23rd December 2012 - O Emmanuel

O Emmanuel you are our king and judge, the one whom the peoples await, and their Saviour. O come and save us O Lord our God.

The Hebrew name invoked in today's Advent antiphon means 'God is with us'. Isaiah's prophecy of the Messiah's birth (7:14), declares that the One to come as saviour will bear this name. 

The evangelists name Jesus as the one to fulfil Isaiah's inspired expression of hope in God's power to save his people, through his unique birth, and the impeccable life of self sacrificial love and service which follows. 

In Jesus, God becomes present in human flesh, not in any abstract philosophical ideal way, but in the personal reality of this man whose story the Gospels recount. Because of Jesus nobody can say that God doesn't understand the trials and tribulations human beings go through.

One can argue about the necessity of his sinless conception birth, or the sinlessness of any child that is born for that matter. If the inclination to sinful behaviour is of genetic origin, what is even more vital is the freedom human beings have to resist inclination and impulse, by direction our attention elsewhere, to higher things. "If you are risen with Christ seek the things which are above where Christ is." said St Paul. God has given human beings the ability not to sin, and in Jesus we see that freedom can be lived fully, in the face of the most evil and life threatening temptations possible. It is an ability and freedom each person must take ownership of in coming to know God.

In showing us His way, at such close quarters, he rescues us from all that threatens to overpower and annihilate us. If we stumble and fall, experience any setback, He doesn't take over control unless really necessary. His way is to help us to our feet, and show us the paths we have a choice to follow. He goes wherever we go. We learn the truth with Him and from His guidance. In this, he is the most gentle of judges, concerned only for the welfare of those who are his own sisters and brothers.

Emmanuel, God-with-us, is the One who accompanies our journey through life, who encourages us to live for others and not for ourselves, as we learn first how to live for God. It's when we give time to God in silence and stillness, opening ourselves to the infinite to be filled with the Spirit that we are given strength to love, and find in this life's fulfilment.

14th December 2012

Heaven, in mythologies ancient and modern, is a place or state of delight and satisfaction, the opposite of hellish suffering. What makes people happy varies remarkably. It's expressed in culturally determined ways - dancing, tasting the best food, feasting, singing together, pampered like royalty, ectatic love-making, absorption in exquisite music or sublime worship, beauty and harmony, leisure and recreation - where everyone's value, freedom and equality are expressed and honoured.

These are just a few examples of what conveys sensual pleasure, a sense of intimacy, or a sense of beauty truth and goodness, touching upon physical and mental, social and spiritual dimensions of existence. Everyone has an idea of enjoyment that makes them feel completely alive and fulfilled, embracing every aspect of our selves, not just as individuals but in relationship to others.

The Scriptures describe heaven where worship and celebration occur continually, modelled on an oriental royal court. Jesus has little to say about it, aware that images can give a misleading impression and arouse false expectations. In response to a theoretical dispute about the post-mortem status of a woman married serially to seven brothers, he remarks "in heaven people neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they are like the angels". Normal social bonds and conventions applied to ordering relationships in life do not exist. They serve no purpose. 

Jesus doesn't say there's no intimacy in heaven. In the story of Dives and Lazarus the poor man is consoled for his suffering 'in the bosom of Abraham' - an image of security and comfort. The prophet of the Book of Revelation speaks of heaven "where there is no more death, mourning, sorrow or pain". The new order is a just and true society, in which all who belong to God inhabit a perfectly beautiful city, not ordered according to flawed human imagination, but by the divine mind: "coming down out of heaven from God". 

Nothing of the flawed and failed sinful dimension of human existence on earth belongs here. No more suffering. It's where relationships between humankind and God flourish as intended, no longer subject to the challenges and pressures of passing time. These images represent our deepest longing to be right with God and each other.

It's in moments of life when, for whatever reason, time seems to pass slowly or is suspended, that we experience "peace which passeth all understanding", and gain some finite sense of what eternity might mean, as a state where longing ends and complete fulfilling joy is found, in communion with God and all humankind. 

Is this an immersion in the depths of the common unconscious? What of our present consciousness and self is present? Or is this the state where ultimately all sense of self can be safely relinquished to receive something infinitely better? The End remains a mystery in which "All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well". Where God is "All in all".