a gift freely given

God has done everything; he has done the impossible:
he was made flesh. His all–
powerful love has accomplished something which surpasses all human understanding:
the Infinite has become a child, has entered the human family.
And yet, this same God cannot enter my heart unless I open the door to him.”
Pope Benedict XVI

(Rosemary Beach / Julie Cook / 2020)

“God travels wonderful ways with human beings,
but he does not comply with the views and opinions of people.
God does not go the way that people want to prescribe for him; rather,
his way is beyond all comprehension, free and self-determined beyond all proof.
Where reason is indignant, where our nature rebels,
where our piety anxiously keeps us away:
that is precisely where God loves to be.
There he confounds the reason of the reasonable;
there he aggravates our nature, our piety—that is where he wants to be,
and no one can keep him from it.
Only the humble believe him and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous
that he does wonders where people despair,
that he takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous.
And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly…
God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings.
God marches right in.
He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where
one would least expect them.
God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost,
the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded,
the weak and broken.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God is in the Manger:
Reflections on Advent and Christmas

And so He has come…

God of God
Light of Light
Very God of very God…

Begotten of woman, not made
Born man
Crucified
Dead
Buried
and yet Risen again for our Redemption and Deliverance

And so it is on this Christmas day…
this day of Light and Hope…that we find not only life…
but it is in that life that we must also find death…

For it is in the miracle of both life and death…
That of His birth, His life and eventually His death…
it is there that we actually find our most necessary Hope…

It is a hope found in both life and death—
of which each mingle together so blessedly and painfully…
yet oh so poignantly…
melding into that single transcendence of the Resurrection.

So on this Christmas day we are reminded, once again, that yes,
we are to rejoice…
We rejoice because we have each been invited to a grand banquet…
We have been invited to claim our rightful place at the table…
taking in all that is freely given and yet that which is gravely
undeserved…
but miraculously given nonetheless.

So in that Hope, found in both birth and death,
is a brilliance of illumination…scattering the
darkness from wherever it yearns to spread.

A great Light has shown in that darkness.
And that darkness scatters
because that Light has overcome the darkness.

Hope
Joy
Salvation
Redemption
Deliverence
Resurrection
Life…

All of which is offered to each man and woman, young and old,
sick and in-firmed, lofty and simple…underseved, yet a gift
freely given…

So yes, we are told to rejoice…

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Again I say,
Rejoice!

“What worthy return can we make for so great a condescension?
The One Only-begotten God, ineffably born of God,
entered the Virgin’s womb and grew and took the frame of poor humanity.
He who upholds the universe, within whom and through whom are all things,
was brought forth by common childbirth.
He at whose voice archangels and angels tremble,
and heaven and earth and all the elements of this world are melted,
was heard in childish wailing.
The Invisible and Incomprehensible,
whom sight and feeling and touch cannot measure, was wrapped in a cradle.”
St. Hilary of Poitiers

May love and joy come to you…

Here we come a-wassailing among the leaves so green;
Here we come a-wandering, so fair to be seen.
Love and joy come to you, and to you our wassail, too.
And God bless you and send you a Happy New Year
And God bless you and send you a Happy New Year
1st stanza to a traditional English carol

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).
Even though the Disciples suffered persecution, they were filled with joy.
One would have expected them to be depressed or angry or resentful.
The very fact that they responded to persecution with joy is a sign that
the Spirit was guiding their actions.
We can use that same test with our own words and actions.”
Rev. Jude Winkler, O.F.M., p. 11
An Excerpt From
Daily Meditations Holy Spirit

Love and joy…
two sentiments found in an old English carol which are, if the truth be told,
actually so much more than mere holiday fodder sung during just a particular time of year
but rather they are two paramount fruits of the Spirit.

We sing about them.
We think about them.
We might even find ourselves with wistful thoughts yearning over
along with hoping over…
Yet sadly I fear that we have become so jaded as a culture that we have
allowed the caustic wave that is blanketing our society to corrode our yearnings
leaving us more than simply longing but rather coming up woefully short.

Love and Joy, for and with our fellow man, woman, and child, are not only difficult
to find but are more and more difficult for us to actually feel.

It’s certainly easy enough to say all of this after turning on a television and
catching any news program, talk show, or late night comedy show…
as they are rife with everything that has nothing to do
with Love or Joy or any gift having anything to do with the Spirit…
but I say this more from a little incident Sunday morning that left me
scratching my head while questioning the notion of both Love and Joy.

Yesterday was the third Sunday of Advent.
It is known as Gaudete Sunday or Gaudete Domino Semper” (“Rejoice in the Lord always”).

The word ‘rejoice’ is found in the Latin lyrics of the traditional and ancient Advent Hymn–
Veni Veni Emmanuel

Veni, veni Emmanuel!
Captivum solve Israel!
Qui gemit in exilio,
Privatus Dei Filio,
Gaude, gaude, Emmanuel
nascetur pro te, Israel.

O COME, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! O Israel,
to thee shall come Emmanuel!

We are to rejoice with a spirit of Love and Joy…
over the Spirit of Love and Joy

My little tale began this weekend.

We had spent the night Saturday evening babysitting the Mayor as her dad had taken her mom
to see the Nutcracker—both of them will be celebrating their 30th birthdays this week
so our son surprised our daughter-n-law with tickets to the play at the historic
Atlanta Fox Theater.

And because we wouldn’t be able to celebrate with them during the week due to
work schedules, we thought we could go enjoy a late Sunday morning brunch
for a little low key family celebration before we were to head back home.

We opted to go to a lovely little French restaurant that we have loved and enjoyed
throughout the years which happens to be located in what was once a quaint
old neighborhood home.

These particular neighborhood homes, in this particular area of town,
came into existence beginning in the early 1920s and were lived in
until about late 1960’s—right when the city was hitting a stride of a boom,
turning the entire area into the trendy shopping and dining mecca it’s known for today
that being Buckhead.

In fact, the high school my parents attended is just around the corner…which is now
some sort of new learning center.
Many of the homes in this neighborhood were once the homes of their friends yet have
since been turned into haute couture boutiques or trendy restaurants.

The street where this restaurant is located is as it was decades ago…
shaded by old oaks with cars parked on either side of
the street making it a tight squeeze when two cars meet that are driving either
up and down the street simultaneously, narrowly missing one another let alone those
parked along the curb.

Our reservations were for 11:30.

We arrived about 10 minutes early and the valet fellow
was setting out his sign but there was a large truck delivering fresh fruit currently
blocking the driveway.
I had my blinker on to turn as we were waiting for the delivery guy to move his truck.

At this point, my daughter-n-law hopped out of the front seat to help me maneuver my car
into the driveway between the truck and a parked car as the valet told us to try and
squeeze in if we could.
She was going to check the distance between the car parked on the curb right by the
driveway and the truck.

Thankfully the delivery guy came out at this crucial moment to get in his truck and move.
Leaving us without having to hold our breath squeezing in between unmovable objects.

However, it was also at the same moment that suddenly a jeep drove up right up behind me
and proceeded to blow their horn.

My daughter-n-law motioned to the jeep to please wait for just a minute.
Because obvioulsy they could see that we were waiting on a delivery truck
to pull out of the driveway we were waiting to turn into.

However, the horn blowing proceeded.

My husband and son, sitting in the back seat with the baby, both reached for the door
so fast, practically falling out of the car over one another, to see what was up with
the jeep.

At this point, my daughter-n-law tells the lady in the jeep that we’re just about
to pull in if she could just hold on a minute, we’d be out of her way,
since obviously, we were having to wait on the delivery truck to move.

The lady in the jeep tells my daughter-n-law that we are being rude sitting in the
road and that she needed to hurry to take her daughter to her riding lessons.

Late for a horse riding lesson in the middle of the urban city??…hummm

She obviously wanted me out of her way come hell or high water or both.

We had only been waiting maybe 3 minutes max when she had pulled up
and we were just about to turn in.

And so with the continued honking horn and the selfish escalating words from the
lady in the jeep fussing about me not moving out of her way,
my oh so pregnant and out of patience daughter-n-law had had her fill…
she proceeded to tell this woman that she could kindly wait just one minute or take those
riding lessons and shove them into a dark, tight and painful place.

At this point the truck moved, the valet motioned me in while the jeep zoomed
past me, narrowly missing my car’s back end.

The valet guy, who had felt helpless, was beside himself telling us that that lady in
the jeep was “a rude looser” and that “this is the season for love and joy”,
as well as a time for little bit of patience. Where was her giving spirit??!!

Did I mention it was a chilly, grey, misty, foggy yucky kind of day…
of which cast a somber veil over the day?
Did I mention that this is a section of town known for being a bit upper crust?
Something my aunt use to laugh over whenever she came back to Atlanta
to visit as she remembered this neighborhood when…

All of us adults in the car, with the Mayor oblivious, were now frazzled with raw nerves.
The Mayor was just ready to be set free from the restraints of a car seat…
restraint is not something the Mayor is fond of as of late.

Grousing as we made our way inside, I had to remind everyone, myself included,
not to let this ruin our day or our time together.

But those sorts of occurrences tend to linger in one’s craw.

Especially when considering yourself to be a mild-mannered, patient
law-abiding citizen of the world whose thought process is live and let live.

I was glad my husband and son could not maneuver seatbelts and a car door both fast
enough to get out of the car, having to leave the dirty work to a pregnant lady who
teaches jr high school right here before a major holiday and was well past putting
up with anyone’s selfish nonsense.

And so now I am pulled back to the notion of Love and Joy.

As in where is the Love and Joy?
Where is the patience, the kindness, the peace?
The fruits?

Finally seated at the table, with the Mayor now opting to go wild,
my husband reminded us that 99% of folks are nice and kind and of whom want to
do the right thing…but it’s always that one person out there who can simply ruin
it all in one fell swoop and think nothing of it.
Leaving us to forget all the good while the bad glaringly taunts our thoughts
and emotions.

And so I was quickly reminded of the one who rejoices in the negative, the bad and
the wrong all found in the tiny percentage versus the good found in the
large percent. Much the opposite of the One who leaves the whole in order to seek
out the one who is lost.

From all of this, the one thing I do know is that Satan, who much like Santa
(note, Satan is real…Santa is, well, in the North Pole)
goes into to overdrive, particularly this time of year, working very hard to rob us all
of any sentiment of a Holy season while he joyously strives
to rob us of those life-giving fruits of the Spirit.

Because if we lose those Fruits we lose ourselves and in turn, a wedge is driven between us
and the very Spirit of God and in turn, Satan claims a tiny victory.

And so yes–whereas we, those of us in my car, needed to be mindful of that very
thought when confronted with a sudden difficult situation, we, as in humankind,
all need to be mindful of how we treat one another—
as holidays seem to bring out both the very best and the very worst in humanity.

So as this is the season of gift giving…
We must remember that we have each been given Spirit-filled gifts.
Life-giving gifts.
We have also been given the gift of Salvation.

Life-giving gifts which are meant to be lived and shared.

The remembrance of this particular holiday season blessedly remains as not merely a reminder
but rather as a wake-up call…
A call not so much of nostalgia or of the fact that we struggle with consumerism…
but rather the call that we are to strive to be gracious gift givers…
gracious in giving gifts that are neither bought nor wrapped…
but rather gifts that we as Believers have each been endowed with…giving
way to the best gift given to all mankind.

May we then be quick to share our Fruitful gifts while at the same time rejoicing
in the most precious gift of all…our very Salvation.

May love and joy come to you…

But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.
Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High,
because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.
Luke 6:35

Veni, Veni Emanuel

Veni, veni Emmanuel;
Captivum solve Israel,
Qui gemit in exilio,
Privatus Dei Filio.

Gaude! Gaude! Emmanuel,
Nascetur pro te, Israel!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel
that morns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
shall come to thee, O Israel

(a woman worships in silence alone, in a small Florentine chapel in Florence, Italy / Julie Cook / 2007)

Growing up in an Anglican, more specifically, an American Episcopal Church, in a large Gothic Cathedral to be more exact, I was immersed at an early age with beautiful choral music and hymns. Many of which boast of ancient roots and beginnings. To hear and to feel the massive and beautiful organ deeply reverberating throughout the massive stone cavernous church as it engulfs one’s entire being, accompanying the voices of the classically trained choir, echoing and rising out from behind the chancel, was all short of magical.

I am very old fashioned when it comes to hymns and the music associated with that of a Cathedral. There is a solemnity and a reverence. Just merely reading the lyrics of these hymns, one is struck by the rich poetic history of the stories being told via the use of ancient song.

There are a handful of hymns, to this day, which tug upon my heart bringing tears to my eyes each opportunity I have, as either a member of a Sunday congregation or merely gently singing to myself as I go about my day–that move my heart to a place of deep reflection–an almost mystical reverence.

Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, the Latin version of O come O come, Emmanuel, is one such hymn. It is a hymn for the season of Advent, as that is the only time it is sung. It’s roots are indeed ancient as some scholars date it (the Latin version) to that of an 8th century Gregorian Chant. Others date it to either the 12th or 15th century France as a processional type of hymn. Even others date it to as earless the 18th century as an antiphon or type of sung liturgical response.

Sadly, I must confess that I don’t know a thing about music, as I’ve never been trained or had an opportunity of singing in a choir. I really can’t sing, but have always wished I could. So as I explain the power of this particular hymn, those of you who do understand music, please forgive me for I speak from my heart about this music and not of classical study.

O come O come Emmanuel is sung slowly, beginning quite low, being “sung” a cappella. It can be accompanied by an organ or other single instrument. Mannheim Steamroller, the wonderfully synthesizing modern music group, who has produced marvelous holiday music based from many medieval songs, has a beautiful rendition. It is very reminiscent of the chants heard from various early Christian monasteries–which is why I believe it does have it’s roots seeded in that of Gregorian Chants. The cadence is steady and specific–there is power in the simplistic rhythm of the 7 groups of stanzas which make up the full body of the text.

I understand the whole joyful noise business, but I am of the serious school when it comes to worship. The ancient hymns, that are more typical of a liturgical service, speak of solemn serious worship–meditative and reflective, which seem to rise up from one’s very core. There is not that over the top emotionalism so often associated with the prayer and praise musical services of today. In this chant, as well as other similar types of hymns, there is rather an acute awareness.

Much of the early Church’s music, which has it’s roots in Medieval Europe, speaks of wondrous mysteries as the world, to those who were apart of those “dark ages,” was indeed a mysterious time and place. They did know the things which we know today. Much of our scientific world has solved many of their mysteries and problems. Their musical worship was based deeply in a belief and faith that was undefinable, full of questions, wonderment and awe. God and the understanding of Him, His Son and that of the Holy Spirit was unfathomable–something not easily or readily defined or put in a nice little box of understanding. Their music reflected such. Mystery and awe.

This particular hymn / chant is serious, steady, determined, meaningful and lasting. It strikes at something very deep. It doesn’t get one worked up in a sweat induced, clap your hands and shout to the heavens sort of deal, but rather it is almost spoken, as in a statement that is meant to make those who hear it contemplate its very importance. It is almost mournful and heavy.

Why mournful and heavy you ask as we enter the season of Advent which, for the Church, marks a time of waiting and expectant watching you wonder. Are we not anticipating a birth? Is not the anticipation of a birth an event of great joy?

A time of joy, yes, and yet at the same moment, with this particular birth, comes a deep heaviness as it is a birth marked with tremendous hardship, only to be followed by the fleeing for safety and then a time of more waiting. The very conception, waiting and birth stay constantly in the shadow of Death. With this birth comes grave consequence for both me and you. . .and yet, as with all births, there is tremendous Hope of what will be.

And as with the anticipation of any birth comes a sense of urgency. The urgency here is of the coming of the one referred to as Emmanuel, as it is He who is come to ransom the captive Israel, which in turn refers to all of us today. He is to come and is to set the captives free. To free you and I from the prison of our sin and of our death. As we mourn throughout our “exile” or separation from our Father.

The Immanuel, Hebrew עִמָּנוּאֵל, which has been Romanized to Emmanuel–meaning God with Us, is invoked to come, to come to us all, but yet is acknowledged as already being here with us–the Omnipotent one. We sing to the God who is with us and yet who is to come, and who is to come quickly. We are then told to Rejoice, Rejoice because He will come, as He has come and as He will come again.

On this first Monday in this new season of Advent may we all be mindful of our continual need of this Holy Coming–of the one who will set and make things right, who will free both you and I from the constant presence of the shadow of Death—-who will bridge the gap of separation, as this Emmanuel is the only one who can and will and has done all of this! So may we Rejoice and Rejoice continually as He shall come to us indeed—Amen. Amen.