Towards the Christlight...
Advent approaches, that evocative, poignant time when all creation seems to hold
its breath in rapt anticipation.
When we who know Christ need and seek to wait and watch, amid the world's
frenetic activity, to listen among the loudness for that still, small voice of
love.
As the days shorten, my physical energy, gentles and dwindles, both with
illness, and more and more because I live now so in harmony with the natural
world And my life as a solitary and a contemplative, an anchorite in an ancient
tradition, separates me more and more from the ways of the outside world At this
Holy Time, this is irrevocably and firmly accentuated, more so than at any other
time.
Not for me the world's bustle and buying, not for me the concerts and
parties....
Not for me the gifts and gaiety.
And there is a quietude and a quiescence in this, here in this serene and lovely
ancient place He has brought me to.
For I am as my Lord has chosen for me. And I am His alone, and am more deeply
fulfilled that I had ever though or hoped to be, or deserve to be.
And in that is a calm peace that is of Him.
And in the quiet early dark hours as I write this, in this my first full year in
my hermitage nestled almost atop a remote Irish mountain, I realise that, for
the first time for many years, there are no major events during Advent to
distract this Holy Season.
Last year, I was so new here, still finding my way round, tentative in new
settings and among new people. And, above all, there was the sheer exuberant and
incredulous joy of the strong probability of being able to go to Midnight Mass
for the first time in over two decades, years when illness and remoteness
prevented this.
I wrote.......
"For I am my Beloved's and He is mine, at home, after a long, hard exile.
The Church waits - soon the Christmas Mass will be . And Sr CJ, whatever it
takes, will be there, kneeling in a quiet corner, rapt and lost in utter
abandonment and heart-givenness
Who am I that my Lord should come thus to me?
That is Love, incarnate, inseparable.
************************
So, with this in my heart, as darkness gathered, the night which would bring the
Daystar, I went to bed after Carols from Kings... sweet and familiar by my Irish
fireside, bright with greenery and red flowers....
I thought then, with some sadness, that I was losing the holiness and stillness
of His Presence in all the arrangements, losing that breathless excitement and
anticipation in tiredness...
And in those stupid anxieties; listening to the heavy rain and worrying if the
car would not start.... It has never once hesitated!!
But He is true and loving.
When I made coffee and dressed, in my ‘best' habit, all the excitement and joy
were there....All the love and longing to be in His House as midnight came...
Laughter almost bursting out of me; delight in this night, that was as sweet in
the fulfilment as it had been in the anticipation.
I tucked my habit into thick trousers to keep it clean, donned Wellingtons...
and sweet- starting car..
To drive along misty Irish lanes, seeing the isolated houses lit with
Christmas.. The moon trying to break free of clouds.....Then the church curled
round with mist caught in the lights. It is an old-style church, stone, with a
square tower, and on a hill....The heating boiler sending steam up into the damp
air....
So I shed my outer layers... Sr CJ, walking to the Church door for Midnight
Mass!!
One of those wondrous moments that stay forever with you..
A fulfilment and a promise. A love-token.
Holding it open for a lady and wishing her happy Christmas!!
Oh sweetness and joy!
And inside; warmth, anticipation
And a Church more fair and holy you could not find.
Candle-lamps and red-holdered nightlights all over. I had thought, when I heard
about the carols before Mass, "Now if there would be candles!!"
And oh, there were!!
And the crib, set out simply before the altar, encircled and embraced by arms of
graded height pillars with redholdered nightlights atop.....
And the flowers...
And I helped light the candles!! The sheer joy of it all; carrying the light
from flame to flame as the Church quietly filled with that hushed whispering..
Then holding a flashlight for the teacher as the children's sweet eager voices
rang out with the joy..........
And then the Mass; the five candles and the tall altar candles lit.
And I retreated to kneel in what we would call the Lady Chapel; it is not
screened or walled, just a quiet part. And I was absorbed and rapt there.
For I can concentrate on Him far, far better when thus apart, and this is known
and respected now.
For I am not part of the congregation and it helps to thus mark that.
We were bidden remember past times, past Christmas - and the quiet miracle came
home afresh to me. Here, in God's House, at peace My long exile is over.
I am at home and at peace in my Father's House, and at ease among His people.
Gifts I never thought ever to be given.
ALLELUIA!
And I give Him thanks and praise.."
I smile as I read this!
And remember too now the weeks of that Advent.
And renew and affirm all more strongly and surely now.
There is no time in our Christian year richer in symbolism. And when we are
busy, it is often impossible to realise and taste fully the meanings We need
symbolism; for how can we, in our feebleness and frailty, in our humanity, grasp
the realities, the enormity of the Coming? T.S. Eliot writes, "Mankind cannot
bear very much reality."
It is like trying to look at the sun; it blinds and dazzles.
And our Father, Who made us, knows this.
So He gives us candles, smaller lights we can bear and love.
Always I have followed it all, always the outward signs around me. Even when I
lived among folk who, if they had any faith, believed that outward things
distracted from inward, that worship must be plain and unornamented to be valid.
Oh, how much they lose! Creator -God; You gave us this world, You, at this Holy
Time, prepared to come among us, in our most vulnerable state, surrounded by all
You made, the tiny things and the great, straw and wood, stars and sky, mother's
milk and the green earth.
And if we truly worship, then all we touch and taste and see and hear are imbued
with Your Love and Presence.
NOTHING is outside you, when we are truly in You.
You made us, with all our faculties and senses....
And no time is richer than these next few weeks.
Just now, in these mild sunny days, I am much outside. And the robin, whose
joyous wakening makes me smile every morning, comes almost to my hand.
The robin; who was a plain brown bird, until, coming as close to Jesus on the
cross as he does to me, in love pulled out a thorn from His head. And the Blood
that flowed stained his face and his breast.
He made that bird... As He wished it to be.
A symbol - and a captivating one, with his bright eyes and fragile legs.
And this land where God has brought me, where faith has been heart-held and
life-lived for so many centuries, is richer than any in this allness of love.
Surrounded by this spirit, in these last quiet weeks, as I wait and watch with
Mary, heavy with weariness as she was with Child, knitting baby clothes in bed
and by the fire, with the Sacred Heart lamp flickering day and night with
eternal love, my mind dwells so deeply on these things.
And as the old Irish used to whitewash and sweep their houses, so the hermitage
will be fettled and settled, for in preparing for Him we prepare also for every
guest who comes...... As the Lorican says, "Christ in every heart that loves me.
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger".....
And an old Irish blessing...
May God grant you and yours
the peace of all things calm,
the place to hide from harm,
the light that shines in dark,
the heart's eternal spark.
A door that's open wide to
the guest who waits outside.
Hospitality, warmth and cheer
by your hearth, no matter where.
O, oft and oft and oft, goes Christ
in the stranger's guise.
He is the light, the truth, the way
May He be with you this very day.
Edited and adapted from the 1st millennium Celtic Oral Tradition
He is our guest, that tiny new Baby.
All the baking and caking, all the cleaning and gleaning are part of our giving
to Him, reflecting His giving to us; a candle flame to His great Sun.
For especially Advent centres on light...
A long-lived custom here was to set a lighted candle in the window, to lead and
guide Mary and Joseph. It said, " There is room here. Welcome!"
And to that was added the poignancy in Penal Times, when priests were hunted and
Mass was forbidden, of that same candle showing any priest that here was a safe
house where Jesus lived...
For me, these scenes evoke and haunt.
For just downhill from the hermitage, now the only house lived in on a mountain
that in old days was richly- populated, is a cave, a dug-out by a stream, where
eight Franciscan Friars, refugees from Creevelea and Cromwell, Creevelea "the
grey branch", a fitting place for a grey-habited Franciscan hermit-Sister, hid
and celebrated Mass. In a poverty as great as the Christ-Child's birthplace.
It is all but impossible for us in our age of electricity, street lights and car
headlamps to imagine the darkness of night. And to know thus the impact a single
candle makes.
These were poor people; the turf fire, fuel hard-dug from the living bog, and
candles, were their only light in these December days.
And they would trek barefoot, miles down the mountain track in that darkness, in
the rain and wind, to keep the flame of faith alive.
Stars and moon their only light on clear nights, a lump of turf on a stick else.
So, my thought dwell much on this in the silence and solitude here.
We carry that flame ever onwards.
And as I craft my Advent Wreath, with fresh-picked greenery, all the richness
and meaning floods and flows through me.
No dismissing greenery as pagan, for Jesus makes all things new! Redeems and
sanctifies all!
And the Celtic lore gives way to His Name.
As the old carols knew.....
Holly; berries blood red, among sharp, sharp prickles; ivy, with its three-lobed
leaves entwining His love around us...Evergreen fir for the eternal Life He is,
Life and Love that encircle the whole world as we weave the wreath.
He gave us the green and red that we gravitate to every Christmas, His red
blood, and the ever-renewing green of life and hope, and our craving and need of
light.
For we weave around light......
Around Light... the rich, sombre, royal of purple, bringing reflectiveness and
cleansing, that rose-pink of joy... and the tall white purity at the heart,
waiting for that breathless dawning of LIGHT!
So I weave this, and set it in a window here.
He lives on, always and forever......
Wherever one loving heart lights one candle for Him....
And the Angel tree will shine out also......
The tree, tall and spire-shaped, white-lit.... Pointing heavenwards.....
And again, given, fresh cut from the mountain, by my neighbour. Only this year,
there has been mutuality, for he remembers the lamb I was privileged to help him
save.
So that caring sanctifies it even more.
And in the other window, the Crib, and behind it the white-lit star, shining out
over the wide valley, as the candles did here in long centuries.
Saying, "Welcome, Christ-bearer!"
And we are all "Christ-bearers"; all Light-Holders....
Light that is not to be hugged to ourselves For the nature of Light is outwards,
not inwards. It is a giving, not a taking. A showing and a sharing.
As was that Life given to us in Bethlehem.
A showing and a sharing; a Lightening in darkness, leading us, pointing the Way
to us.
A way of living-with-love, of living not for us, but for Him and for each
other... Of giving more than we are given.
And we need these symbols in this frenzied world... For us they are not empty
rituals, not commercial gimmicks.
Advent..... Emmanuel...... Christ-with-us.
Too vast and too huge for mortal minds.......
Here, now, my outgoings into that gaudy glare that is the world's way at this
time are all but over. One more shopping day in the big town, and that by
slipping in on the side-roads early, avoiding the noisy centre, then out again,
through dim, silent forests, past deep, still lakes, and back up the mountain
track to peace.
Then only briefly to Mass and oddments locally.
My own giving over early in physical terms, as I crafted for pre-Christmas
religious order Sales of Work.. My hands and heart now given to Him.
All else in "silence and solitude and persevering prayer and penance", as the
peace up here alone with Him grows and gathers.
Softly singing sweet carols to my coming King by candlelight and firelight.
A still point, a light up here on the mountain, steadfast and strong.
The world set aside, to watch and wait, to gaze at the growing light of dawn as
the robin smiles his song.....to mark the days with the beautiful Advent
Offices, then the Great ""O" Antiphons.....The Child the world awaits, caught in
eternity, always then, always now.
The lights of the sleeping village across the wide valley as serene as
Bethlehem...........
Trees bare and stark now, as all descends and darkens, before that explosion of
light as the Daystar dawns And then a feasting and a gladdening, a great bright
shouting ALLELUIA!
And each day in Advent, I will light a candle, and hold all in prayer, bring all
into this profundity, this hushed waiting with Mary.......
Pause a while, then; light a candle with me. Spread and nurture that Light, Who
is the True and only Light.......All that is, all that has any import..
All and all and all.