6th December 2012

Life from birth to death is in constant process of change. The process of adjustment to continuous minor changes is automatic. We are hardly aware of them, until we quieten ourselves and re-focus our attention, as in meditation, or when checking how to achieve something, like shouldering a burden we're unused to, balancing, attempting to read small print with weakening eyes.

We observe more consciously, reflect on and celebrate major change: childhood development stages, adolescence, leaving home for work or college, marriage, childbearing, vocation, major illness, bereavement. The meaning of existence is made partly from experiences great and small. It also comes from connections we make with others during this journey, above all, in relation to One with us always from start to finish. One who dwells in us, with us and beyond us; One in whom we live, move and have our being.

It's not that we're fully conscious of God and who God is for us at any time. We can sometimes be aware of God without understanding, unable to interpret this to ourselves or others. We can learn from religious practice or spiritual discipline, ways and means of interpreting this awareness, but ignore what we are taught, resisting or taking ages to be persuaded of the truth. "Late have I loved you Lord." said St Augustine after his libertine years rejecting his Christian mother's appeal to live by the Gospel. Some people feel their lives are invaded by God, and experience being changed by grace from beyond. They interpret this as conversion to life of faith in God, as St Paul and many others have.

Does God force Himself on anyone? Doesn't this violate the freedom God confers as part of human nature? Sometimes experiences and events in life give the impression of God breaking in unexpectedly, perhaps unwanted. This has more to do with hidden aspects of our nature of which we know little. Jung invited observation that conscious experience is like the visible tip of an iceberg, mostly hidden beneath the waves. The background processing of sensations, memories and understanding as thoughts which may or may not percolate up to consciousness from below suggests how the mind/brain works.

If human existence is immersed in divine Being, the unconscious may be understood as a dimension where God dwells hidden, closer to us than we know, until we learn to delve within ourselves. When God seems to break into conscious experience, is it the outcome of a dialogue in the unconscious between self and God, resolved by emerging into consciousness, changing what we believe about everything? It doesn't matter whether we interpret this as God intervening from within, or above and beyond. We cannot fathom how grace works to make change and bring all things to fulfillment under God's reign. Grace manifests itself in all the affairs of the world as in the affairs of the heart, if only we learn how to perceive it, and awaken to welcome its Advent.

5th December 2012

Saint Paul lived in an era when anxiety about the end of the world was commonplace. Life under a violent exploitative colonial regime was nasty brutish and short. It was understandable that oppressed people should long to see an end to victimhood. Jesus' ministry and the events issuing from its astonishing conclusion, heightened expectation among his followers that the End of all things would be soon. This was reflected in his writings.

As decades passed, the church spread from Palestine across languages and cultures. Believers were martyred in persecutions. Some grew old or sick and died, but the End didn't arrive. Paul gave pastoral reassurance to people  wondering anxiously if dead loved ones would lose out if they missed the finale of the great cosmic drama.

His own certainty about the End and eager anticipation of it was undoubted. He didn't know when and didn't seek to know when, but he expected it to occur in a single instant, when the eternal 'imperishable' nature of reality, which is clothed by transient material reality, would be revealed. He stated: "We shall not all die, but we shall all be changed in a flash in the twinkling of an eye ..."

This refers back to his conversion experience, when the risen Lord was revealed to him as he was unexpectedly overwhelmed by blinding light. This instant that turned him from persecutor to evangelist by the grace of God acting in a decisive transformation. 'We shall all be changed' is a key theme of his preaching and the spiritual formation of new Christian disciples. "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your minds." he exhorts.

Change is a constant feature of existence, whether we are called to respond to it, or to be its initiators and instruments. Paul, however, speaks in the passive voice, about change we aren't in control of, concerning the nature of our existence as children of the creator Father God. We don't just live, we are sustained, cherished in life by the infinite consciousness of the One Jesus declares with poetic flourish, values every sparrow, and each person so much more, He numbers the hairs on our heads.

Over and against the prospect of annihilation at life's end, the Gospel places, not our knowledge of God, but God's knowledge of us. My consciousness of self is fundamentally linked to God's consciousness of me. I come fully alive as I open myself and reach out in trust, discover and acknowledge the bond of love between us. "Not that we first loved Him, but that He first loved us."

We affirm in faith that we are on journey into the unknown, now in this world, and at at the end of life. In that unknown we are not alone, due to Him who loved us and gave himself for us in a way we can understand - in Jesus Christ.