Vision

Friday, December 13, 2024

Memorial of Saint Lucy, Virgin and Martyr

(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)

Vision

Blessed are we when we delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on his law day and night.

Once when we were retreating at Saint Meinrad’s Abbey near Evansville, Indiana I sat for an hour after the morning mass, eyes closed, just listening. No one speaks much anyway at a Benedictine monastery, and I heard the sounds of chairs scraping, hymn numbers being changed on the black hymn sign on the wall, a few whispers here and there.

I think of Zechariah and what he surely came to see as blessing: he was not allowed to hear or speak for so many months as Elizabeth’s baby John grew within his own silence inside her womb. Unable to participate in the everyday chatter, he heard from the inside, he heard God, and his “meditations on the law day and night” were surely fruitful and warm. When John was born his “song,” his Benedictus, called out his praises to heaven.

 

 

When you hearken to my commandments, your prosperity will be like a river and your vindication like the waves of the sea. The names of your descendants will abound and their names will not be cut off.

Margaret’s eyes trouble her every day. Saint Lucy’s eyes were gouged out before her fourth century execution and she was named patron saint of those with eye illnesses. Today marks Miss Lucy’s memorial.

So now I am thinking of all our senses, especially sight and hearing. I also think of the inner tumult that turns to silence when I cannot speak. Peace fills me up when I breathe in deeply the oxygen of God’s world. As I walk or stand or sit silent and let my thoughts flow in and away, peace rains down all around. I remember the words Shakespeare gave to Portia at Shylock’s trial in The Merchant of Venice:

The quality of mercy is not strained; it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.

Peace drops like that gentle rain. Not because of events but because I sit. Not because of any thought I have, but because God speaks, and his favorite language is silence. I think he made us (me and maybe all of us) naturally to be still, not loud. Naturally to be listening, not speaking. Naturally to fall down in worship, not rise up in action.

But then how could we get anything done? Who would milk the cows, who would drive the truck full of milk to the store, who would make hot chocolate for us to sip while we sit by the fire and pray?

I am grateful for the luxury of time to ask such seemingly unnecessary questions, during this seemingly unnecessary season of Advent.

We can be like trees planted near running water, trees that yield their fruit in due season and whose leaves never fade.

Jesus speaks in disappointment to his fellow Israelites in today’s gospel.

You are like children who sit and complain to one another about John and me: “John did not eat or drink so he is possessed by a demon. I came eating and drinking so you said I am a glutton and drunkard, friend of tax collectors and sinners.”

But things are not so simple as that, and Jesus knows it. Jesus in his unique relationship with Father Abba knows what true and what is not.

Wisdom is vindicated by her works.

Over and over, Advent day by Advent day, we have this precious (silent) opportunity to learn about this ourselves. We can choose to sit with Jesus and learn from him that his yoke is easy and his burden is light, and that he wants with all his heart for us to take that yoke upon us too.

The Lord will come; go out and meet him! He is the prince of peace.

 (Isaiah 48, Psalm 1, Matthew 11)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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