ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

Mary’s question, Son, why have you done this to us?, implies that she does not think that Jesus had a right to do what he did.  But Jesus’ reply to his mother surpasses her complaint in its trenchancy:  Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?  He seems surprised that they were looking for him at all, as if they should have known better.   But he’s speaking to them from another level of existence.  To his Did you not know?, Mary could well have retorted:  ‘No, indeed!  We did not know!  How could we have known?  You are, after all, only twelve years old!’  But Mary is too deeply wise and pure in her love to speak thus.  She abides in a silence full of awe and obedience. Here is the point of extreme difficulty, when God chooses to reveal his nature as Redeemer through the agency of ordinary human beings.  These ordinary human beings are expected by God—whether they are...

Mary ponders and treasures. Perhaps this is how we are meant to let the meaning of Jesus’ birth come alive in us. Such pondering isn’t about explaining or analyzing. It is about wondering and discovering. Silent treasuring and pondering seem to be the way of Mary. Might it also be our way? The Christmas gift she is offering us with her Son? She knows that her Son is the Way.  What do you treasure about Jesus’ birth? What treasure does his birth hold for you? What does your pondering reveal about him; about you; about the life that he now shares with you? How would your life look and feel; how would it be different if you carried Jesus’ birth within you? The ‘continuing incarnation’; the incarnation which began in the womb of Mary is never ending; it continues in our lives. Excerpt from Abbot Damian's homily for Christmas Eve.

At Christmas we are not just recalling past events. These events remain somehow  present    as a live current that we are meant to plug into. As we celebrate the physical birth of Jesus into the world, we are meant to move from the fact of this birth to its meaning. What does this birth mean for your life and for my life? What do our lives look like now in light of this birth? Jesus’ birth, the birth of the eternal Son of the Father in each of our lives is as unique and particular as is each of our lives. The angel’s announcement of Jesus’ birth interrupted the shepherds’ lives. It called them away from their field and the watching of their flock. They went to Bethlehem to find “the child lying in a manger.” The “good news of great joy” is announced in the ordinary, everyday circumstances of our lives. What are our particular fields and flocks? Family and friends, ups and downs, frustrations and consolations, joys and sorrows. That’s where he wants to be born. Th...

He who was one in substance with the Father stooped down to share the substance of his mother and thereby took on himself our fallen nature, our human condition. Thus, the mystery of new birth shone upon us, so that through the same Spirit by whom Christ was conceived and brought forth, we too might be born again by a spiritual birth. Nothing about his birth took place outside our human condition. What we really celebrate today is that Jesus continues to be born in the narrowness of  our  lives, taking on our very earthy humanness in order to give his love to the world through us, through our flesh and blood. The British mystic, poet, and spiritual teacher Caryll Houselander puts it this way: The reason why we are where we are this Christmas...is because it is here in this place that Christ wants to be born; it is from here that he wants his life to begin again in the world. The reason that we are with these particular people is because it is precisely to these p...

The mystery that confronts us this morning is the birth of a very particular infant, the birth of someone who alone shows us the road to oneness with God; someone who came and dwelt among us in order to lead us all into this communion that is the very life of God. Incarnation is not so much “what” but “what for.” This Nativity is full of purpose ! “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Jean Vanier expresses beautifully and in simple terms the meaning of this Christmas proclamation: Here we have the heart, the center, the beginning and the end of the gospel: God, the eternal God, Creator of the heavens and the earth, became like us, a vulnerable, mortal human being. He became as a baby needing a mother, conceived in her flesh, nourished at her breast, needing her love and the love and presence of Joseph in order to grow and develop as a human being. Pitching his tent among us , he became a pilgrim and a brother, walking through the desert with us. He became part...

In peaceful silence, the all powerful Word, Our Lord Jesus will come to us this night from the hidden quiet of Mary's pure womb. Let us open our hearts to welcome him, who is our only Consolation, our Hope, our Refuge. His littleness is the sign of his divine grandeur.

Mary has been visited from on High with the news that she is to be God-bearer. And this morning we watch as she heads into the hill country to share her extraordinary secret with her cousin Elizabeth, herself large with child, since God has intervened in her life as well.  In their intimate encounter Mary and Elizabeth remind us that there is no place where God’s presence does not reach. Our stories as well as theirs are replete with God’s interventions, if we dare to notice them. God is no less intimate with us today as well, for we too have been welcomed into intimacy with God.  The Creator of all has chosen to become one among his own creatures. God is with us, God now has a human face. Such a truth far beyond our grasp invites us to wonder, and wonder is the threshold of contemplation, a contemplation that is not so much seeing God, as entering God’s seeing.  The Visitation , c. 1495, attributed to Rueland Frueauf the Elder, German (c. 1445 - 1507...