Love in the Dwelling
WRITTEN BY:
Fr Carl Telford sm
READ TIME:
3 mins
Surely we cannot be thinking about Christmas already! But yes, hopefully we will gather with family soon to celebrate the birth of the Lord. And what a year it has been!
Sometimes times of trial make us revisit spiritual wisdom and rediscover the truth. God’s ways are mysterious. Perhaps the first truth to reflect on is that the first Christmas was not what Mary and Joseph wanted it to be. They had to introduce their newborn son with no room in the inn but instead into a smelly stable. In poverty the Lord was born. What does that teach us?
As we ponder the message of the stable we are reminded that it is not the dwelling or externals but the love in the dwelling that matters. As we watch another home improvement show, beware. As we renovate our homes, first remember the call to renovate our hearts. There was never more love surrounding the Lord than in that Bethlehem stable.The eyes of Mary and Joseph were on the newborn. We can always begin this day to walk in the way of love. So as we get ready for Christmas let us ask the Lord for more loving hearts.
The second truth is that the Lord’s work is never done with noise and loud attention-seeking behaviour. The Lord always comes in peace and gentleness: in a hidden cave outside Jerusalem the Saviour was born. You will not find the birth of the Lord as primetime news. The noise of life can exclude the necessary contemplative heart. Surely we can all say, ”If only I had listened more!” The holy season of Advent stops us and helps us to listen and ponder more.
Third, God always uses the weak to confound the strong. Part of the mystery of God’s plan is that he prefers to use the minority, the little ones. In many ways this is a time of diminishment of the public image of the Church. We do not have the numbers or the strength. But Jesus is the man of few numbers, as Cardinal van Thuan says. Moses confounded the power of Pharaoh, Judith defeated Holofernes, Gideon overcame the Philistines, St Catherine of Siena helped bring the pope back from Avignon to Rome. The history of the Church is full of examples of little ones doing great things for God. One of the miracles for the canonisation of St Thérèse happens far from Lisieux. It happened that a priest had been waiting in vain for years for converts. He prayed to her and asked for her intercession and there was the sudden arrival of Inuit people seeking catechesis and the real beginning of the mission.
Fourth, Jesus is the man who prefers the few. Remember the story of the abundant feeding of the five thousand. From five loaves and two fish came a feast. Jesus looks out for little people: the Samaritan woman, Zacchaeus, the pagan Syro-Phoenican woman, the adulteress to give a few examples. We do not find him in a palace. He teaches that the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which becomes a tree or like the yeast that changes the flour. Jesus prefers humble things and humble people. We also know he does not use the proud. The history of the Catholic faith coming to New Zealand is a story of a long delay due to Napoleon and the imprisonment of the pope. These were events outside the Church’s control. So when the Catholic missionaries finally came the missionaries from other church communities had been here for years. Yet God gave the increase.
The best present we - the humble, the few, the weak and the small - give each other is a loving attentive heart: sometimes easier said than done. Hence the grace of Advent and Christmas to change our hearts and give us peace as, longing for a saviour, we reflect on the story of salvation in the midst of our lives.
