Entering the Biblical Story during Advent

During class Father Albert Haase, OFM referenced a remark he made in his book, Living the Lord's Prayer - The Way of the Disciple and I was awe-struck by it. The remark was: "Remember your suffering. It need not be in vain. It can become the womb of compassion."  The womb is a place where something is in the process of being birthed - a place where something is formed.  Fr Albert goes on to say, "Compassion makes us aware of who we truly are as it bonds us to others in relationships." 

Interestingly, the word religion is a derivation from  re-ligare: meaning, "to bind back." As we are beings in and of and for relationships - and as we are always falling in and out of relationships we, by nature are religious beings patching ourselves back together. And so I was struck by how suffering works in all this and how compassion is connected.

Richard Rohr, when lecturing on suffering and pain says; "If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it." So at our point of suffering we are weaving these two strands of thoughts together and our choice says a lot about our faith. For how we deal with our suffering is the incubator of choice - we either are being transformed through our suffering or it is a source of transmitting the suffering on to others. 

During the Advent season we are ever reminded of Our Lord and how He came to awaken in us a self-donating transformation of suffering.

Link HERE for a powerful Advent reflection by my friend Gerry Straub, sfo.  Gerry will be coming to Bloomington-Normal the first part of April 2012.  We are lining up a couple presentations during his stay with us so we will let everyone know when we nail down the specfics.

Gerry begins his reflections with this Oscar Wilde quote:

“Jesus understood the leprosy of the leper, the darkness of the blind, the fierce misery of those who live for pleasure, the strange poverty of the rich, the thirst that can lead people to drink from muddy waters. He penetrated the outward shell of things and understood that whatever happens to another happens to oneself, and whatever happens to oneself happens to another.”

These words make a connection - they link us to one another and they do it through suffering. It seems to be that we would do well to embrace our suffering and the embrace another in their suffering.  Another friend, Gil Bailie talked about suffering this way:

Jesus says take this cup, which is the cup of suffering. We don’t have to be melodramatic about it; there is suffering in our lives. The suffering that I should understand as redemptive is my suffering. The sufferings that I see other people undergoing I should not think that I am going to take it away, I won’t be able to, but I can be present with them in that suffering so they can feel that they are not alone in that suffering and perhaps feel the truth of the situation which is always, always, always that Christ is in it with them. They may not be able to experience that unless they know that I am in it with them. That act of being present with them may be their only entrée to the discovery that Christ is in it with them. Being in that suffering with others, and of course, that sometimes means helping to relieve the suffering, is our responsibility...

See link HERE to get the transcript of Gil's talk on entering the biblical story.

There seems no better time at which to enter the biblical story then now, during Advent.  One last link HERE to read an Advent selection from Father Alfred Delp.

The Grace to Listen to the Lord’s Words

Today’s Magnificat meditation is from Fr. Alfred Delp, SJ who was a German Jesuit priest condemned to death by the Nazis in Berlin, Germany.  What powerful words he speaks here - we should let them sink in and penetrate us to our very being for these words have the power to transform.

“The Grace to Listen to the Lord’s Words”

That God would become a Mother’s son and that a woman could walk upon this earth, her body consecrated as a holy temple and tabernacle for God, is truly the earth’s culmination and the fulfillment of its expectation…

Oh, that this was granted to the earth, to bring forth such fruit! That the world was permitted to enter into the presence of God through the sheltering warmth, as well as the helpful and reliable patronage of her motherly heart!

The gray horizons must light up. Only the foreground is screaming so loudly and penetratingly. Farther back, where it has to do with things that really count, the situation is already changing. The woman has conceived the Child, sheltered him under her heart, and has given birth to her Son. The world has come under a different law. All these are not merely one-time historical events upon which our salvation rests. They are simultaneously the model figures and events that announced to us the new order of things, of life, of our existence…

At a deeper level of being, even our times and our destiny bear the blessing and the mystery of God. The most important thing is to wait, to be able to wait, until their hour comes…

Let us pray for the openness and willingness to hear the warning prophets of the Lord and to overcome the devastation of life through conversion of heart.Let us not shun and suppress the earnest words of the calling voices, or those who are our executioners today may be our accusers once again tomorrow, because we silenced the truth.

Once again, let us kneel down and pray for keen eyes capable of seeing God’s messengers of annunciation, for vigilant hearts wise enough to perceive the words of the promise. The world is more than its burden, and life is more than the sum of its gray days. The golden threads of the genuine reality are already shining through everywhere. Let us know this, and let us, ourselves, be comforting messengers. Hope grows through the one who is himself a person of the hope and the promise.

Advent is the time of the promise, not yet the fulfillment. We are still standing in the middle of the whole thing, in the logical relentlessness and inevitability of destiny…

The sounds of devastation and destruction, the cries of self-importance and arrogance, the weeping of despair and powerlessness still fill the world. Yet, standing silently, all along the horizon are the eternal realities with their ago-old longing. The first gentle light of the glorious abundance to come is already shining above thing…This is today. And tomorrow the angels will relate loudly and jubilantly what has happened, and we will know it and will be blessed if we have believed and trusted in Advent.