This Season in Heaven: A Calendar of Christmas Reflections

 

 

Twelve Benedictines of Christmas.

We offer the following brief reflections from twelve Benedictines of note, for your reflection during the days of the Christmas Season. As the Christmas Season now extends liturgically beyond twelve days, some of our sources are included twice.

 

Saturday, December 25: The Nativity of the Lord

A Christmas Revelation

Gertrude the Great (1256-1302), O.S.B., from her “Life and Revelations”

 “The day of Thine adorable Nativity, I took Thee from the crib, wrapped in swathing-clothes, like a little infant newly born, and placed Thee in my heart, that I might make a bouquet of myrrh of all Thy infant sufferings and incommodities, to place it in my breast, that I might drink there from a libation of Divine sweetness. But as I considered this the greatest favour Thou couldst bestow on me, Thou, who, when we least expect it, accompaniest Thy first graces. By others yet more precious, didst will to diversify the abundance of Thy graces in this manner. For on the same day, the following year, as the Mass was said, I received Thee, coming forth from the virginal womb of Thy Mother as a feeble and delicate Infant, and carried Thee for some time in my arms. It seemed to me that the compassion which I had shown before the Feast, by some special prayers for a person in affliction, had obtained this favour for me; but, alas!, after having obtained it, I did not receive it with the devotion I ought. I know not if it were an act of Thy justice, or a chastisement of my negligence; I hope, nevertheless, that Thy justice, by the intermission of Thy mercy, has so ordered it, to make me know more clearly the greatness of my unworthiness, and to make me less negligent in putting away idle thoughts. But it is for Thee, O Lord, to say to which of these causes I ought to refer this effect.”

Sunday, December 26: The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

Our Lord’s First Advent

Aelred of Riveaulx, O.S.B. (1110 – 1167), from Sermo 1 in Adventu Domini 1-6

You must understand that the reason why this season was instituted was to inspire us to remember the desire of our holy fathers for our Lord’s first coming, and through their example learn to have a great longing for the day when he will come again. We should consider how much good our Lord did us by his first coming, and how much more he will do for us by his second. This thought will help us to have a great love for that first coming of his and a great longing for his return.

Monday, December 27: St. John, apostle and evangelist

The Beloved Intercessor

Anselm of Canterbury, O.S.B., A Prayer to Saint John

Jesus, against whom I have grievously sinned, | Lord, whom I have wickedly despised. | Omnipotent God, whose anger I have stirred up by pride; | You are the lover of John, your blessed apostle, | And to him your terrified accused flees. | Your sinner, your offender, however great his wickedness, | However great his disgrace, | Holds the name of your beloved | Between him and the threatening sentence | Or your just judgment. | By that blessed love spare him who seeks John's protection. | Lord, by what name will you have mercy upon sinners | If you condemn someone who prays | By the name of your beloved? | Lord, under what cover is there protection, | If under the name of your beloved there is punishment? | Where is there refuge if with your beloved there is peril? | Lord, do not feel hatred for him who flees to your beloved. | Lord, Lord, do not let my iniquity avail for damnation.

Tuesday, December 28: Holy Innocents

No power to hurt you more.

The Venerable Bede, O.S.B., “Hymnum canentes martyrum”  (A hymn for the Holy Innocents)

The Hymn for conqu'ring Martyrs raise: | The Victor Innocents we praise: | Whom in their woe earth cast away, | But heav'n with joy received today. | Whose Angels see the Father's face, | World without end, and hymn his grace: | And while they chant unceasing lays, | The Hymn for conqu'ring Martyrs raise. || By that accursed Monarch slain, | Their loving Maker bade them reign: | With him they dwell, no more distrest, | In the fair Land of light and rest: | He gives them mansions, one and all, | In that his heavenly Father's hall: | Thus have they changed their loss for gain, | By that accursed Monarch slain. || A voice from Ramah was there sent, | A voice of weeping and lament: | When Rachel mourn'd the children's care, | Whom for the tyrant's sword she bare. | Triumphal is their glory now, | Whom earthly torments could now bow: | What time, both far and near that went, | A voice from Ramah was there sent. || Fear not, O little flock and blest, | The lion that your life oppress'd! | To heavenly pastures ever new | The heavenly Shepherd leadeth you: | Who, dwelling now on Sion's hill, | The Lamb's dear footsteps follow still: | By tyrant there no more distrest, | Fear not, O little flock and blest! || And every tear is wiped away | By your death Father's hands for aye; | Death hath no power to hurt you more, | Whose own is Life's eternal store. | Who sow their seed, and, sowing weep, | In everlasting joy shall reap: | What time they shine in heavenly day, | And every tear is wiped away. || O City blest o'er all the earth, | Who gloriest in the Saviour's birth! | Whose are his earliest Martyrs dear | By kindred and by triumph here. | None from henceforth may shall thee small. | Of rival towns thou passest all; | In whom our Monarch had his birth, | O City blest o'er all the earth!

Wednesday, December 29: St. Thomas Becket, bishop and martyr

“Pax Inter Spinas”

Cardinal Basil Hume, O.S.B., The Mystery of Love

Peace is so very precious, but it begins in the human heart. I speak of that peace which is the right ordering of our lives. It comes when we want what is right and strive to achieve what is good. It is the wanting and the striving that are important. It is the constant attempt to open up our lives to God, and when he invades the human heart, he establishes peace within his newly won kingdom. In the old Benedictine Breviaries there was a crown of thorns with the words Pax Inter Spinas [peace among thorns]. It has proved to be a marvelous ideal because there are a lot of thorns in life, but we have to strive for peace within. So the ideal is peace within your own heart. Realistically, it is going to have to be won in order to cope with all the difficulties and problems in life. An ancient definition of peace is tranquility of order; the opposite is disorder. The Hebrew shalom is a state whereby a person or society lives in harmony, in harmony with nature, in harmony with God; the opposite is disharmony, chaos. There are two words which I believe are the very soul of peace: love and life. Neglect love, neglect life, then you cannot have peace. They find their prototype and highest expression in God himself. God is love, God is life. That is the ultimate explanation as to why these two are so precious and must be respected. Wouldn’t it be good if we lived in a society in which love was respected and honored, and in which life was respected and protected? If we really were concerned for each other, and the needs of the other were more important; if we all thought and acted like that, we would have peace.

Thursday, December 30: Sixth Day of Octave of Christmas

At Peace with Angels

Gregory the Great, from a Christmas homily

“…What does it mean that an angel appears to the watching shepherds, and that the Brightness of God shone round about them, if not mystically signifying that they, more than others, shall merit the vision of heavenly things, who have learned to rule carefully over their faithful flocks? For while they are devoutly keeping watch over them, the divine favor shines abundantly upon them. The Angel announces that a King is born, and the choirs of angels unite their voice with his and rejoicing all together they sing: “Glory be to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.” Before the Redeemer was born in the flesh, there was discord between us and the angels, from whose brightness and holy perfection we stood afar, in punishment first of original sin, and then because of our daily offenses. Because through sin we had become strangers to God, the angels as God’s subjects cut us off from their fellowship. But since we have now acknowledged our King, the angels receive us as fellow citizens. Because the King of heaven has taken unto Himself the flesh of our earth, the angels from their heavenly heights no longer look down upon our infirmity. Now they are at peace with us, putting away the remembrance of the ancient discord; now they honor us as friends, whom before they beheld weak and despised below them.” 

Friday, December 31: Seventh Day of Octave of Christmas

As a Small Child

Bernard of Clairvaux, O.S.B. A Christmas Prayer

Let Your goodness Lord appear to us, that we, | made in your image, conform ourselves to it. | In our own strength | we cannot imitate Your majesty, power, and wonder | nor is it fitting for us to try. | But Your mercy reaches from the heavens | through the clouds to the earth below. | You have come to us as a small child, | but you have brought us the greatest of all gifts, | the gift of eternal love | Caress us with Your tiny hands, | embrace us with Your tiny arms | and pierce our hearts with Your soft, sweet cries.
 

Saturday, January 1: Octave Day of Christmas; The Solemnity of Mary, The Most Holy Mother of God

God’s Mother

Hildegard of Bingen, O.S.B., Hymn to the Virgin (Ave Generosa)

Hail, nobly born, hail, honored and inviolate, | you Maiden are the piercing gaze of chastity, | you the material of holiness – the one who pleasèd God. || For heaven’s flood poured into you | as heaven’s Word was clothed in flesh in you. || You are the lily, gleaming white, upon which God | has fixed his gaze before all else created. || O beautiful, O sweet! | How deep is that delight that God received in you, | when ‘round you he enwrapped his warm embrace, | so that his Son was suckled at your breast. || Your womb rejoiced as from you sounded forth the whole celestial symphony. | For as a virgin you have borne the Son of God – in God your chastity shone bright. || Your flesh rejoiced | just as a blade of grass on which the dew has fall’n, | viridity within it to infuse—just so it happened unto you, | O mother of all joy! || So now in joy gleams all the Church like dawn, | resounds in symphony | because of you, the Virgin sweet |and worthy of all praise, Maria, | God’s mother. Amen.

Sunday, January 2: The Epiphany of the Lord

An Epiphany

Thomas Merton, O.C.S.O., Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun…. Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed... But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.

Monday, January 3:

A Wonderful Exchange

Columba Marmion, O.S.B., Christ in His Mysteries

The mystery of the Incarnation is a wonderful exchange between divinity and humanity. -- I. The Eternal Word asks of us a human nature in order to unite it to Himself by a personal union: Creator... animatum corpus sumens. -- II. In becoming Incarnate, the Word brings us, in return, a share in His Divinity: Largitus est nobis suam deitatem. -- III. This exchange appears still more wonderful when we consider the manner in which it is wrought. The Incarnation renders God visible so that we may hear and imitate Him. -- IV. It renders God passible, capable of expiating our sins by His sufferings and of healing us by His humiliations. -- V. We are to take our part in this exchange by faith: those who receive the Word-made-flesh by believing in Him have “power to be made the sons of God.” The coming of the Son of God upon earth is so great an event that God willed to prepare the way for it during centuries. He made rites and sacrifices, figures and symbols, all converge towards Christ; He foretold Him, announced Him by the mouth of the prophets who succeeded one another from generation to generation. 

Tuesday, January 4: St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, religious

Room for Christ

Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker

     It is no use to say that we are born two thousand years too late to give room to Christ. Nor will those who live at the end of the world have been born too late. Christ is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts. But now it is with the voice of our contemporaries that he speaks, with the eyes of store clerks, factory workers and children that he gazes; with the hands of office workers, slum dwellers and suburban housewives that he gives. It is with the feet of soldiers and tramps that he walks, and with the heart of anyone in need that he longs for shelter. And giving shelter or food to anyone who asks for it, or needs it, is giving it to Christ.

     We can do now what those who knew Him in the days of His flesh did. I’m sure that the shepherds did not adore and then go away to leave Mary and her Child in the stable, but somehow found them room, even though what they had to offer might have been primitive enough. All that the friends of Christ did in His life-time for Him we can do. Peter’s mother-in-law hastened to cook a meal for Him, and if anything in the Gospels can be inferred, it is surely that she gave the very best she had, with no thought of extravagance. Matthew made a feast for Him and invited the whole town, so that the house was in an uproar of enjoyment, and the straight-laced Pharisees–the good people–were scandalized. So did Zaccheus, only this time Christ invited Himself and sent Zaccheus home to get things ready. The people of Samaria, despised and isolated, were overjoyed to give Him hospitality, and for days He walked and ate and slept among them. And the loveliest of all relationships in Christ’s life, after His relationship with his Mother, is His friendship with Martha, Mary and Lazarus and the continual hospitality He found with them–for there was always a bed for Him there, always a welcome, always a meal. It is a staggering thought that there were once two sisters and a brother whom Jesus looked on almost as His family and where He found a second home, where Martha got on with her work, bustling round in her house-proud way, and Mary simply sat in silence with Him.

     If we hadn’t got Christ’s own words for it, it would seem raving lunacy to believe that if I offer a bed and food and hospitality for Christmas–or any other time, for that matter – to some man, woman or child, I am replaying the part of Lazarus or Martha or Mary and that my guest is Christ.

Wednesday, January 5: St. John Neumann, bishop

Star of the Sea

Peter Damian, From a Homily for Epiphany

There was a star in the sky, a star on earth, and the Sun in the manger. The star in the sky was that bright heavenly body; the star on earth, the Virgin Mary; the Sun in the manger, Christ our Lord. …A star, brethren, has four main characteristics: it has the nature of fire, it is bright and clear, it sends forth a ray and it shines in the night. We can find all these qualities in our star, the Virgin Mary. She is that burning bush in which the Lord appeared to Moses, which burned with fire and yet was not consumed; for though she was with child she was not consumed by the flames of desire. She is in herself bright and splendid, so that it was said of her in the Song of Songs: “Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, clear as the sun?” And she has sent forth from herself a ray which pierces to the secret places of the heart and searches the heart and the reins; this is the living Word of God, quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit. The meaning of her name is very fitting, for Mary means “star of the sea.” The sea is this world, of which it was written: This great and wide sea, wherein are innumerable creeping things. And she is rightly named “star of the sea”, for she shines on the world like an incomparable star, and her brightness makes the world light, and she has sent forth from herself that ray “which lighteth every man that cometh into the world”. …Such is our star, brethren, such is the Virgin Mary, the star of the sea, and because she has left us an example, that we should follow her steps, of such kind should our souls be. Let us then, brethren, have the nature of fire, so that we may have in us that fire which the Lord came to send on the earth; may that fire which blazed in the bones of Jeremiah be kindled in the melting-furnace of our hearts, where the Lord sits purifying and cleansing the sons of Levi.

Thursday, January 6: (Traditional date of Epiphany)

They Went Home Changed

Dorothy Day, Room for Christ

The Magi gave out of their wealth, so too us. The gold, frankincense, and myrrh benefited Christ’s body, cared for his physical needs, so too our sweaters and grocery store gift cards. The Magi did not stay for long, but returned home. They did not journey through life with Jesus as he learned to walk in obscurity, or as he crisscrossed Galilee proclaiming the Gospel, or as he trod the road to Calvary. They did not even accompany the Holy Family during their flight into exile in Egypt! Yet precisely through their material gifts, the Magi wonderfully blessed Christ by recognizing Him, by bestowing upon Him their time, attention, and presence, by pilgrimaging a great distance and displacing themselves from their ordinary lives to pay Him homage. Surely they went home changed and renewed (“they departed for their country by another way”), carrying Christ in their heart and out of that memory sharing Christ with their friends and family (Mt 2:12). May we do likewise.

Friday, January 7: St. Raymond Penyafort, priest

The Sanctification of Poverty

St. Anselm of Canterbury, O.S.B., Book of Meditations and Prayers

The Nativity of Christ, and its sanctification of poverty. O loveable, O admirable condescension! God of boundless glory, Thou didst not disdain to be made a contemptible worm. Lord of all things, Thou didst appear as a slave among slaves. It seemed too little to Thee to be our Father; Thou didst deign, O Lord, to be our Brother also. Nay, more; Thou, Thou the Lord of all things, who hadst need of nothing, didst not refuse, even at the very outset of Thy human life, to taste to the full the inconveniences of most abject poverty. For, as the Scripture says, there was no room for Thee in the inn when Thou wast about to be brought forth, nor hadst Thou cradle to receive Thy frail and delicate frame; but Thou, Thou who boldest the earth in the palm of Thy Hand, wast laid, wrapt in rags, in the vile manger of a fil­thy cattle-shed; and Thy Mother shared with brute beasts a stall for her hospice. Be comforted, be comforted, you that are nurtured in filth and want, for your God is with you in your poverty. He does not lie cradled in splendor and luxury; no, nor is He found in the domains of those whose life is a life of ease. Why, O rich man, do you boast any longer I why do you boast, O thing of clay, as; you lie lolling in your couch of luxury and colour, while He, the King of kings, has preferred to dignify the pauper’s bed of straw by lying on it? Why do you loathe hard beds, while He, the frail Baby-God, in whose Hand all things are, has chosen for His pallet the hard straw where cattle lie, in preference to your cover lets of silk and pillows of down?

 

Saturday, January 8

Theophania

Columba Marmion, Christ in His Mysteries

…For every soul of good will, rays come forth from this Man revealing that He is likewise God. The soul enlightened by faith knows the splendour hidden behind the veil of this Holy of Holies. In the mortal Man that Jesus is, faith finds God Himself, and in finding God, she drinks at the source of light, salvation and immortal life… This manifestation of God to men is so extraordinary a mystery, a work so full of mercy; it constitutes one of the characters so essential to the Incarnation that, in the first centuries, the Church had no special feast in honour of the Saviour's Birth at Bethlehem. She celebrated the feast of the "Theophania," the feast of the "Divine manifestations" in the Person of the Incarnate Word: the manifestation to the Magi, the manifestation upon the banks of the Jordan at the Baptism of Jesus, and the manifestation at the marriage feast of Cana where Christ wrought His first miracle. In passing from the Church of the East to that of the West, the feast has retained its name in Greek: Epiphany, the "manifestation"; but it has almost exclusively for its object the manifestation of the Saviour to the Gentile world, to the pagan nations, in the person of the Magi. …before ascending into heaven, He sends His Apostles to continue His work and mission of salvation, no longer among the lost sheep of Israel, but among all people. "Going therefore," He says to them, "teach ye all nations... preach the gospel to every creature... I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world" (Mt 28:19-20). The Word Incarnate did not, however, await His Ascension to shed abroad the grace of the Gospel upon the Gentile world. As soon as He appeared here below, He invited it to His cradle in the person of the Magi. He, Eternal Wisdom, would thus show us that He brought peace, …not only to those who were nigh to Him - the faithful Jews represented by the shepherds - but also to those who "were afar off"- the Pagans represented by the Magi. …The calling of the Magi and their sanctification signifies the vocation of the Gentiles to the faith and to salvation. God sends an angel to the shepherds, for the Chosen People were accustomed to the apparition of the celestial spirits; to the Magi, who studied the stars, He causes a marvellous star to appear. This star is the symbol of the inward illumination that enlightens souls in order to call them to God. …The soul of every grown-up person is in fact enlightened, once at least, like the Magi, by the star of the vocation to eternal salvation. To all the light is given.

Sunday, January 9: The Baptism of the Lord (First Sunday in Ordinary Time)

He is Superior to Me

Gregory the Great, Homily on the Testimony of John 

John the Baptist cannot in any way understand how the Word takes on a body, how the highest spiritual being, who is the source of life, takes a soul into the womb of a mother, how can one who does not have beginning comes into existence and is conceived. The strap of the sandal is the link of this mystery. John cannot untie the strap of the sandal of the Lord, because even he who knew the Incarnation by the spirit of prophecy, he remains powerless to probe the mystery. And why say: “I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal,” if not to openly and humbly recognize his ignorance? It is as if he were saying clearly: “How can I be surprised that he is superior to me, since even though I can see that he was born after me, I cannot understand the mystery of his birth?” That is how John, full though he is of the spirit of prophecy, and admirable by the brilliancy of his knowledge, yet he makes us know his ignorance… In this regard, dear brothers, we must consider and ponder very carefully the conduct of the saints: even when they know certain things in an admirable way, they try to recover before the eyes of the mind what they do not know, in order to preserve in them the virtue of humility. Examining themselves from the side where they are weak, they prevent their soul from rising to the side where it is perfect. For if the knowledge of God is a virtue, humility is the guardian of virtue. All that remains then is to humble our minds in all that he knows, to prevent him from being torn by the wind of pride, which his virtue of science had collected… When you do good, my brethren, always remember what you have done wrong: your soul, having thus the prudence to pay attention to its faults, will never have the imprudence to indulge in its good deeds. Estimate your loved ones better than you, especially those you do not care for; for even if you see them committing some evil, you are ignorant of all that is well hidden in them.