English poet Christina Rossetti was looking through the lens of Incarnation when she prayed: Lord, purge our eyes to see, Within the seed a tree, Within the glowing egg a bird, Within the shroud a butterfly. God is now fleshed. To perceive the world in Christmas light is to discern the hidden depths of everything, the astonishing possibilities in all that happens, the extraordinary mystery abiding within the ordinary. This Christian revelation of an incarnate […]
It is 11.45pm on Christmas Eve. Everything is ready – except the homily! Our church had fallen down – literally. We were trying to keep our parish-family together in the school hall. The day was spent in taking care of the essentials – finding an ordinary table for a make-shift altar, replacing infant chairs with ones big enough for well-padded adults, coaxing the caretaker for adequate heating, extra lighting for the partially sighted, making space, […]
‘A flamenco dancer, lurking under the shadow, prepared for the terror of her dance. Somebody has wounded her in words, alluding to the fact that she had no fire or duende. She knows she has to dance her way past her limitations, and that this may destroy her forever . . . When the music starts she begins her dance, with ritual slowness. Then she stamps out the dampness from her soul. Then she stamps […]
In one of her striking reflections Annie Dillard described how we would behave at Mass if we understood its full impact. We would strap ourselves to our seats, wear protective headgear, and be utterly attentive to the earth-shaking import of what was happening around us. We have many ways, she was pointing out, of avoiding what we would rather not face. And so we argue over translations, rubrics and rites. We distract ourselves with the […]
It was a child’s comment to her father that started me off on a whole new way of thinking about Christmas. I was studying in the United States at the time, paying my way by ‘doing supply’ at a local parish in San Francisco. They were standing together in front of the crib. Her father heard her musing to herself, “I wonder if God enjoys being a baby?” Especially around this time of Advent, the […]