Faith in Advent

Thank you for joining us for the first of our Advent Saturdays.  

Beginning this week with faith as our subject, we will ask what faith, hope and love look like in this season of grace and in these challenging times. We will reflect on how we can live our Advent well so that we can celebrate our Christmas with joy. 

There is no charge for this day or to follow the retreat online, but a donation is appreciated via the link below which will support our work and mission. 

May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ send you grace and peace. 

I never stop thanking God for all the graces you have received through Jesus Christ.  I thank him that you have been enriched in so many ways, especially in your teachers and preachers; the witness to Christ has indeed been strong among you  so that you will not be without any of the gifts of the Spirit while you are waiting for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed; and he will keep you steady and without blame until the last day, the day of our Lord Jesus Christ, because God by calling you has joined you to his Son, Jesus Christ; and God is faithful. 

God of power and mercy,

open our hearts in welcome.

Remove the things that hinder us

from receiving Christ with joy,

so that we may share his wisdom

and become one with him

when he comes in glory,

who lives and reigns forever and ever.

Amen

With the Divinest Word, the Virgin

Made Pregnant, down the road

Comes walking, if you'll grant her

a room in your abode.

The job of any preacher, it seems to me, is not to dismiss the Annunciation because it doesn't appeal to modern prejudices but to remind congregations of why it might still be an important story. I once heard a Benedictine friend who is an Assiniboine Indian preach on the Annunciation to an Indian congregation. "The first thing Gabriel does when he encounters Mary," he said, "is to give her a new name: `Most favored one.' It's a naming ceremony," he emphasized, making a connection that excited and delighted his listeners. When I brood on the story of the Annunciation, I like to think about what it means to be "overshadowed" by the Holy Spirit; I wonder if a kind of overshadowing isn't what every young woman pregnant for the first time might feel, caught up in something so much larger than herself. 

I think of James Wright's little poem "Trouble" and the wonder of his pregnant mill-town girl. The butt of jokes, the taunt of gossips, she is amazed to carry such power within herself. "Sixteen years, and/all that time, she thought she was nothing/but skin and bones." Wright's poem does, it seems to me, what the clergywoman talks about doing, but without resorting to ideology or the false assurance that "it's OK." Told all her life that she is "nothing," the girl discovers in herself another, deeper reality. A mystery; something holy, with a potential for salvation. The poem has challenged me for years to wonder what such a radically new sense of oneself would entail. Could it be a form of virgin birth?

When catechisms [of the 19th and early 20th century] defined faith as accepting as true what God has revealed and teaches us through the Catholic Church, this was not and is not false, but it is thoroughly incomplete, and does not reveal the intrinsic quality of living faith as fundamental option for life in Jesus Christ. To see faith, hope and love, clearly and consciously, on the level of fundamental option is vital.

If one conceives the content of faith as a system of doctrines that call for mere intellectual assent, the act of faith is woefully defective. The content of faith is God, who reveals himself as loving Creator and Redeemer. He reveals himself as loving us — you and me —-— and calling us to intimate friendship and union with him. The act and attitude of faith —— the Christian fundamental option — is, then, a very special kind of abiding, self-giving assent to respond with all our being — heart, mind and will —— to this love, incarnate in Jesus Christ. The gift of faith embraces all this. The self-giving love of Jesus and his abiding presence call for our all-embracing love and discipleship.

It is in this orthodox understanding of faith that we avoid a deadly misunderstanding and separation between faith and life. Similarly, we distinguish living faith from deadly faith-relics. Faith that is only an intellectual assent… lacks wholeness… it does not have the force of fecundity to bring forth love and all other Christian virtues and a truly Christian life-style. 

Bernard Häring, Timely & Untimely Virtues, 1986, p. 34-35

The threefold terror of love; a fallen flare

Through the hollow of an ear;

Wings beating about the room;

The terror of all terrors that I bore

The Heavens in my womb.

Had I not found content among the shows

Every common woman knows,

Chimney corner, garden walk,

Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothes

And gather all the talk?

What is this flesh I purchased with my pains,

This fallen star my milk sustains,

This love that makes my heart's blood stop

Or strikes a Sudden chill into my bones

And bids my hair stand up?

Mother, help our faith! 

Open our ears to hear God’s word and to recognize his voice and call. 

Awaken in us a desire to follow in his footsteps, to go forth from our own land and to receive his promise. 

Help us to be touched by his love, that we may touch him in faith. 

Help us to entrust ourselves fully to him and to believe in his love, especially at times of trial, beneath the shadow of the cross, when our faith is called to mature. 

Sow in our faith the joy of the Risen One. 

Remind us that those who believe are never alone. 

Teach us to see all things with the eyes of Jesus, that he may be light for our path. And may this light of faith always increase in us, until the dawn of that undying day which is Christ himself, your Son, our Lord!

Lumen Fidei (co-written by Pope Benedict)

Reflect on Pope Francis' words: 

“Faith is not a light which scatters all our darkness, but a lamp which guides our steps in the night and suffices for the journey.” 

Can I be comfortable with ambiguity in life and live a trusting faith through all of life's mysteries?

What habits nurture my faith?

“O Wisdom, You came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and reaching from beginning to end, You ordered all thingsmightily and sweetly. Come and teach us the way of prudence.”

“O Adonai and Ruler of the house of Israel, You appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush, and on Mount Sinai gave him Your Law: Come, and with an outstretched arm redeem us!”

O Root of Jesse, You stand for an ensign of mankind; before You kings shall keep silence, and to You all nations shall have recourse. Come and save us and do not delay.”

“O Key of David and Scepter of the house of Israel: You open and none may close, You close and none may open. Come and deliver from the chains of prison those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.”

“O Dayspring, Radiance of the Light eternal, and Sun ofJustice; come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.”

“O King of the nations and Desired of all, You are the cornerstone that binds two into one: Come, and save humankind whom You formed out of clay.”

“O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, the Expected of Nations and their Saviour: come, and save us, O Lord our God!”

“His state was divine,

yet he did not cling to his equality with God 

but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, 

and became as men are; and being as all men are, 

he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross. 

But God raised him high

and gave him the name which is above all other names 

so that all beings in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld,

should bend the knee at the name of Jesus 

and that every tongue should acclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Philippians 2:6-11