This evening, we celebrate the coming of Jesus. The reality he symbolizes is the union between God and humanity. When we look at this sacrament, this symbol in Jesus, we see God uniting the entire humanity to God’s very own self. The image of that which is conceived of the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary captures God coming and dwelling in our midst, Emmanuel. This reality of our union with God is in and of itself God’s salvation. In the presence of God, all our brokenness is restored and healed.
That we are at-onement with God is initiated by God in the same way that we are created by God alone. We don’t make God available. We can certainly make a god available for our own sakes. Rather, God faithfully and perpetually makes God’s own self available for us so that God’s presence can be found in us. The kingdom of God dwelling in us, which is the good news Jesus proclaims, is the message of Emmanuel as well. The Christmas message is not different from the gospel message of Jesus. There’s one more grace of God we can merrily celebrate through breathing. This one is experiential in its nature that we see the coming of God dwelling within our bodies. St. Paul in his letter to Titus sees the Holy Spirit being poured out on us richly through Jesus. From a contemplative perspective, we are to experience the presence of the Holy Spirit in meditation, particularly through breathing. Jesus’ breath is not different from our breath. It’s the same breath that we breathe. It’s the same Holy Spirit breathing into our bodies. Imagining that our breath is the same as Jesus’, we can enter into a deep sense of communion with him. This communion through breathing is also the way to experience God in a trinitarian way. Our human body that stands in the place of Son connects with the Holy Spirit through breathing in the presence of the Father. Our body is then the locus where God happens, the locus of Emmanuel, God with us. When we are able to sense the depth of this holy communion with God with our bodies through our own breathing, there comes a radically different yet once hidden reality in which the Holy Spirit links you and me, us and Jesus, all of us and the world in the Holy Trinity. This is how we can experience God in the most fundamental and natural way. I would like to suggest that sharing this contemplative experience with your loved ones can be a special Christmas gift. It’s not costly but takes courage for us even to give it a try! I have a beautiful story that can convince us why this can be a special gift. This is the story shared on NPR recently The last time Carolyn DeFord, a member of the Puyallup tribe, saw her mother was in 1999. That's when Leona Kinsey, who raised DeFord in La Grande, Ore., went missing. She was never seen again. Her disappearance is just one unsolved case in the nationwide crisis of missing or murdered Indigenous women. In a 2019 interview with StoryCorps, DeFord told the story of her mother's disappearance. The lack of closure — not knowing what happened to her mom, she said at the time — made her grief all the more inescapable. While other people have funerals and ceremonies to acknowledge their loved ones, she didn't feel that she had a place she could go to honor her mother's life. “For the rest of the world, losing somebody, there's a grieving process,” DeFord said. After 22 years, DeFord said recently, she's managed to find moments of reprieve from the grief. DeFord, now 48, returned to StoryCorps this past October, a time of year that usually weighs on her. It's the same month her mother went missing. "As soon as I smell fall and the leaves are turning brown, I always feel a little heavy, a little reminiscent, a little empty."But there's a memory of her mother that she said always brings her comfort. When she was about 6 years old, she was in the car with her mom and a funeral was being broadcast on the radio. DeFord had asked her mother about it. “It's the cycle of life. Everybody dies," she recalled her mom saying. "And I said, 'No, I don't want you ever to die.'” Seeing her daughter upset, Kinsey told DeFord to close her eyes and asked: "Was I still here?" “Yes,” DeFord answered. Kinsey then asked: If her daughter couldn't see her, how did she know she was still there? “I told her, ‘I could feel you,’” DeFord said. “And she said, ‘Well, the part of me that loves you, you'll still be able to feel that.’” With the season change, there's another thing that gives DeFord hope. “This year, I'm not feeling the gloom because my daughter's getting ready to have her first baby,” she said. “I'm just hoping that having something beautiful coming into our lives, it'll overwhelm the ugly — it'll wash it out.” Three days later, on Oct. 21, her family welcomed Caspian Hayes, a healthy baby boy. “The part of me that loves you” in its deepest sense is the presence of the Holy Spirit that all of us share in common. This hidden joy of God coming in our midst is what we celebrate during the season of Christmas. And what can be better than an infant coming to the world, overwhelming the ugly, washing out darkness? May all of us find the joy that comes from within, and Merry Christmas! |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
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