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<\/p>\nAs we approach the Advent and Christmas seasons, I am in a forward-looking and hopeful mood. But that also involves looking back to a point in my life, not that many years ago, when hope took on a new meaning for me.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The great but incredibly difficult German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in a rare moment of clarity, wrote that all important human questions can be boiled down to these three:\u00a0WHAT CAN I KNOW? WHAT OUGHT I TO DO?<\/b>\u00a0 and\u00a0WHAT MAY I HOPE FOR?<\/b>\u00a0The Advent and Christmas seasons focus on the last of these three questions.\u00a0A major figure in the seasons\u2019\u00a0stories is\u00a0John the Baptist,\u00a0Jesus\u2019 relative\u00a0who once sent his disciples to ask his cousin a \u201cWhat may I hope for?\u201d question. \u201cAre you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?\u201d This is one of the many\u00a0poignant and excruciatingly human scenes in the gospels\u2014John has been imprisoned by Herod Antipas and his head will be on a plate soon. He is by no means the only prophet in the land\u2014they came a dime a dozen in those days. Nor is Jesus the only Messiah candidate around\u2014Israel is full of them. So John\u2019s question is not an academic one. What he really wants to know is \u201chas my whole life been a waste?\u201d<\/p>\n
Jesus\u2019 answer to John\u2019s question relies on John\u2019s knowledge of the prophet Isaiah. \u201cGo and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.\u201d Hopefully the message got back to John before he was executed by Herod. The man whom you baptized is the real deal\u2013the Messiah has truly come. That\u2019s what John foretold and waited for.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s what we wait for every Advent and Christmas season. As Christians we anticipate and celebrate what we believe to be the single most important event in human history\u2014the Incarnation. But there has always been a secret, perhaps perverse part of me that asks, \u201cso what?\u201d What exactly are we\u00a0celebrating at Christmas?\u00a0What difference do the circumstances of Jesus\u2019 birth make, a story told differently by Matthew and Luke and considered to be so insignificant by Mark and John that they don\u2019t even include it? As the 13th<\/sup>\u00a0century Dominican monk Meister\u00a0Eckhart provocatively asked, \u201cWhat good is it for\u00a0me<\/b>\u00a0that Christ was born a thousand years ago in Bethlehem?\u201d<\/p>\n During the first five months of 2009, I spent a sabbatical semester as a resident scholar at an ecumenical institute on the campus of St. John\u2019s University, run by the Benedictine Catholic order, in Collegeville, Minnesota. My academic plans were set; a well-defined book project was ready to be written. But upon arrival, it gradually became clear to me that something else was going on.<\/p>\n For most of my then fifty-plus years, I had struggled with the conservative, fundamentalist Protestant Christianity in which I was raised. What became clear to me in Minnesota was that what I thought was a long-term, low-grade spiritual dissatisfaction had become, without my being aware of it, a full-blown spiritual crisis. Beneath my introverted, overly cerebral surface my soul was asking John\u2019s question\u2014\u201cAre you the one, or is it time to look for another?\u201d<\/p>\n The answer developed quietly, subtly, unheralded, over the weeks and months. As I tested the waters of daily prayer with the monks at St. John\u2019s Abbey, I noticed a space of silence and peace slowly opening inside of me that I had never known. No voices, no visions, no miracles\u2014but I was writing differently. The low-grade anger that had accompanied me for most of my life began to dissipate. I felt more and more like a whole person instead of a cardboard cutout of one. The world looked different. I felt different. Eventually a few of my colleagues said \u201cyou\u2019re not the same person you were when you first got here.\u201d And they were right\u2013I wasn\u2019t. I began spending more time with the monks at prayer, often three times daily. Essays began to flow from a place I didn\u2019t recognize, but really liked. Little had changed outwardly, but everything was changing.<\/p>\n As the day of returning home after four months drew near, I was worried. Would these changes be transferable to my real life? Would this space of centeredness and peace be available during\u00a0a typical 80-90 hour work week in the middle of a semester? Or would these changes soon be a fond memory, to be stored in an already overfull internal regret file?<\/p>\n Two days before leaving, one of the Benedictines preached at daily mass (which I did not normally attend). In the middle of an otherwise forgettable homily, he quoted the obscure St. Catherine of Genoa, who said \u201cMy deepest me is God<\/b>.\u201d This was the answer. The space of quietness, silence and peace inside of me, the one I\u2019d never known and had just discovered\u2014is God. I was stunned. Tears filled my eyes. I tingled all over. I\u2019m tingling all over right now as I write this. Because what I had been looking for is here. And it\u00a0is\u00a0<\/b>transferable. Trust me.<\/p>\n I used to think that the evidence Jesus sent to John in prison\u2014the blind see, the lame walk, and all of that\u2014was all well and good, but\u00a0I\u2019ve<\/b>\u00a0never seen a blind person healed, I\u2019ve never seen a cripple stand and walk.\u00a0But I was looking in the wrong place. Because although I don\u2019t see perfectly, I\u2019m a little less blind than I was. My frequent tone-deafness to the needs of others is getting a little better. My inner cripple is now walking with a limp. Some days I even think I know what Lazarus must have felt like as his sisters started to unwrap his grave-clothes. A few paragraphs ago\u00a0I quoted Meister Eckhart\u2014but only half of the quote. The full quote is \u201cWhat good is it for me that Christ was born a thousand years ago in Bethlehem,\u00a0if he is not born today in our own time<\/b>?\u201d The answer to that pressing question?\u00a0He\u00a0is<\/i>\u00a0born today<\/b>.\u00a0In us<\/b>.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s make this Advent and Christmas season a coming home, an embracing of the true, continuing mystery of the Incarnation. Yes, God became flesh. And God continues to be incarnated in you, in me. This is our heritage and the promise to us. Our deepest me is God. William Wordsworth expressed this truth beautifully: \u201cBut trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home.<\/b>\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m hoping that in the darkness of his dungeon cell, John remembered his father Zechariah\u2019s words spoken at John\u2019s naming ceremony, words that I\u2019m sure were part of the family stories in John\u2019s childhood.\u00a0The Song of Zechariah, the \u201cBenedictus,\u201d\u00a0 is the canticle that closes every morning prayer service in the Benedictine daily liturgy of the hours. You may remember that Zechariah had not spoken for months, struck dumb because he found it difficult to believe the angel\u2019s announcement that his wife Elizabeth, well past child-bearing years, would bear a son.<\/p>\n When Zechariah and Elizabeth\u2019s son is circumcised at eight days old, a family squabble breaks out over what the baby\u2019s name will be. Most of the group votes for \u201cZechariah Junior.\u201d But Zechariah motions for a tablet and writes \u201cHis name is John,\u201d as the angel directed. His power of speech returns\u2014the Benedictus follows. After a beautiful meditation on his new son\u2019s role in the divine economy, Zechariah closes with a stunning promise.<\/p>\n In the tender compassion of our God<\/strong><\/p>\n the dawn from on high shall break upon us,<\/strong><\/p>\n To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,<\/strong><\/p>\n and to guide our feet into the way of peace.<\/strong><\/p>\n Let\u2019s walk in that dawn together.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As we approach the Advent and Christmas seasons, I am in a forward-looking and hopeful mood. But that also involves looking back to a point in my life, not that many years ago, when hope took on a new meaning for me. The great but incredibly difficult German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in a rare moment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2938,"featured_media":14493,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,9,11,21,22,23,35,36,40,41,47,52,57,63,68,101,103],"tags":[114,121,169,221,242,268,289,369,497],"class_list":["post-14487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-angels-2","category-beauty","category-belief","category-bible","category-christianity","category-christmas","category-collegeville","category-faith","category-family","category-god","category-grace","category-hope","category-incarnation","category-jesus","category-love","category-mystery","category-truth","category-wonder","tag-advent","tag-angels","tag-christianity","tag-faith","tag-god","tag-hope","tag-jesus","tag-old-testament","tag-william-wordsworth"],"yoast_head":"\n