Merry Christmas.
May it be merry, may you know the deepest joy, of glimpsing the light of God’s love for you and every human being in Jesus Christ.
The Webster family was in Paris in April, celebrating Eve’s birthday and our 40th wedding anniversary.
On the right bank of the Seine, just across from the Isle Saint Louis not far from Notre Dame, there is the gothic church of St. Gervais. A very lively community exists there – monks and nuns and laity in the Fraternités de Jérusalem, communities of Jerusalem, which have a lively website (http://jerusalem.cef.fr/).
By happy chance, our son and daughter found a restaurant in the square there for a family celebratory dinner. And there was a shop of things from monastic communities around France, including from the Abbey of Aiguebelle in the south, which we visited as a family three times. We had been to an extraordinary exhibition of Russian art at the Louvre, and it prompted me to buy small icons of the Mother and Child for the family – of the Virgin of Tenderness, the Child nestling his head against the Mother’s cheek, her blue mantle set against a gold background.
Just so may God hold us. The incarnate Son by his unique nature was able to show fully the love of God which is the chief characteristic of the nature of God. He learned how to do that as a human being in the arms of the woman who bore and raised him.
We all picked up other things, produits from the abbeys, and I took the purchases to the counter. And the very nice clerk promptly had a problem with the American credit card and had to call one of the sisters for guidance. A young nun appeared down the stairs from the office above, polite and business like in that French way, and called upon the intercession of Maksymilian Kolbe for help. Anyone who knows me, knows I have a profound admiration for (what the French used to call a specials devotion for) the story of the Polish priest Maksymilian Kolbe who was imprisoned at Auschwitz and took the place of another prisoner sentenced to death. It seems to me to reflect, in the life of a priest, the Gospel story of Jesus himself taking our place. And following Jesus as disciples on his way, we are share one another’s burdens.
However meaningful the sister’s intercession, up on the credit card machine came the French word “abandon” -- in this case with a meaning exactly the same in English, give up. European credit cards have a little chip that American cards do not have, and occasionally – ticket machines in the metro, small shops – one’s card is denied. The rector does not frequent extremely expensive places, however I suspect the more expensive the place, the less likely the denial, chip or no chip.
Sister said “abandon” and I said, ah, Le Saint Abandon, the classic work of French spirituality with quite another meaning – giving oneself into God’s hands. And we laughed together.
Jolly as the moment was – and outside my son commented on this venture into nun humor, and that there were probably a relatively small group of people who would understand what the conversation was about – jolly as the moment was, I reached for my wallet and paid cash.
A year ago I went on a retreat for clergy sponsored by the Church Pension Fund. An extremely helpful and rich week. All sorts of things came out of the week. I think I told you about being in touch with high school teachers.
One of the exercises the leaders had us do was to think about our early passion – what we were passionate about coming into the ordained ministry. And now, for me forty years on, how to return to, cherish, appreciate that passion. It wasn’t something to announce to the group or wear on our sleeve.
When I was a teenager I came across a series of paperback books published by Doubleday, the Image Book series. The first one I read was St. Francis de Sales Introduction to the Devout Life, which was really a conversion experience for me.
Later as a student, I also read Thomas Merton for the first time in that series. Born in 1915, he went to Columbia, in New York, where he became a Roman Catholic. In 1941 he entered the Cistercian Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky, where he was a member of the community until his death in 1968, in an accident in Thailand where he was attending an inter-faith monastic conference.
In 1949 he wrote a book that was a history of the Cistercian Order called The Waters of Siloe. Cistercians are often called by their nickname Trappist from the abbey of La Trappe in France.
One of the great gifts of monastic communities, is they remind the wider church of things meant to be deeply important to us – for instance, the place of building community, the place of prayer woven in daily life.
In his history of the Cistercians, Merton told a story that I think reveals something deeply important in his early passion – the heart of him through his life as a monk – and something profoundly important to me.
In the 19th century a monk named Vital Lehodey came to the Cistercian Abbey of Bricquebec in France. He was the writer of the great classic book I talked with the sister about -- Le Saint Abandon – Holy Abandonment – not lowering the flag, not giving up the ship, but giving yourself into God’s hands, into God’s love.
In the community there was a lay brother named Candide Villemer. He had worked as a blacksmith and in the abbey mill, and then in the kitchen of the guest house for years. This is how Merton described him – and I think was giving something of Thomas Merton’s own passionate vision of a life of prayer and something that deeply spoke to me and speaks to me, from Scripture (the Cloud), from the monastic tradition, indeed from the Quaker tradition:
All he knew was that the love of God worked and expanded within him and drew him down into the depths of a vivid and suave darkness that was full of rest and yet full of life: a deep cloud that enveloped his whole being and in his center he came face to face somehow with God. It was not that he saw anything or heard anything, but his whole being was pervaded with the loving sense of God’s presence.
Thomas Merton, The Waters of Siloe
Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image Book,
And later:
… only one thing mattered: the silence, the deep fruitful silence, of adoration and love with which his heart was full.
This brother had been told by his superiors and directors that he should always be doing something, that just being still was a mistake, let alone being drawn into quiet. Vital Lehodey gave him encouragement –
Then his heart expanded with joy, and he gave himself up without fear to the love of God that so quietly, yet so urgently demanded to possess his whole being ….
We celebrate at Christmas God coming to us in Jesus, who is Emmanuel, God with us, to love each one. Each one.
God calls each one of us trust in the gift of God’s love in Jesus, to respond in trust, and abandon – giving ourselves into God’s hands, the risen hands of Jesus which bear the scars of whgat we go through in this life – to give ourselves “up without fear to the love of God that so quietly, yet so urgently” demands to possess our whole being in love. To rest in God’s presence and love, like the Child in his Mother’s arms, resting on her cheek. To trust and adore.
Merry Christmas – may it be merry, the deepest joy, in God’s love for you, and every one.
(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector, in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2010 at the Midnight Eucharist.)
No comments:
Post a Comment