REFLECTION FOR THE HOLY FAMILY

Traditionally, the Sunday which falls within the week of Christmas is given over to contemplating the mystery of the Holy Family of Nazareth; Jesus, Mary and Joseph. It is as though, the excitement of the birth of Jesus, the dramatic signs of star and angels surrounding it, the visits of the shepherds and Magi accomplished, we see, for the first time, this little family group, alone together at last. And these three unpretentious, humble people, quietly going about their God-given tasks, have affected and moved more people than perhaps any other family in history. For that which binds them together is not the ties of flesh, blood or emotions; the bonds by which they are indissolubly bound together, are those of Faith, Hope and Love.

It was through faith that Mary was able to accept God’s plan for her. It was through faith that Joseph was able to accept the very difficult role that God had marked out for him as Mary’s husband, foster-father to God’s Son. It was through faith, that gift of God which enables us to believe in him and to know him, that God became a powerful, living presence in their lives in the form of Jesus Christ, the Word made Flesh.

But it was in the first place through love that Christ Jesus even came among us. For “God so loved the world, that he sent his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life”. Into a world where human beings are driven apart by their own evil, God sent his only Son as a sacrifice of love, to bind us together, to heal us. “God is love, and he who abides in love, abides in God.” It is faith and love which bound Jesus, Mary and Joseph together into that indissoluble unity we know as the Holy Family of Nazareth, an image of unity, love and peace which offers hope to a broken world.

This is a life-giving message to all human families. It is not ties of flesh and blood that make for love, unity and peace, but faith and love. Christian marriage is itself a sacrament, and is meant to be lived within the love and faith which come from God alone as gifts to us. A Christian family, bound together in faith and love, is a powerful sign of hope.

But the greatest sign of hope for the world that God has given is his Church. For it is through that same faith and love that he brings together human beings “out of every tribe and tongue”, and makes of us one human family. In Christ there is “no Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or freedman”.

The only hope that the world has for unity, peace and love, is the healing presence of Christ among us, within us. And it is only through faith that Christ is born amongst us; it is  only when he is born amongst us that he can heal us, redeem us by his love; and only in redemption through his love that there is any hope for the world.

May God bless you on this feast of the Holy Family of Nazareth. Through your surrender to God in faith and love, may the Lord Jesus be born in the hearts and midst of each family here, and may he bring to each joy, unity and peace. And may he bind us all together in the unity of his own Family, the Church, that we might love and bless one another, and that through our own love and unity, the world might come to know and love him, who alone is our hope and our salvation.

Fr Phillip

REFLECTION FOR CHRISTMAS

In 2003, the British Sunday Telegraph published the following Christmas editorial. The Telegraph was reacting to two things;

1) The media-hype surrounding the pop-singer Madonna, as she arrived in Britain for her wedding, and the baptism of her “love child”;

2) The increasing attempts of secular society to stop Christians celebrating Christmas as a religious event, on the grounds that it gives offence to non-Christians especially in Britain and the Unites States.

Last week’s pages were dominated by pictures of a mother, a father and a babe in arms. We may be repelled by the global glitz that surrounds this celebrity christening and wedding. Yet the universal, primeval appeal of the image calls to mind another family, in another time and another place. When the Madonna arrived in Bethlehem 2 000 years ago, heavily pregnant, accompanied only by her husband, Joseph, there were no television cameras, no paparazzi, no reporters. Indeed, the principal witness, whose memories are preserved in the gospel accounts, must have been the mother herself. The words of St. Luke — reveal the evangelists’ human source: “But Mary kept all those sayings, and pondered them in her heart.”

Partly because of the lack of witnesses, the precise factual basis of the Nativity always has been and doubtless will always be a matter for scholarly controversy. It is, however, beyond dispute that the birth of Jesus Christ was an event that took place at a particular point in time. Had The Daily Telegraph existed then, we might have reported the whole extraordinary story. Christianity, unlike some religions, is rooted in history; and the Incarnation, unlike some Christian doctrines, stands or falls on its historicity. We can gain an inkling of the Incarnation only if we approach it as Mary did, with humility and love. Even St. John’s account of how “the Word was made flesh”, sublime as it is, serves only to remind humanity of how intellectually unequal we are to this mystery: “And the light shines in darkness, and darkness comprehended it not… He was in the world, and the world by him was made, and the world knew him not.” At a time when genetic science and technology seem to have given mankind power over life and death, it is worth reminding ourselves that God chose to demonstrate his infinitely greater power in the person of a little child. Ours is the illusion of omnipotence; His is the unassuming reality.

For many people, including some Christians, the Incarnation has been, in St. Paul’s words, a stumbling block. How is it possible, they ask, for the divine to become human, for the eternal to become temporal? It is this rupture in the seamless continuum of time that marks out Christianity from the other biblical religions, and has inspired meditations ever since the first Christmas. On Boxing Day, 1945,  C.S. Lewis replied to a query from his oldest friend, Arthur Greeves: “Something new really did happen at Bethlehem: not an interpretation but an event. God became Man…all time and all events in it, if we could see them at once and fully understand them, are a definition or a diagram of what God really is.”

Lewis contrasted Pythagoras, whose theorem has always been true even before he discovered it, with the Incarnation, which was far more than “a change in our knowledge”: “Though the union of God and Man in Christ is a timeless fact, in 50BC we hadn’t yet got to that bit of time in which it actually happened.”

Lewis’s was but one of countless attempts to express what cannot be expressed. Yet if we had to define the meaning of Christmas in order to celebrate it, then it would hardly be the most popular of festivals. What gives the story of the Nativity its own timeless allure is its tangible, concrete, visual reality. The manger, the shepherds, the wise men: all speak to us across the ages, in the angel’s words: “Glory to God on high, and peace on the earth: and unto men, rejoicing.”

[South Africans, like] the British, [from whose Sunday Telegraph this article is taken], have always rejoiced at Christmas, whether religious or not. Puritanical attempts to abolish Christmas have always foundered on our capacity to rejoice. There is nothing wrong (other than blandness) with secular formulations such as “Happy Holiday” or “Season’s Greetings”, but to impose them on Christians in the name of good manners [and “tolerance”] is gratuitous. It should not be offensive to those of other faiths, or those who have none, to be wished a Merry Christmas. That, indeed, is what we wish all our readers: a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

From the Editorial pages of the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph.

REFLECTION FOR THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT

The person who visits the modern city of Athens for the first time can expect a serious disappointment. Gone is the classical city of marble columns and temples, of white-robed philosophers and sculptors. Gone is the ancient cradle of civilisation, the home of all that we value most in our heritage. In its place is a great, noisy, dirty city, crammed with people, clogged with traffic. 

But there is one solitary sign of the glory which once was Athens. In its very centre, perched high on a flat-topped hill, the Acropolis, stands a magnificent Greek temple, a great structure of marble columns and friezes of perfect proportions and elegance. Alone amongst the unsightly modern sprawl, it is a reminder of the place of beauty, culture and learning which Athens once was. That building is the Parthenon. Its name comes from the Greek word for virgin, and amidst the ugliness in which it stands, it has lost none of its ancient beauty. It stands for all the world to see, a reminder of what Athens once was, and what it has long since lost.

In today's gospel we encounter the word “parthenos” as we read: “In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to Nazareth, to a virgin...and the name of the virgin was Mary.” Like the Parthenon in Athens, Mary stood out in God's eyes above the broken wreckage of humanity, created once in the His image but marred and disfigured by sin. Because God reckoned her to be worthy, she was found to be in a relationship of grace with him. “Rejoice, you who have been filled with grace, the Lord is with you,” says the angel Gabriel to her, and “You have found grace before God.” 

Twice in quick succession Mary is referred to as being in a relationship of grace with God. God has found made her worthy for the most important task to which he has ever called a human being; to be the bearer of his only begotten Son. And she is to do this so that God can send a Saviour into the world, Jesus, whose very name means “Saviour.”

It would be easy to see the grace of the mother of Jesus in terms of itself; that is, to see her simply as a spotless human being, without any reference to God. We could then speak on endlessly about her physical beauty – inasmuch as we could, for we know nothing of her looks – her moral purity, and so on. We could make her the focus of our attention. And in doing so, we would miss the point almost entirely. For the key to Mary's grace in God's eyes lies in her faithfulness and in obedience to his will.

Her two best known statements, preserved for us in Scripture, make this clear. “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let whatever will, happen to me according to his word.” Mary chooses to see herself as a slave before her master, bound to God who has the power of life and death over her. Confronted with a demand that must have taken her breath away, her only concern is to be utterly obedient to God's will. She was also faithful to God in his call to bear witness to all that he does and is. This we see in her other recorded statement, made at the wedding at Cana, when she tells the servants to “Do whatever He tells you.” Here, she draws attention away from herself and towards Jesus, who then works the first of his miraculous signs. 

Total obedience to God, and pointing the way towards Jesus, his Son; these are the greatest things that can be asked of us. Mary is the perfect example of how we should attain this. As we conclude our Advent preparations and look forward to the joyful season of Christmas, may she be an inspiration to us to do whatever God tells us.

Fr Phillip.

REFLECTION FOR THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT

As Christmas approaches, we prepare to receive into our midst the Prince of Peace, the infant Jesus the Lord. And he is preceded by John the Baptist, who proclaims his coming. 

The prophet Malachi, last prophet of the Old Testament, proclaims the coming of the great prophet of the New Testament, John the Baptist in striking terms. “See,” he says “I shall send my messenger to clear a way before me.” And then, in words which give us a dramatic perspective on the Presentation of the infant Jesus he says, “And suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his Temple.”

That is exactly how it happens. The infant Jesus appears in the Temple, lying in his mother’s arms, the very image of gentleness and peace. And out of the massive crowd in the Temple, old Simeon finds him and recognises him as the Messiah.

But Malachi’s next words turn this gentle, peaceful image on its head. “Who will be able to resist the day of his coming? For he will be like a refiner’s fire, like the fuller’s alkali. And he will purify the sons of Levi, and refine them like gold and silver.” These images are quite different. The purification of noble metals with the blazing heat of a furnace; the washing white of stained cloth with powerful bleaches. Hardly the sorts of images we associate with the gentle scene at the manger, or for that matter of the infant Jesus lying peacefully in his mother’s arms! They remind us more of Jesus driving the moneychangers and sellers of animals out of the Temple, or coming to judge us at the end of time.

But they bring home to us the wonderful truth behind the manger; because it is these images that bring real hope to our fallen world. In the war-torn world today, it is peace for which we most long. We have United Nations and peace-keeping forces and peace missions and so many other attempts to bring peace to our world. But the wars go on. How many wars are being fought even as we prepare to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace?

God wants us to struggle constantly to bring about and maintain peace. But peace, unlike war, does not “break out,” as some people like to say. It is a precious, hard fought commodity, difficult to attain, even more difficult to keep. There will never be a definitive solution to the wars between nations, or within nations, or between people, until we have accepted the solution of the Prince of Peace, until it has become a reality in the hearts of the human race: “And he shall purify the sons of Levi.”

Until we have turned back to God, until he has, “like the refiner’s fire and the fuller’s alkali”, purified the sin from our hearts that sets us at war against each other, there will never be true peace on earth. All through Advent we are called to “repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand,” to “prepare”, in our hearts, “a way for the Lord.” In Christmas we celebrate the birth of that hope amongst us, that living hope who died for us, that we might be purified.

Yes, if only we long for it with all our hearts, he shall “purify the sons of Levi.” And we are the sons of Levi. The child in the manger, the same child whom his mother presented in the Temple, is our only hope. But what a hope!

If we seek true peace, “a peace the world cannot give”, then we, too, will seek him out as the shepherds and the wise men did at the cradle, as Simeon did in the Temple. And the gift we will bring him is a humble and contrite heart. And we will seek his mercy, his love, his purification, that we might be true messengers of the Prince of Peace, that we too might go before him to prepare his way, that the hearts of all men might be changed. May it be so. And may his peace descend upon us all this Christmas, and may it spread out to all the earth, that he may truly be, in our hearts, the “Prince of Peace.”

Fr Phillip

REFLECTION FOR THE SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT

We have all had the experience of waiting up for the late arrival of a guest. In the days before cell telephones, there was little else one could do except wait, and pray that the person concerned was all right. As the expected hour passes, still one waits, afraid to do anything else, or to go to bed, in case there is no one to welcome the guests when they arrive. There is the constant going outside to see if anyone is coming, the endless to-and-fro to make sure that the bed is turned back, the towels are fresh, the water in the kettle stays hot.

Eventually, just when everyone is nodding off, there is the sound of the vehicle stopping, the slamming of car doors, the crowding out the front door of the house to receive the travel-worn guest with cheerfulness, cups of tea or coffee, and a sympathetic ear for whatever misfortune was the cause of the delay. And relief and pleasure; the guest has finally come, the waiting is over; life can once more move forwards.

Last week we celebrated the First Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the Church’s new year. The readings were very much concerned with watching and waiting for the Lord. In a nutshell, the message of last week’s readings is that, whatever signs we see of the Lord’s coming, God wants us always to be awake and watching, ready to receive him whenever he comes.

The Old Testament readings for this Sunday, in any year, sound rather like a civil engineering project; levelling hills, filling in valleys. One is reminded of the digging of the Panama canal or the building of the great Aswan dam. But one is also more specially reminded of the preparations which happen for a big occasion or the visit to a country of a very important foreign head of state: the building of great new highways, the clearing of unsightly messes alongside the new route, and so on. The visit of President Nixon to Moscow in 1976, the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, are two notable modern examples of whole cities being transformed for important occasions. Imagine how carefully we would prepare for a visit of Pope Francis to Bloemfontein; all of us, Church and City Fathers together.

The transformation of the wilderness spoken of in the Old Testament prophets is for them, as it is indeed for us, a preparation for the greatest visit of all; high mountains and valleys, some of them below sea level, being levelled out to make a straight road for the Coming of the Lord. God, in the words of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, “visits us like the dawn from on high…he has come to his people and set them free.”

John makes it clear to us that watching and waiting means “preparing the way of the Lord.” , making “the crooked straight and the rough places plain.” His message “Repent!” tells us that it is in the human heart that this preparation has to be made. All the hills of pride and self-righteousness have to be levelled. All the deep, dark valleys of sin have to be filled in. Each one of us needs to confront the big sins of our existence, and to bring them before God for healing.

There are mountains of pride, valleys of sin, crooked and rough places in the hearts of each one of us. Ultimately, when God comes, we will stand alone before him to be judged, and the others around us will have no part in that judgement; the responsibility is ours alone. It is our task to address, and through God’s grace, to deal with the sin and darkness within us. As we watch and wait for the Lord, let us persevere in the hard and difficult task of preparing our hearts for his coming; and when he comes, may he find hearts ready to receive him, a “straight highway through the desert” across which he may advance, to make his home with us forever.

Fr Phillip