Reflection

A New Year about to begin. A time for deeper reflection and prayer. For reflection allows us to look differently at our life, by looking deeper into our life, at the things we treasure and the things we lose. Does our way of living reflect the values we hold? Are we missing precious opportunities because we fear? What are our fears? Where is our trust? These are worthwhile questions to ask, questions not easily answered, and needing deep thought and reflection.

To use reflection to our best interest, we need to start with a willingness to see ourselves in a new light. It is an openness of heart and awareness of mind, and calls for us to look at life again. What does real life look like to you in your best moments, your quiet moments? What is it that you yourself actually want – deep down—and how much are you willing to give up to get it? If we only realized that most answers are there, deep down inside of you, waiting for you to be still enough to see them. It requires us to become truly "awake" to both the grace of God, and His guidance in our lives. 

Through reflection, what we believe in becomes the manner in which we live.

Holy Innocents

Father, the Holy Innocents offered you praise by the death they suffered for Christ the opening prayer says for today. How can the Church glorify the slaughter of innocent children, children torn from their mother’s arms and slain right in front of them? Jeremiah did not try to “pretty” up the death of these children, as he writes: A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be consoled, because they were no more. Does not a Feast in honor of these cruelly slain children in some respects condone the crime?

But this is the difference between how the Church thinks and how the world perceives. By glorifying the death of these children, the Church is demonstrating one of it’s most ancient truths…we suffer from the hands of our fellow human beings; but God can bring good out of any harm or crime done against us. Think of St. Therese, who says that God does not want to see us suffer, indeed, He suffers when we do. Then why does He allow it? Because, He has given each one of us the gift of free will. If we are truly free (and we are), then our choices are simply that, ours. And these choices do affect others. Frederick Faber preached, Jesus did not bring suffering into the world, it was already here. What Jesus did was to take on our suffering and make it redemptive.

And so today celebrates the glory brought to children who were cruelly slain. They are crowned because He Who Is reached down with His Almighty hand and snatched them from those slaying them, bringing them up to Himself in Light and Love. He can do the same for us.

Thy Almighty Word

“While all things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her course, Thy Almighty Word leapt down from heaven from Thy royal throne.” (Wis. 18 :14-15)


No scripture quote so captures the eagerness of God to be with us as this one from Wisdom. Why is God so eager? He is with us always. Why this urgent desire to leap down from his Throne in Heaven to take on the swaddling clothes of the manger? Why, but to give us the opportunity of beholding him face to face.

The Book of Perfection says: Happy that luminous eye of the heart which, in its purity, clearly beholds him before whose sight the seraphs veil their faces… We can see God; He is among us. Our job is to make ourselves aware, to find sight to see, to live on that level where God is not the stranger, but our intimate companion, our confidant.

This level of living brings us into the world of the mystics. Michael Demkovich, OP, says that modern society senses its lack of holy mystery. He believes we have important questions to ask: how can we let go and be less attached to things? What is at the core of who I am? How can I break through the barriers of life? We are searching for answers, but the ready answers of social constructs fail us. We seek something deeper, something that speaks to the ache in our soul.

Would you see God face to face? Keep in mind the image: The Almighty Word leapt down. You have the power to make it land in your soul.

Shipwrecked at the Crib

The crib at Bethelem. A time for reflection and veneration. We seek ways and means to prepare ourselves for the glorious feast of Christmas. But what is the best way to prepare? Good deeds, giving alms, fasting and prayer. They lead us, but only so far. Brennan Manning believes we need to go further…we need to be absolutely convinced of our own vulnerability. When we are, we find that the child in the cradle represents something more than salvation, as important as that is. The child is the image of God accepting our own state, that of vulnerability.

He writes that God entered into our world not with the crushing impact of unbearable glory, but in the way of weakness, vulnerability and need. He feels present religious culture has prettified the Christmas story, reducing the crib to a tame theological symbol so that we can think of it with warm and fuzzy feelings of piety. He believes we need instead to feel shocked at what we find at the stable, shocked to see the Son of God in the state of our vulnerability. Such shock is possible only when we recognize that we ourselves are truly poor, vulnerable, broken, almost desperate. Manning calls it the feeling of being shipwrecked. One realizes how she is shipwrecked when one realizes that in reality, she has absolutely nothing.

José Ortega writes: This is the simple truth – that to live is to feel oneself lost. Whoever accepts this has already begun to find herself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, she will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glace, absolutely sincere because it is a question of her salvation, will cause her to bring order to the chaos of her life….She who does not really feel herself lost, is without remission; that is to say, she never finds herself, never comes up against her own reality.

Meister Eckhart says: In Christ equals in peace. To find Peace this Christmas we must first find ourselves. Then the stable will be more than mere good feelings for us for the light it offers or the salvation it brings. The stable will remind us where we stand, shipwrecked. And the Jesus who lies there will be the reality we need in our lives: God is all, and we are nothing.  Knowing that, realizing that fact, kneeling in shock before the truth of that statement…that is where you find yourself. And in that truth, with the babe in Bethlehem, you will find Peace.

The Desert

The desert. Isaiah speaks often of it. The desert and the parched land will exult (35:1); the most famous prophet of all, John the Baptist, is described by Luke as A voice of one crying out in the desert: Prepare the way of the Lord!

The desert. Madeleine Delbrêl writes: There has been a lot said about “the desert of love.” Love seeks the desert because the desert is where humankind is handed over to God, stripped bare of country, friends, fields, home. In the desert, a person neither possesses what he loves, nor is he possessed by those who love him; he is totally submitted to God in an immense and intimate encounter. That is why in every age the Holy Spirit has compelled all lovers to seek the desert (from We, the Ordinary people of the Street).

The desert. Eusebius of Caesarea says that prophecy makes it clear; not in Jerusalem, but in the wilderness: it is there that the glory of the Lord is to appear, and God’s salvation is to be made known to all mankind (Cap. 40: PG 24, 366).

What is the desert? To some, it is the peace and quiet of recollection (Loretta Ross-Gotta). Ross-Gotta also says that such recollection begets the stark edge of fear that this doing nothing, this being, this offering of oneself for God to be the actor, cannot possibly be enough. It all seems so passive. Do something, perform, earn your keep. And why is the desert questionable? Because, she continues, few of us possess the radical belief such recollection requires.

Do you want to go into the desert? Then follow those who went before you. Follow Mary. As Ross-Gotta notes, The angel summoned Mary…from the rather safe place of conventional wisdom to a realm where few of the old rules would make much sense. She entered that unknown called “virgin territory.” She was on her own there. No one else could judge for her the validity of her experience.

The desert. Go into the desert, and through recollection, find God. It will change your life.