A Light in My Darkness

After a period of weeks of nothing of note coming forth, I finally have seen (under the light of heaven) that my behavior in recent weeks has been as one who is drunk. But not with alcohol, but with hidden grief. By hidden I mean, not perceived. My language and emotions have been violent and wild, speaking without thinking, feeling without fear of consequence, a drunk ravaged heart wandering in its own desert. This is why it is helpful not to judge people, who knows what is really going on in the human heart, but God alone, who at the right time, comes in from the desert riding on a donkey. There are some places in the human heart that only a donkey can travail. I am ravaged and mad like King Saul in grief who needed a gentle David to sooth his soul—or like a wild lion who suffers from the decay of a rotten tooth and cannot extract the dreaded fire within his mouth.  Who would have known this? Save the gentle nurse from heaven who pours His oil on me in drops...of which my head and heart hungrily search. I reproach myself daily to "get on with life" not knowing that the condition of my soul is not so friendly, but starving, lunatic from loss of a peculiar hand to guide me. 

Thank  God it is the season of Epiphany and the brothers of the Jesus Initiative have soothed my fire with liquid balm. It is the only thing that calms the irrational beast within.  I will try to copy a portion of it for your reading. 

The Feast of the Epiphany of the Lord:

Epiphany is a Greek word, which indicates a showing, a manifestation, usually of divine glory—what we might today call a revelation. The incarnation is an event that not only changes our world, but the way in which we know and understand God. It is His self revelation and the liturgy invites us to journey into this mystery. Yet for such a momentous event in history and in our understanding, it is given, even with the angelic proclamation, soto voce, revealed almost in secret to Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth, then shepherds and now to strangers from foreign lands. It is as if we are witnesses to a seed that is planted and given a vision to what it will become. But we know that we must wait. 


In this sense we  conclude our Christmas celebration but begin our vigil of watching and following, wondering where is God going to take us. Every epiphany or revelation is not just given to our eyes, our seeing, must also be accompanied by understanding. The test of our understanding will be in the response that it evokes. For understanding even the smallest part of this gift of Christ, requires a response, a movement of the heart and of the will. How do you understand this gift from God? 


We have been well tutored by the season, and by the people who have brought us to this moment—Mary and Joseph in their accepted consent to God's plan, the shepherds in their response to the angels and now the Magi and their response to the star. For all of them things will change, their lives will change— they come, they see, they ponder. They are not drawn into some escapist reverie, for they are to return to their people and to their world and  they are to continue their journey, but now with new eyes, new  understanding, new hearts into a new world, a new hope that God is now one with us, and that the darkness is finally giving way to the light which has come into this world. 


This is the great movement of this Christmas season as it reshapes and reforms our lives. And it opens us not only to the Epiphany of Christ but to the Epiphany of humanity in Christ, a new way of being and acting, of living and loving and hoping. All of this is contained in the feast we celebrate today. But it is given to us in a picture told with color and economy by Matthew. 

We are introduced first to these strangers, the Magi, who are the masters of an ancient wisdom, a science which is not part of the revelation that Israel alone possesses—yet points to it. They are the seekers and they have the courage to trust their wisdom and follow where it leads. Here too there is  humility, because they know that for all their skill in searching, for all  their knowledge of the skies—that knowledge is incomplete, it remains a riddle and a hope that cannot find fulfillment, until it comes to the Scriptures wherein is found the revelation that God gives of Himself to His people. Unless [their seeking]  leads  to this, it remains a futile searching, and a sterile wisdom which  cannot answer the deeper longings of the questing of the human spirit. What deep longings does the coming of Christ fulfill for you? 

Then there is Herod, whom we know of from other sources outside Scripture, we know that he is a cunning political operator, who is finely attuned to the lines of power in his world. When we dust away the layers of sentiment that have built up over the  ages, we find in the Gospel a stark, austere realism into which this child is born—a world of ruthless power and political treachery.  It is a world where the poor have no voice and no history. It is world of calculated violence. It is our world. What feelings stir in you as you contemplate this? 

In both Matthew as Luke, the infancy narratives with their gentle and quiet confidence show the unfolding of God's plan within the tragic and grotesque history that we make for ourselves. It is a new history that has been written by the Spirit in which the poor have a voice. It is a their history and it is the history of God's freedom which cannot be imprisoned  within the iron cage of empty human plans for power. Is this something you can do this year? Let God's plan for you unfold without letting yourself interfere?

The gifts of the Magi are prophetic gifts. They are not only rooted in the ancient visions but they also look forward to the journey that the newly born Christ Child must make in order to heal the broken nations of the world. Gold for His Kingship, which is not dependent on any worldly power or politics but on the sovereignty of God.  Frankincense  for the worship that is his due as Son of God and Myrrh as the mark of His suffering through which He will heal our humanity. As we contemplate the picture of the adoration of the Magi as the Gospel of Matthew paints for us, we might linger and ponder the depths of its beauty and of the mystery it invites us to enter. 

The Magi went back "another way". So we too are sent back into our world by "another way". The way that He has already traveled for us. The way in which we find him  walking with us. The way that leads us back, rejoicing,  to the Father. Let us pray that 2012 will bring us closer to Him and to the light which is our goal. Let us pray that He who has come to us in His poverty will find us like the Magi, on our journey to adore Him [with our gifts of faith, worship and sacrifice.) 

Glory be the the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

And it is here after contemplating the Scriptures that my irrational soul becomes sane again and in short, I am allowed to live again. So do, must you, in your grief and in the 'Great Sadness" that so often consumes us be made whole again. A light in our darkness has come.