HERE

Today is the Solemn Feast of the Annunciation of Jesus Christ’s Nativity.  It is actually a very ancient feast.  For a couple of millennia, it has been associated with late Lent – and I read somewhere that in the ancient Syrian Church this feast occurred on the Thursday of Holy Week – in the morning.  It marked the beginning of all the things Christians were about to celebrate.  Rather mercifully in modern times, Holy Thursday is not also the day of this feast!  In the first chapter of Luke we read about an angel, Gabriel, being sent to Mary of Nazareth.  There is now a modern church in that town and in the crypt a little Chapel which commemorates the event.  Don’t ask me how they know exactly where it happened – but it did happen in “this” place.  On the tiny altar in that crypt chapel certain Latin words are engraved:

‘verbum caro hic factum est’

That could be freely translated: ‘Word enfleshed HERE it was’

The “Word” is God, according to St John.  So, it’s that little word “hic” – that is not in St John.  This little word ‘hic’ is like a thunder bolt and it could thrill us or shock us, or both.  HERE.  Not “once upon a time” but HERE.  I want to mull that over, do you?

INFECTIOUS

While joy is never out of season, even in Lent, it can seem at least ‘high risk’ these days.  Fear seems to be the most infectious disease around.  Covid-19 or The Virus seems the engine that drives our lives, even our Churches and other places of worship.  It is becoming obsessive.  Don’t you agree?

That said, we must never lose focus on the good or the ‘blessing’ hidden in all of life.  In life itself!  Accepting LIFE as a gift or a blessing is what transforms our daily slog.  To see the hidden wholeness in life is transformative.  There is a Jewish tradition of prayer that says we should give thanks for at least 100 things each day – a minimum number, that.  This takes the form of a prayer of blessing, a barakah.  “Blessed be Thou Lord of the Universe….” that I was able to get out of bed this morning… that I am healthy, or I am ill, but You LORD are with me in this.”  Nothing is too small to evoke an expression of gratitude or a barakah prayer.  The prayer ought to be EXPRESSED too, not just a vague thought.  Of course, an Orthodox Jew probably has a written prayer for almost any occasion – but as Gentiles, we could be forgiven for composing our own little humble versions.  Now – as for the “100” – it is obvious that if we aim only at that minimum, we will be spending a LOT of time offering barakah/blessings!!  I am working on it.  It’s harder than you think!  It could become INFECTIOUS.

JOY OUT OF SEASON?

Lent again!  Recently I thought this is like a season when a ship pulls into a convenient port for needed repairs and overhauls.  Yet it is so much more than that, of course.  I ran across something written by the English priest George Congreve, SSJE many years ago; because he was a great soul, his thoughts are worth sharing, even if this proves a longer read than usual.  He wrote this at a time when Lent was taken seriously by the society in general.  Nevertheless, I find it helpful.  Maybe you will too.  Here goes:

“Lent is no mere ceremonial regulation, like the Lord Chamberlain’s order for Court mourning for so many days. As if the Church should announce that on Ash Wednesday immemorial custom and ecclesiastical propriety demand that we begin to live sadly for forty days, put aside every encouraging consideration, and dwell upon past sin and the consequences of eternal sin. ….joy is out of season for six weeks. On the contrary, George Herbert writes, ‘Welcome, dear feast of Lent’; and the meaning of Lent is the spring of the soul and of the Church. It symbolizes not the despair or indifference of the dead in sin, the winter of the soul, but the spring, the stirring of mysteries hidden in the depths of our nature, the silent awaking of a desire to love God, which is new and wonderful–of a capacity of growing in likeness to Christ…”   He continues:

“The soul is setting herself in a quiet time to remember the highest and deepest thoughts she ever had, and deliberately to choose afresh the highest aim she ever caught sight of. All who intend to obey the Church, and keep Lent, mean that by the grace of God they intend to grow through these forty days in the knowledge and love of God.”

Congreve reflects on the ancient saints, how Lent was for them “a school of Christ.”  It should be a ‘school’ for us too – a school that awakens spiritual HOPE in us.  This is not the sort of ‘hope’ the world can offer but the theological virtue of that name.  But that for another time!