Spiritus Christi
Father Jim Callan
November 29, 2020
As you know there are two Christmas: One begins on Black Friday, it’s a mad frenzy of commercialization and shopping and shopping until the holiday of Christmas. The other began about ten minutes ago when Natalie lit the Advent candle. Actually, Natalie, your name means Christmas. You are the perfect person to do this, thank you so much. So Natalie got us going with the first Advent day and this is a spiritual time of peace, prayer and patience and kindness until not the holiday of Christmas comes but the person, Jesus comes. And Jesus, himself, gives us the theme of these next four weeks of Advent. Here is the theme: Be watchful, be alert, stay awake, be ready. Be ready for unexpected divine encounters. Be ready for surprising intrusions of beauty in your life. In other words it is going to be a good time the next four weeks. So stay awake and don’t miss it.
Now Joe read the Isaiah reading and one line says, “Lord, open up the heavens and come down.” Do you notice anything off about that? “Lord, open up the heavens and come down.” See, that’s old thinking about God. That God is way up there and we have got to plead with God to cut through all those barriers and come down to reach us.
A missionary in India says it is easy to tell the Christian kids from the Hindu kids. All I do is say: Where is God? And all the Christian kids point up and all the Hindu kids go in.
Richard Rohr was walking through the fields of a monastery one time and there is an old monk out in the field who goes: Richard! Make sure you tell the people that God isn’t out there. God isn’t out there.
I had to change the rubrics of the mass right before the consecration the priest extends his or her hands over the elements and says: Let your spirit come down and bless these gifts to make them holy. Well, God’s spirit doesn’t have to come down from anyplace. God’s spirit is right here flowing through us. We just need to be aware of it. So I changed it to: Let us feel your spirit consecrating us along with these gifts. Let us be aware of your spirit because your spirit is here all of the time, we don’t have to call you out from outer space. God is not an elsewhere God. God is not a distant God. God is flowing through our veins.
So Advent is a time to be aware. To feel God’s presence, right here.
Another name for God is – God has a lot of names – my favorite is beauty. Beauty is another name for God. So be ready for unexpected intrusions of beauty in your life.
Actually this happened to me a few days ago on Friday. Jeff Reimer came over to tune my piano and I love how the piano sounds after it is tuned. So I went right in there and played by favorite Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto and as I was playing a few lines of it, I had to stop because I started to cry. It is so beautiful! It is so dreamy and romantic and emotional and spiritual. Before he composed this concerto, Rachmaninoff fell in to the three-year clinical depression. It was a terrible time. Awful. He had writer’s block. Did a lot of heavy drinking. He received psychotherapy and support from friends and family. And he dedicated this concerto to his physician who restored his self-confidence. So the concerto is a confirmation of his triumph over a very dark night of the soul. His struggle gives this masterpiece extra spiritual character. It is born from a heavy heart and that is why it brought me to tears. It was an experience of God. It was so beautiful and God is beauty.
So be ready for unexpected intrusions of beauty like this.
Roxanne Zeigler often plays the harp for people who are dying in hospice care. It’s not about giving the family a concert to distract them. It is about cradling them with beauty as they have their final conversation. God’s presence is tangible present right there through her soothing melodies.
The famous French sculpture, Auguste Rodin, always told his students: Don’t go looking for a good-looking model. Don’t go looking for somebody perfectly proportioned. Take anybody you come across because everybody is beautiful.
Beauty is the inherent goodness in all things. It is the God, the Divine in all things. The human soul is hungry for beauty. We seek it everywhere. We seek it in music, in art and in clothes, in companionship, in intimacy, in gardening, in cooking. In the full moon last night – did you see that? It was gorgeous. It reminded me of St. Francis of Assisi. There was a full moon one time and about 2:00 in the morning he rings the church bell and all these people come out in their pajamas into the piazza and they are wiping their eyes and ask, “What’s going on here?” He says, “Look! It’s a full moon. Why are you sleeping?” So I think of that every time there is a full moon. You have got to be aware of the beauty that is breaking in to our lives.
So we experience beauty. There is a sense of homecoming that meets the needs of the soul. So beauty created us. Beauty made us beautiful. All of us.
To love somebody is not first of all to do something for them but to reveal to them their value and their beauty.
People who come through Jennifer House, Nielsen House, Grace of God Recovery House often say to us: You loved me before I could love myself. They say that over and over again in different ways. You loved me before I was able to love myself.
One of those people was Simone Parsons. Simone said: When I was five I wished I was a white man. And later I wished I were a white woman. Then a little later in my life I wished I were a black man but a black woman? In my mind it was at the bottom. But today I love my skin and I love my gender because I am a child of God and not matter what I look like I know I am beautiful and blessed.
Well, not that Kamala Harris will be the first black woman Vice President, black women like Simone Parson will hopefully know sooner in their life that they are beautiful and blessed.
And now that Wilton Gregory yesterday became the first black American Cardinal in the Catholic Church, black Catholics will know that black Catholics matter.
And that their call for justice for people of color and people on the margins will have a more prominent prophetic voice coming out of Washington.
Beauty shines through everybody. Not just some of us.
Thick Nhat Hanh said: The miracle is not to walk on water but to walk on the earth in the present moment and to appreciate the peace and the beauty that is right there. That’s the miracle. Not to walk on water but to walk on the earth and be in the present.
During Advent we can be on the lookout for beauty which is God. Whether it be in music or art, of the face of your child sleeping or your grandchild sleeping. Or the face of a person who is different from you. Or the smell of coffee or tea brewing. Or the laughter of friends. Or the person six feet away from you in line at the grocery store. Beware of the presence of God.
Now during Advent there are three spiritual disciplines: prayer, patience and kindness.
First prayer. We always recommend having an Advent candle. So buy a new candle and light it every morning or every night. I lit mine this morning. Drink coffee or tea or hot chocolate or wherever and just do it for ten minutes. No need to say anything. Just no words. Just sit in from of the light and do it in silence. The language of God.
You know, it is no coincidence that many religions hold festivals of light in the dead of winter. The act of lighting a candle is actually an act of hope. Every time you light a candle it is an act of hope. In fact some say that the miracle of Hanukkah was not that the oil lasted 8 days. It was that somebody had the hope to light it on the first day. Every time you light a candle it is a sign of hope.
Maybe do some spiritual reading during Advent. When Martin Luther King was asked what books influenced you the most, he said Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Take one of them, Matthew, Mark, Luke or John and read one chapter every day until Christmas. Let these words be food for your soul.
So prayer is the first discipline. Patience is the second discipline. Wow! The whole world is practicing patience right now. Because of Covid. Thanksgiving was already much different for everybody. Monica Anderson said she usually cooks for 32 people. This Thanksgiving it was just Bob and I. If we are patient we can accept a different kind of Christmas too. At Spiritus we had to forego the in person masses because of the spike in Corona. Did you see in Monroe County yesterday there were 515 new cases? It is unbelievable. So this is the time to hunker down. We have to be patient with live streaming until in person is allowed again.
But help is on the way we know that vaccinations are coming. We need to stay isolated for a few more months. Avoid gathering where Covid spreads. But through our patience we will have a better time in the future. So patience is the second spiritual discipline.
Prayer, patience and the third one: kindness. It is time to be kind. We can be kind by reaching out to the hungry. You know that food insecurity has tripled during the Covid time. Hunger rates are even higher for black and Latinx households. So giving to places like Food Link and Salvation Army are very welcome acts of kindness. We can reach out to shut ins. Can’t visit them but maybe send a card. People are finding creative ways to stay connected through Zoom, Face Time and window visits and patio visits and drive-bys. Trying to make those connections.
A woman in Rhode Island was unable to visit her 92 year-old mother in a nursing home. The mother was dying and the daughter didn’t want her to die alone. The only ones who could see her mother were employees of the nursing home. So she got creative. She became a laundress at the nursing home. She got a job there. And as she made the rounds removing bed sheets and putting fresh towels in the rooms she was able to see her mother several times a day. How was it for her? She said: For one thing it was good to have a job that had a beginning and an end to it. She said that her real job is a therapist and the results are very much uncertain. But here you start this and you finish it. But more importantly, even thought the work was hard, it would have been harder to see my mother die without having her see any of her family. I did have some quality time with her. I have not regrets. She worked there until her mother died two weeks ago.
Kindness is the third discipline of Advent.
Advent and adventure come from the same root word meaning: To come toward. We are coming toward the birth of Jesus. But is not about the arrival that matters so much as the journey all along the way. It is an adventure.
So stay alert and pay attention! Be ready for those intrusions of beauty in your life. Enjoy these weeks.
Happy Advent.
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