Thursday, December 8, 2022
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Waiting for my own Christmas day
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Behold, I am the handmaiden of the Lord. Let it be done unto me according to your word. Then the angel departed from Mary.
And so it began. Mary was alone. Her vision, and Gabriel, left her, while all around the life of her family, her village, her country and her world whirled along, caught in chronos time as always. Mary had a visitor from the land of Kairos, and she felt the pull of fulfillment and eternity even when Gabriel was gone.
The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. The child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God, and you shall name him Jesus.
No doubt it made her dizzy. She had no idea what to do next. Perhaps she walked mechanically into her mother’s kitchen and told her the news. Or she ran to Joseph’s carpentry shop and fell into his arms, weeping in both joy and fear.
How can this be, since I have had no relations with a man?
Not with you, Joseph, or anyone. God has found favor with me. Will you not believe that with me? Please believe my vision, as I do.
Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
Joseph needed a dream, but it didn’t take long before he believed Mary’s vision as she did. The two of them had each other, and they had their vision, and Gabriel led them along the rest of the most immaculate pregnancy in history, into the manger at Bethlehem.
But Kairos time does not proceed apace. There’s no schedule, exactly. So John Donne, preaching on Epiphany in the seventeenth century, could say in his sermon “The Showing Forth of Christ”:
The whole life of Christ was a continual Passion; others die martyrs but Christ was born a martyr … his birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas day and his Good Friday are but the evening and morning of the same day.
Mary discovered her oneness with God in Christ (later to be acclaimed as her immaculate conception by Franciscans and then in 1854 the entire Roman Catholic church), and Joseph followed her. Anna and Simeon in the temple followed on the heels of the shepherds, and then the wise men. And now … you and me. John Donne, metaphysical poet that he was, caught the Kairos fever too.
Every manifestation of Christ to the world, to the Church, to a particular soul is an Epiphany, a Christmas day.
Rembrandt, 1669, Simeon in the Temple
Speaking of Simeon in that same wonderful sermon:
Now there is nowhere a more evident manifestation of Christ than in that which induced this text: “Lord now lettest thy servant depart in peace.” And this is Simeon’s Epiphany, Simeon’s Christmas day.
Bring it home, John. What about us?
To have a Christmas day, a manifestation of Christ in your soul, you shall have (your own) crucifying and “it is finished,” a measure of corrections, and joy in those corrections. You shall have temptations, a Resurrection and Ascension, an unremovable possession of heaven itself in this world.
So let us begin at the beginning, and face the awful question God posed to Adam:
Who told you that you were naked?
Can I answer that question without defense, without blaming? Can I tell God that I am the guilty one, I succumbed to the temptation, I am in need of correction, even unto death?
The Franciscan theologian Duns Scotus and centuries of artists depict Mary caught up in God’s grace, acknowledging her humanity and accepting God’s love before and beyond any need for forgiveness. But me? I need to make my repentance, and I need God’s forgiveness. Then I can follow John Dunne into his own vision and make it mine:
Make good your Christmas day, that Christ be born in you, and he who died for you will live with you all the year, and all the years of your lives, and inspire into you, and receive from you at the last gasp, this blessed acclamation, “Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.”
(Genesis 3, Psalm 98, Ephesians 1, Luke 1)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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