Monday, December 9, 2024
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
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Garrison Keillor, creator of Prairie Home Companion, is a sometimes crotchety 82-year-old Minnesotan living in Manhattan. He recently finished a book he called Cheerfulness. But his recent column on Christmas gave him a moment to talk about what what’s wrong in the world. He even went after Charles Dickens.
The Christmas season is a trial for us Christians who must wend our way down miles of aisles of trashy merch as musical garbage drizzles down from the speakers in the ceiling and try to keep the nativity of Our Lord in mind, no easy thing, and for this I blame Charles Dickens who took a holy occasion and hung tinsel on it.
But what am I saying? Or quoting? I’m thinking this is hardly the time to bring up all the drizzle and drivel, not on this Solemnity to end all solemnities. This is by any definition the day the Lord has made! The angel is making the Announcement to God’s favorite Mary. The Lord is near.
The Lord God called to the man. “Where are you?” The man answered, “I heard you in the garden but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid.” And then God asked, “Who told you that you were naked?”
As you can see, the lectionary does begin with those first days of creation when Adam and Eve picnicked with their Father in the garden he created just for them. The picnics didn’t last long enough, not after the serpent whispered in their ears for them to check out this particular apple tree, the Tree of Life. Surely, he suggested, those apples were not forbidden fruit, even if God had mentioned something like that.
Just take a little taste.
Ever since that day, we hear the story and think about one of two things: what came before, or what came after. Of course the “after” is easy to describe because we’re living in it. St. Augustine coined the phrase “original sin” (peccatum originale) to describe the post-creation condition of sinfulness which all humans share.
But what about the “before.” Matthew Fox, no longer a Catholic Dominican, thinks we should consider how we might return to what he called the “original blessing.” God does not leave his work unfinished. He will accomplish what he sets out to do. We will become the children he created us to be. What do you think of that?
But all the good deeds, novenas, genuflections and confessions in the world don’t make this come to be, and that’s a problem. Jesus is prophet, priest and king, but most of the time we are caught in the rules and reprehensions of priests and kings – the prophets don’t get much time on the microphone. Of course the rulers of this dark world have the same sin problem as the ruled, but since they have the amplifiers, they often point out the sins of others and ignore their own.
See, here I am doing the same thing they do. It’s a puzzle, finding a way to accentuate the positive while not ignoring my own negative. This is God’s specialty, however, and He will show me how if I just let him.
Former Father Fox, now an educator in Boulder, ended his book on what he called “creation-centered spirituality” with an appendix (Appendix B). It’s a mind-bender, which I hope you enjoy. Here it is:
The man called his wife Eve, because she became the mother of all the living. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women.
And Mary, unlike Eve, listened and was loved.
Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done unto me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
And here we are, celebrating the day, turning our eyes up, up, up. On the bus with our Father, trusting his love and forgiveness, we sing.
Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together.
(Genesis 3, Psalm 98, Ephesians 1, Luke 1)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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