Advent has filled our lives with light, wonder, and anticipation. The still beauty and reverence of Christmas Eve has come and gone, the excitement of Christmas Day in it’s wake. This time between Christmas Day and New Years once was celebrated as the Twelve Days of Christmas, ending on Epiphany. This space is still held for family, for gatherings, for gifting, for rest…if you are fortunate enough to find it. But somewhere in there is the niggling question of what to do with Baby Jesus now. So much easier to contemplate the devotion given to an infant, compared to a man who turned the establishment of how people and governments treated one another, let alone a King returning to redeem creation.
Father Carlo Caretto (1910-1988), a priest in the order of the Little Brothers of Assisi, postulates
eloquently in his writings concerning the human relationship with God. An excerpt from In
Search of the Beyond takes the dynamic of liminal space in which we find ourselves this week
and melds it with our Bicentennial year of prayer which waits on the threshold.
“What has always struck me about the way in which the desert dwellers receive friends is their
ability to put all activity to one side. You, the guest, become the focal point, and they range
themselves round you in a circle. If the owner of the tent has planned to go on a journey, he puts
it off: now he must concern himself with you. If the wife was thinking of doing the laundry, she
piles it all up on one side: now she must see about serving you. The guest is sacred: everything
else is less important. For the time being you are the one who matters: time is less important. And if the friend, who has left one corner of the world in order to search you out and spend a bit of time with you, has these rights, surely God has the same right, the one who came from heaven itself to find you; who took on flesh in order to become visible for you; who became the Eucharist in order to gain entrance to your tent and stay there as long as possible.”
Happy Twelve Days of Christmas, friends.
Pastor Rachel
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