Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Christmas Eve: Norway Spruce Pt. II

"Towards Meditation

'Rouse yourself, rouse yourself, stand up O Jerusalem. Hark, your watchmen lift up their voice, together they sing for joy; for eye to eye they see the return of the Lord to Zion. Break forth together in singing, you waste places of Jerusalem' (Is. 51:17; 52:8-9a).

"Today is especially the day for answering Isaiah's call, both spiritually and practically. However few the guests at tomorrow's feast, and however well I have prepared, there are always those culinary tasks that family tradition dictates must be left for today...............An early start is essential and time must be allowed at least for the Office Readings. Here I find St. Augustine, in his Sermon 185 'Truth sprang from the earth', also telling me to wake up. It was, he says, for all of us that God was made man. We are to awake from sleep and Christ will give us light. We could not have come to life again, had he not come to die our death. Peace on earth can spring only from Truth coming out of the earth and being born of flesh. Christ, the Word, born of a virgin, is that Truth and the Light. Thus fortified I go about my work.

"Wherever I am, the turning on of the tree lights is for me the moment when Advent ends. It is the moment when I offer a prayer for absent loved ones, alive and dead, and when I give thanks for the Christmases they made for me, or that I shared with them. When did I first appreciate the symbolism of the lighted tree and the bright star? 'Christmas is for children: so runs the cliche. But 'unless you become as little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven'. And if we take heed of Our Lord's warning, we must surely realise that it is for us all, particularly for those who are blind to its light.

"There was a Christmas Eve (during parental opposition to my Catholic conversion) almost half a century ago, when I had insisted on watching a televised Mass by the light of the tree alone. My father exercised his considerable wit at the expense of the vestments, incense, and church Latin. A fierce argument broke out, during which we did not notice the end of the Mass, or the beginning of the Nativity play that followed it. Suddenly, the voice of a male child cut across our discord with the simple imperative, 'Look at that bright light.' His tone conveyed an awestruck, almost peremptory urgency, toatally devoid of artifice or sentimentality. It won our silence, and we turned to the screen. There stood the boy shepherd, gazing up at the distant star. And there stood we, our anger, fear and recrimination all vanquished in the utter purity and honesty of the moment. Our views on religion would always differ, but we were never again acrimonious about denomination. Every Christmas Eve when the tree lights are turned on, I hear that boy's voice. And at every Midnight Mass I feel to my depths the truth of Isaiah's words, 'the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwell in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined' (Is:9:2) And as Zechariah predicted, the 'dawn from on high' has broken upon us. Jesus Emmanuel - God is with us."

extracts from 'Gardening with God' copyright Jane Mossendew 2002

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