Octave OB

It’s hard to believe that Advent has run its course and Christmas is finally here.

Looking back at your Advent from the midst of this Feast, how well did your preparations ready you and your family to celebrate Christ’s birth?

I had an interesting, or maybe I should say a unique, experience this Advent. I might say that Advent had a shade of Lent mixed into it. It is tinged with a bit of what I shared in regard to St. John on 12/15.

What I mean by that is that Lent’s characteristic introspective turn toward all-things-sinful crept into my Advent, and Christmas became an experience of redemption.

But not just an abstraction, the general notion of being saved from sin. Very specific; targeted; precision surgery in my life. A vivid sense that the birth of the Savior heralded the death of my sins; that the blazing Light coming into the world threatened to overthrow the shadows within.

To overthrow. Not just to 'pardon', if pardoning is seen as simply a kind of divine amnesia that kindly forgets the darkness deep within me. No, this grace seeks not to overlook but to overcome the springs of darkness that well up from places within I cannot get to by mere willful struggle.

Rather, this Lumen is something so deep, so primal that it is from the deepest core of who I am that I am being re-created; re-born. And though this creating/birthing event is wholly a work of grace, it requires, again and again, my free consent.

Not only do I believe this as a doctrine of faith, but it is how I have come to experience this primal grace. Indeed, the experience confirms to me again and again St. Teresa's pithy insight: "When you commit to the life of prayer, you will either succumb to the transformative work of grace within, or you will cease to pray." Often, it is when I begin to sense that God is probing too deeply that I find my finest excuses not to pray. But I digress into realms too personal.

We have Mary to thank for permitting this invasion of Light into the night.

During Advent the Light from Light gestated in Mary's womb; Mary, whom we confessed on 12/8 to be the most radical re-creation of God.

Now the Light has dawned, the Sun has shown its face above our horizon and the shadows take flight.

Alleluia!

Presently, the Light gestates in the heart of the Church, awaiting birth into a world enveloped by night’s cold and thick sway. Christ longs to come to birth that He might redeem and save what is wounded, lost and lifeless.

Let us now consent anew to His birth within. Truth born into my lies; compassion into my apathy; mercy into my unforgiveness; justice into my injustices; trust into my fears. And so on.

Every birth contains a risk. In this Feast if we consent to labor Christ into this world, we can be certain that He will deliver us from all evil; beginning with the evil that is within.

I consent, O Lord, as Mary once did: come and be born again in me.

I believe.

O my child,
child of sweetness,
How is it that I hold thee,
Almighty?
And how that I feed thee,
Who gives bread to all?
How is it that I swaddle thee,
Who with the clouds
encompasses the whole earth?
+ Orthodox Liturgy

Amen.

Merry Christmas. Christ is born! Glorify Him!