo Almanac ; he says:
“Ancient myths and legends so surround the Christmas season that it is hard to know what’s true and what isn’t. The oldest biblical accounts include no nativity tales, no angels, no wise men, no stable and no date of Jesus’s birth. December 25th was likely borrowed from the pagan Saturnalia and solstice celebrations. Our roly-poly Santa Claus is a 19th century make-over of the 4th century St. Nicholas who brought gifts to poor children. Flying reindeer didn’t pull Santa’s sleigh until Clement Moore’s famous poem “’The Night Before Christmas,” first published in 1823. Christmas was a regular business and school day in Boston until about 1860. Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer didn’t show up until the 1930s. Myths can be bad when they over-ride common sense and when we worship the myths themselves rather than the truth behind them. But myths can be exceedingly good when they awaken our hearts to joy, wonder, reverence and compassion for Creation, as all good myths will do. Children need good myths for their hearts and souls to flourish. And so do adults. We need to believe, not in myths of endless war and terror, but in myths of peace on earth. As we believe, so we do.”
With Mary, we say a daily “Yes” and enter into the journey towards union with the Mystery of God, into the journey to human wholeness, and into the creating on Peace on Earth.
I hope that in the future Dennis and I will have opportunity to worship again with you. Happily, Dennis has gotten a good job as General Manager of Food and Dining Services at Western New Mexico University in Silver City, New Mexico, 14 miles from our property! What a blessing! This is his last Sunday. I leave after the Christmas Liturgy. I certainly have had a lot of frustration with “church” over the decades. But “church” is vitally important when it is centered in being a community in which we all together work to “prepare a mansion fit for” God to dwell. Dennis and I have found St. Benedict’s a nurturing place for this ongoing journey and it has been our pleasure to share it with you and to have found so many new friends.
As we approach the celebration of the Incarnation, in which through the beautiful, so-human Story of the manifestation of God in human form in the child Jesus we are reminded that the womb of Mary and the inn and the manger are our own hearts, may we delight in the assuring words of another mystic, Juan de la Cruz, in the 16th C:
Oh, then, soul, most beautiful among all creatures, so anxious to know the dwelling place of your Beloved so you may go in search of him and be united with him: now we are telling you that you yourself are his dwelling and his secret inner room and hiding place. There is reason for you to be elated and joyful in seeing that all your good and hope is so close as to be within you, or better, that you cannot be without him.
The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh
2 Sam 11: 1-11,16 Canticle 15 Rom 16: 25-27 Luke 1: 26-38
"A Mansion Prepared for Himself "
“Who am I?”
“Who do I wish to be?”
And the third Question must follow as Day follows Night: “What is my heart like?”
I think that these are the questions that all human beings, and certainly all Christians, would do well to meditate on at the beginning of every day. They are the questions that lie at the core of all seeking, all religion, all art.
I have come – that is, I have chosen - to believe that at the heart of the Mystery of Being Human there is a common Story, a Great Myth - by which of course I mean a Story that speaks the deepest Truth about Life. This common Story has taken different forms throughout history. The Great Myth is often held in one simple, all-encompassing, holy Word: “God”. In order to become a complete and whole living being, one must become One with God, with the very essence of Life. This is the core teaching, the core wisdom, of all religious thought. And at the core of all religious practice is the desire to enter into this unity with God.
We disciples of Jesus have our version of the Great Myth. It is a beautiful, charming, powerful ….. and sometimes inevitably a disturbing Story, because it deals with living and dying, hate and love, suffering and joy, enslavement and freedom. Every year, it unfolds as we do our primary spiritual work, our leitourgia, liturgy – “the work of the people”. Every Advent the call goes out: Come to the banks of the Jordan, confront your separation from God, begin to “make straight in the desert a highway for our God”. And the work begins. It is a yearly cycle ….. but it also a daily cycle. Every day is a journey through Advent to Resurrection to new life in the Spirit.
Advent Sunday brought us face to face with the questions, Who am I?” “Who do I wish to be?” On this third Sunday of Advent, here we are, each and all of us, in the figure of Mary. And the answer comes: “You are the Theotokas, the God-bearer. Will you say Yes to God’s request to come and dwell in your heart?” As the Collect for today asks, will the One Who Comes find a “mansion prepared for Himself”?
The 11th C mystic Bernard of Clairvaux captures the urgency of our answering, not only for ourselves but for the whole human community, in words addressed to Mary:
“This is what the whole earth waits for, prostrate at your feet. It is right in doing so, for on your word depends comfort for the wretched, ransom for the captive, freedom for the condemned, indeed salvation for all the children of Adam, the whole of your race. Answer quickly, O Virgin. Reply in haste to the angel, or rather through the angel to the Lord. Answer with a word, receive the word of God. Speak your own word, conceive the divine word. Breathe a passing word, embrace the eternal word.”
In Mary, each of us is charmingly seen in our youth, in our freshness, in the openness of youth to a new adventure despite the challenges hinted at in the fact that she will be stepping outside the accepted ethics of her community as a pregnant unmarried woman. On this journey to union with God, we are all likely to have to face into cultural demands that run counter to our longing for union with the God of Unconditional Love, Justice, Compassion, and Kindness. Bernard recognizes the power of the World, and therefore the urgency to say with Mary, “Let it be to me according to your Will” ….. for in some way, on our Yes depends “salvation for all the children of Adam”.
The importance of living out our Great Myth is spoken to by Rob McCall, the editor of the Awanadjo Almanac ; he says:
“Ancient myths and legends so surround the Christmas season that it is hard to know what’s true and what isn’t. The oldest biblical accounts include no nativity tales, no angels, no wise men, no stable and no date of Jesus’s birth. December 25th was likely borrowed from the pagan Saturnalia and solstice celebrations. Our roly-poly Santa Claus is a 19th century make-over of the 4th century St. Nicholas who brought gifts to poor children. Flying reindeer didn’t pull Santa’s sleigh until Clement Moore’s famous poem “’The Night Before Christmas,” first published in 1823. Christmas was a regular business and school day in Boston until about 1860. Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer didn’t show up until the 1930s. Myths can be bad when they over-ride common sense and when we worship the myths themselves rather than the truth behind them. But myths can be exceedingly good when they awaken our hearts to joy, wonder, reverence and compassion for Creation, as all good myths will do. Children need good myths for their hearts and souls to flourish. And so do adults. We need to believe, not in myths of endless war and terror, but in myths of peace on earth. As we believe, so we do.”
With Mary, we say a daily “Yes” and enter into the journey towards union with the Mystery of God, into the journey to human wholeness, and into the creating on Peace on Earth.
I hope that in the future Dennis and I will have opportunity to worship again with you. Happily, Dennis has gotten a good job as General Manager of Food and Dining Services at Western New Mexico University in Silver City, New Mexico, 14 miles from our property! What a blessing! This is his last Sunday. I leave after the Christmas Liturgy. I certainly have had a lot of frustration with “church” over the decades. But “church” is vitally important when it is centered in being a community in which we all together work to “prepare a mansion fit for” God to dwell. Dennis and I have found St. Benedict’s a nurturing place for this ongoing journey and it has been our pleasure to share it with you and to have found so many new friends.
As we approach the celebration of the Incarnation, in which through the beautiful, so-human Story of the manifestation of God in human form in the child Jesus we are reminded that the womb of Mary and the inn and the manger are our own hearts, may we delight in the assuring words of another mystic, Juan de la Cruz, in the 16th C:
Oh, then, soul, most beautiful among all creatures, so anxious to know the dwelling place of your Beloved so you may go in search of him and be united with him: now we are telling you that you yourself are his dwelling and his secret inner room and hiding place. There is reason for you to be elated and joyful in seeing that all your good and hope is so close as to be within you, or better, that you cannot be without him.
1 comment:
God Speed and Bless ya'll Brian...in the Light! JOEL
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