"Christmas Message 2004"

We celebrate Christmas just after the winter solstice and the shortest day of the year. The early church realised that this time expressed so truly the meaning of the coming of Christ. Hope for this advent of the Christ, the Word made flesh, that would bridge and unite the vast and violent division in the human soul, the split between our self and God, is as old and as deeply written into human nature as any genetic code. And so, as St Leo the Great said, this is the day when no one on earth has the right to be sad!

And yet, as a look at the painting above will illustrate, the light has not yet penetrated all the dark corners of the world. At first it even makes the dark darker. Jesus was born homeless, he had to escape the massacre of Herod and flee into exile. Knowing the effect of such light on minds grown accustomed to shadows, Jesus warned us that he came to bring not cosy togetherness but the conflict between truth and falsehood that is necessary before unity is achieved. He came not to bring the false and impermanent peace such as the world gives but a sword of peace and justice that teaches us the way of non-violence.

Not surprisingly, humanity chose to dilute the meaning and evade the truth that we try to celebrate this season. It’s all too much to take in. Too much and too radical a change of mind is called for. What eventually wins us over and leads us to kneel before the truth and offer the gifts of our lives and talents is the unspeakable, indescribable meaning behind this event. Simply and terrifyingly, that God likes us. Let’s forget about being ‘loved’ for a moment. It’s a heavily overworked term with many shadows in it. Let’s begin by realising that God likes, accepts and embraces us as we are. “I like you”. Let’s begin with that and see where it leads us. Behind the pure self-giving of the Incarnation is the one, wholly pure gift of self that empowers us to give ourselves, to learn to love one another as God loved us.

As Father John often reminds us, this overwhelming Christian mystery explodes in the silence of love in the heart’s deep core. Meditation is incarnation. Our whole mind, body and life become one with the one is who is one with the One. W e learn to see Jesus in the innerness of things, their true meaning, not just in the externals upon which we project so many of our fears and false desires. Meditation is also enlightenment. It spreads light into those shadowy corners of consciousness, reclaiming what was lost or forgotten, reviving what had died, calling us into the fullness of life, the purpose of his coming.

I hold you in my heart through this season of light shining in the dark. As a community we are - at this and every moment - being born, weeping, laughing, coming to strength, dying, rising in the spirit, all at once because we share each of these phases with each other, indeed with all we meet in the love of Christ. For some it is their first Christmas, for others their last. Yet it is all one. So let us keep each other in our heart as, like Mary and the prophets, we contemplate this overwhelming mystery in our hearts.

With much love and wishing you every grace of Christmas

Father Laurence

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