All Roads Lead...

From the Roads to Rome project

Today's readings:

• Isaiah 60:1-6
• Ephesians 3:2-6
• Matthew 2:1-12

In the Douay, RSV, or the NABRE with other Mass Texts.

Those rays of thine shall light the Gentiles on their path; kings shall walk in the splendour of thy sunrise. Lift up thy eyes and look about thee; who are these that come flocking to thee? Sons of thine, daughters of thine, come from far away, or rising up close at hand. Heart of thee shall overflow with wonder and gratitude, to see all the riches of ocean, all the treasure of the Gentiles pouring into thee!
Isaiah 60:3-5 (Knox)

Judaism makes an august claim: that one day, a renegade criminal, hiding from the most powerful man in the world (at that time) beheld a miracle, a bush that was burning and yet was not consumed. In that miracle, to that one runaway, the God of All the Universes and Times there have ever been or ever will be revealed himself as the One by Whose Being all things are. And even as they were being persecuted, led into slavery again and again, fought, destroyed, nearly killed, they held on to that revelation knowing that "The gods of the gentiles are but idols." On that claim the Church comments that the One by Whose Being all things are, He whom the heavens cannot contain was, in the fulness of time, entered into time as a babe contained in the womb of an unmarried teenager, and there brought hope to all the poor, smelly people in a forgotten corner of the world.

When he grew up, that poor, smelling backroads child, now a man and a preacher, announced, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no one comes to the Father but by me."

And the whole world has listened.

And come, by way of that Child, to the same revelation of the Bush that burns and is not consumed. The One by Whose Being all things are, in Whose Presence all things bow, by Whose Flame all things burn and the real things last - and others go up in smoke - this Very One, is this Babe in the arms of his mother, now, before whom the Magi kneel.

And the full meaning of Moses' Bush is revealed in the Virgin into whose womb the Divine Fire descended and yet she was not consumed. And we, into whose mouths the Flesh of God is taken and we do not die.

And all the world is fed on Israel's God, made known in his loving fullness: the Babe in Bethlehem.

This feast, though, says something even more shocking than all the above. This feast says that since Jesus is "the Truth" then All Truth is Jesus. And so the Magi, following the Truth as they know it, come to Jesus. All that is Truth in anything - in any religion, in any political system, in any love, in any art - is Jesus.

As God was preparing, by direct action, the Nation of Israel to birth his promised Messiah, so God was preparing every other nation by direct action to receive Messiah. Israel's function is to the world. The hatred born by so many towards Israel is a hatred of the God Israel reveals - and the whole world is to receive. To reject Israel's action is to reject the whole work of God in the world.

All come to the Father by him - even those who are not Christians: because they follow the Truth given to them and so, they are following Jesus. This is not a case of universalism in the warm and fluffy sense (read, Popi, have you seen Dash?) cuz it's scary to fall into the fire that burns up everything worthless. Will there be anything left of me?

This feast is the promised union of all mankind and God into one great hymn of Divine Fire.

Relating in Courage

Today's readings:

• 1 John 5:5-13
• Mark 1:7-11

In the Douay, the RSV, or the NABRE with other Mass texts.

Quoniam tres sunt, qui testimonium dant in cælo: Pater, Verbum, et Spiritus Sanctus: et hi tres unum sunt.
Thus we have a threefold warrant in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, three who are yet one.
1 John 5:7

All the cool Bibles leave this verse out. I'm sure they have their reasons, Mr Knox, following Mr Douay and Mr Rheims, in turn following Mr Jerome, who was following the best texts of his time, leave it in. And they have no axes to grind against the Church so I will trust them. The RSV skips it for their own reasons and the NABRE does as well. So, go as you wish, but 5 of my 7 go-to sources have it. So I have it.

The Trinity, apart from any doctrine we might care to explore, is about relationship. God is a fully divine being in relationship. God's love is so full and perfect that it can only be in relationship. Since we are called to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, we are thus called to be in relationship. The old adage is true: you complete me. As the Orthodox say, no one is saved alone. The prayer intention we explore today is also about relationship:

For our relationships, that they may holy, healthy, and honorable at all times.

I've been wrestling with this idea for a few weeks, since I first visited the San Francisco chapter of the Courage Apostolate, which is a 12 Step-based community for people who struggle to live according to the Church's teachings on sex, especially as people who experience attraction to their own sex.

When I finally attended my first meeting I encountered Courage's formulation of the 12 Steps. I was especially struck by steps 8 and 9:

8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make direct amends to them all.
9. We made the direct amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others.

When I moved to SF (in 1997) I got a call from someone whom I'd not heard from in years. It was a fun call, a little, I don't know, hyped and oddly sexual. But it ended with good laughter and was over. About a year, or maybe two later I got another phone call from the same person telling me that he had been very drunk/high during that phone call, had no idea what was said. He had found an unknown number on his outbound calls and knew he needed to reach out, under the guidance of his N.A. Sponsor, to make amends. We had a long talk, and forgiveness and love was shared.

When I read steps 8 & 9 that phone call came back to me. Was I expected to do that? To everyone whom I had hurt in an through my sexual sins and explorations? That list can go on for years!

How many of my relationships are not holy, healthy, and honorable! And how many more have not been!

Holy and Healthy are, essentially the same thing for to be saved and to be whole are the same thing and we turn to Christ for both. It is with Christ, also, that we form our primary relationship. Through that relationship all others are kept in balance. Proper relationships of Agape begin and continue as acts of self emptying, self sacrifice. As the Father pours his being into the Son, and through the Son into the Holy Spirit; as Son shares his self sacrifice to the Father, through the Holy Spirit with us; as the Spirit lives through the loving communion pouring himself out to each and through each. So are we, in our Self Sacrifice to God in each other,ade to receive the indwelling Spirit, with the Son and the Father, and so are we made to pour forth ourselves to God, present in our neighbors as we worship. This pouring forth, this self-emptying is, exactly, our identity.

We come to realize that an unchaste relationship is neither holy nor healthy. It is one in which there is a constant struggle to self-defense against or in spite of the other. Unchastity is a zero sum game where one must contain, control or confine the other. That can be in a negative or positive sense: you satisfied my sexual needs so move along now. Relationships that are neither holy nor healthy move us away from - not towards - our salvation.

This all came home harder last night, at the first Courage meeting of the new year when the topic was Step 8! I admitted that I was lost and had no idea how to navigate around this step. Yet I was very thankful I was only at my second meeting! I could wait a while before worrying about how to deal with something so advanced. I still had to do step 4, at least, "We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves." Yeah, that's going to take a while to get to.

Humans share one human nature, in the divine pattern: as the Trinity is one in three persons, so are we supposed to be one in many, one shared communion of love.  We mess that up at every turn, yes, but that is what we are called to be.

Mindful that, as I noted yesterday, even Christian Marriage is a chaste institution: sex is always about self-sacrifice and love, never about self-satisfaction, always open to God's gift of life, so we are all called to Chastity in our relationships. Where are yours? How do you find yourself working on "holy, healthy, and honorable" relationships? What brings you to that place of salvation?

If You're in Love, Show Me.

Today's Readings:

• 1 John 3:11-21
• John 1:43-51

In the Douay, the RSV, or the NABRE together with other Mass texts.

You were not to be like Cain, who took his character from the evil one, and murdered his brother. Why did he murder him? Because his own life was evil, and his brother’s life was acceptable to God. No, brethren, do not be surprised that the world should hate you.
1 John 3:12-13 (Knox)

Murder for one's faith is not very common in the USA, especially if one is a Christian. Apart from some social ostracization we're not likely to experience anything much at all, yet.

Recently there has been a revival of the Sanctuary Movement. As the Wiki notes, "The Sanctuary Movement was a religious and political campaign in the United States that began in the early 1980s to provide safe-haven for Central American refugees fleeing civil conflict. It responded to federal immigration policies that made obtaining asylum difficult for Central Americans." And, since part of the stated mindsets of the incoming administration as well as its supporters has been opposition to immigration, registering, and deportation, Sanctuary seems perfect for a movement of Churches and Christians concerned about justice. This will, of course, cause them to be reviled by the Administration, but one would imagine this would make them a friend to others.

Yeah, not so much.

A friend (not of the Church-going sort) posted on his Facebook about the revival of the Sanctuaries and instantly he was given a reply: since churches are involved it will only be heterosexual immigrants that they care for. The mainline, liberal denominations are already lumped in with other, more traditional sorts, in the popular mindset, despite 60+ years of caving in to "relevance". In fact, as the Episcopal Church was moving forward as one of the most gay-friendly of communities, I had a fight with fellow students at NYU when a local parish posted the words of John the Baptist on their reader board, "Make straight in the desert a highway," etc. This was in 1985 when ECUSA was setting up AIDS ministries and whatall. In NYC where the then-bishop had been most outspoken about his support for gays.  Didn't matter: once you hate Christians it doesn't matter what sort of Christians you have.

Today's verses then should not come as a surprise for us. If you've committed to live your life being acceptable to God you will be contrary to social norms. My fear has never been of the political sorts in our country, to be honest, but of the religious sorts who are caving in to societal norms all over the place. I think, at some point, we may see a political power play where the more mainline folks turn over confessing Christians in order to keep their tax exemptions and their access to the corridors of power. It has ever been this way, in Germany, in Communist countries, in other totalitarian dictatorships, so it's easy to imagine it here. The power may be leftist with Episcopalians, or rightist with Evangelicals and Fundamentalists. Either way confessing Christians with their social actions, their sacraments, and their sexual morals won't fit in.

So the first of the 15 Aves in the Angelic Warfare Confraternity has us pray with this intention:

For our social and cultural climate, that it may be purified of everything contrary to chastity, and that we may have the strength to resist the pressures of prevailing ideologies.

Chastity is about sexual purity, yes, and much of our culture is tuned to the contrary frequency. However chastity is not only pressured by sexual ideologies: educational ones, commercials, political parties, a general cultural opposition to responsibility, a bias toward hedonism, a loss of joy, a philosophical embrace of nihilistic darkness; these all conspire against this virtue. Privatizing religion helps us towards a less chaste culture as well: religion that has no place in the public sphere, that has nothing to say about public ethics. Literature that glorifies sexual "exploration" even within marriage, or ideas about sex that have only the goal of "satisfaction" in mind all pressure us to discard this virtue. Mindful that Chastity includes the virtue of procreation and the proper use of the sexual gift, think of how many ways even married couples are tempted. In our modern culture almost all non-Catholic religions support the use of birth control.  Even traditional ones, like Eastern Orthodoxy, allow it with a don't-ask, don't-tell policy.

Shielding against this the prayer calls on the Virgin Mother of God for aid that we might resist these challenges, but also that our culture may be purified. And St John adds, Filioli mei, non diligamus verbo neque lingua, sed opere et veritate. (1 John 3:18) Msgr Knox renders this as, "My little children, let us shew our love by the true test of action, not by taking phrases on our lips."  The "love" there is the verbal form of Agape, that divine love that is God. Here is this love in action on our hands. Let us act-out-love not only in the uttering of phrases.

In a culture so dead set against true love, what is our action? How do we find a way to make real love present in the world?

It starts with prayer and the reformation of our own lives. Let us see where it takes us.

Poetic Justice

Today's readings:

• 1 John 3:7-10
• John 1:35-42

In the Douay, the RSV, or the NABRE with other Mass Texts.

In hoc manifesti sunt filii Dei, et filii diaboli. Omnis qui non est justus, non est ex Deo, et qui non diligit fratrem suum:
This, then, is how God’s children and the devil’s children are known apart. A man cannot trace his origin from God if he does not live right, if he does not love his brethren.
1 John 3:10 (Knox)

St John says he who does not poion dikaiosynen is not of God. He was does not live right is not on the path. The Apostolic epistles of like this idea of "living right". It is beyond important - it is the center of Christian spirituality. It's here, I think, in the use of this word ποιέω poieo - do or make.  It's the same word from whence we get "poet".  Hold that thought. It's about doing, about a way of action it is, in some obvious respects, exactly "works righteousness" that so many Protestants want us to avoid. There is something to do here.

(Side note, this "poieo" word occurs 572 times in the NT. There's a word study worth doing!)

That word δικαιοσύνη dikaiosyne means justice. In the LXX it's the Greek word used for the Hebrew tzadek צֶדֶק.  It's how one describes straight paths, just balances, or fair laws. You, my dear Christian heart, are expected to live that way. We are called to do justice (see footnote, re: Micah 6:8), to be Poets of Justice. Justice does not mean, "do whatever you want and we will write laws to defend you in your selfishness." Justice, rather, means walking along God's straight and narrow path. If it's not found there, it's not justice at all. It maybe what you want, crave, or are addicted to - but it's not just for you to have it nor for someone else to provide it or permit you.

The other side of that coin - of course - is that the works do not make us righteous. They are the sign of our righteousness, of our walking with God. You can't just say "I believe" here and let it all pass. You have to be doing something or nothing is happening. But we don't do these works of ourselves, more on that later.

St John ties living right in with loving our brother. As I posted a few days ago, that's not philia, it's not friendship with our brother it's agape: that divine love that moves us all to perfection. This is not the apathetic, bland tolerance that passes for "non-judgemental love" today, leaving us in our sins and our weaknesses. This love calls, pushes, jabs, and dances us forward. As for this verse to be living right is loving our brother then to be this poet of justice is to move our brothers and sisters into that justice too.

Truly poetic justice semper reformare me est - is always reforming me - but not only me. If this music is singing out it should move all around me into the divine Dance of self-emptying.

Lately I've been praying the prayers of The Angelic Warfare Confraternity. Those of you who know me will know this is a needed discipline for me. There are two prayers (one asking for the intercession of St Thomas Aquinas and one written by him) then one says 15 Aves a day for specific intentions. As time and the assigned readings permit over the coming 6 weeks or so prior to Lent I want to look at these prayers and intentions. This is where I find this Poetic Justice singing out in my life just now.

For today, then, a look at the first of the prayers. This one, written by Thomas Aquinas, will give us a hint about the poetic justice of this passage from St John.

Dear Jesus, I know that every perfect gift, and especially that of chastity, depends on the power of Your providence. Without You a mere creature can do nothing. Therefore, I beg You to defend by Your grace the chastity and purity of my body and soul. And if I have ever imagined or felt anything that could stain my chastity and purity, blot it out, Supreme Lord of my powers, that I may advance with a pure heart in Your love and service, offering myself on the most pure altar of Your divinity all the days of my life. Amen.

Every perfect gift depends on the providence of God: we have no virtue of ourselves, without God's grace. This poetry is not written on themes of our own devising. Forgive me, but there is no Jazz here. There is, however, unfolding, an exploration of themes or leitmotifs as in a great opera. What we here God saying to us we say in our own lives by his grace. The Angelic Warfare Confraternity is about chastity and sexual purity. Yet, the concept applies for all the virtues: they arise and grow within us from God's gift. We must offer ourselves for it, in order to "advance with a pure heart in God's love and service."

We must become poets by learning from the first (and only) Poet. We become just at the very fount of justice. We become chaste praying to the very author of chastity. And as we acquire that salvation, so too those around us will share in it.

By way of footnote: this is not, as I expected, the same phrase that's used in Micah 6:8 - "do Justice". there is a translation of the Hebrew implying "make good judgements in court". That's a different concept than tzadek or dikaiosyne.

The Real Thing, Baby.

Today's readings - 

• 1 John 2:29-3:6
• John 1:29-34

In the Douay, the RSV, and the NABRE with other mass texts.

Videte qualem caritatem dedit nobis Pater, ut filii Dei nominemur et simus. Propter hoc mundus non novit nos: quia non novit eum.
Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called and should be the sons of God. Therefore the world knoweth not us, because it knew not him. 
1 John 3:1

Today is the Memorial of the Most Holy Name of Jesus. This feast was of great importance to the English Church before the Henrician destruction of popular piety. The prayers of the feast became a sort of go-to for English Catholics. Many English parishes had a specific altar commemorating the Holy Name. There is a litany, still said daily. Msgr Benson (RIP) has left us his wonderful "Book of the Love of Jesus" which documents this piety.

Benson says "There are certain characteristics of medieval English devotion which are easy to trace in this collection. They spring, for the most part, from an intense and passionate love for the Sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ." He notes this as an "intimate familiarity" with the Saviour. And - as with any friend - it is because we know his Name. God, when he was asked his name by Moses, replied with the cryptic, "I am that I am". The name "YHVH" is not revealed as such, it just happens along at the same time. It is not a personal name. (I suspect it is, in fact, a contraction of the Hebrew phrase "I am, etc". And might better be written Y"HVH) and even so, quickly gets replaced in popular piety with the word "Adonai" and, that becomes "HaShem", these meaning "Lord" and "The Name" respectively. And these, even, get replaced for use outside of the praying community with the "Kado'Shem" which contraction means "Holy Name". Apart from mysticism, there is anything but an intimate relationship with this name. It's relationship of awe and reverence, yes, but not one on the level of familiarity we're about to see.

Jesus, is a person's name. Or, better, "Yashuah" or "Yeshua" as it is sometimes rendered - this name was not given him by mortals: this name was commanded by God in revelation to his parents. And in knowing, now, God's name, we have intimacy that was never there before. This intimacy is not limited to Mystics but rather shared out with all (anyone who calls on the Name of the Lord shall be saved). Now, yes, in some ways it thus becomes pro forma as any relationship might, but all in all, it is friendship with Jesus that does this.

Take for your meditation the prayers of the Litany of the Holy Name or the Jesus Psalter (my favourite) which was so important to the English Catholics undergoing the Crown's persecution and martyrdom. At the end of the entire Jesus Psalter, one will have said the name of Jesus in excess of 465 times! In the East it's the "Jesus Prayer" where in the course of the day's praying, one might say Jesus name 10,000 times or more. This was not limited to Catholics or Orthodox. Benson shares this prayer, written by a Protestant:

O my Jesus! I am not worthy to love thee! Yet because thou biddest me love thee, and hast told me that my Soul was created on purpose to love thee, I cheerfully resign my Love and Affection to thee! I desire to love thee! I wish for nothing more than that I may passionately love thee. Whom have I in Heaven to love but thee? And there is none on Earth that I desire to love more than thyself. For thou art altogether lovely, and thy Love surpasses all the Love of Friends, and the dearest Relations I have. O my blessed Redeemer I I desire to love thee with all my Heart, and with all my Strength: Thou gavest me this Heart and this Strength: And on whom can I bestow it better, than on thee, the Author of it? Oh, that all that is within me might be turned into Desires, and Inclinations, and Sighs, and Languishings, and Breathings after thee!

The world does not know us because it would not know him. The world is quite happy with their projections of "Good Teacher" or "Wise Man" on Jesus - despite the fact that to get there they have to edit out all the good stuff where he says that's not what he is. But once you make up your own Jesus, you don't get to know him. It's like a porno-Jesus which they vainly imagine to be so much better than the real thing - because they can command him to be what you want. They do to Revelation & Theology what CS Lewis notes about this "Harem of imaginary brides..."

For me the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back; sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides.
And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman.
For the harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no woman can rival.
Among those shadowy brides he is always adored, always the perfect lover; no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity.
In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself. . . . After all, almost the main work of life is to come out of our selves, out of the little dark prison we are all born in. Masturbation is to be avoided as all things are to be avoided which retard this process. The danger is that of coming to love the prison.”
Personal Letter From Lewis to Keith Masson (found in The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3)

But we've been offered the real thing, intimacy with God. Who needs a porno Jesus? Pray the Jesus Prayer, say the Jesus Psalter or the Litany of the Holy Name. Get it out of your head and into your heart.

(That's gonna be fun for the Search Engines)

You got the Wrong Man-God.

Today's readings:

• 1 John 2:22-28
• John 1:19-28

In the Douay, the RSV, or the NAhttp://usccb.org/bible/readings/010217.cfmBRE with Mass texts.

Et interrogaverunt eum, et dixerunt ei: Quid ergo baptizas, si tu non es Christus, neque Elias, neque propheta?
And they asked him and said to him: Why then dost thou baptize, if thou be not Christ, nor Elias, nor the prophet? 
John 1:25

The Pharisees and, later, the Sadducees and the powers in the temple - most of the latter were sold out to the Romans - were looking for something. They came to John to ask if he was this something. And he said no. But Jesus wasn't the something they were looking for, either. The over used (even abused) phrase "paradigm shift" comes to mind here. We've heard often enough that Jesus just wasn't the sort of Messiah the Jews were expecting. It's true. But Judaism of this period was not a monolithic experience. John the Baptist is of a priestly family (on both sides). His parents were clearly prepared for what happened. So, somewhere in the Jewish world, Jesus really was expected - just not by most of those in power.

When you're looking for the wrong thing, you don't find it.

A lot of people do not find in Jesus what they are seeking, yet they try to make it so. You have to do violence to Jesus as we have received him in order to make him into something he is not. The Jews tried to take him to force him to be king, for example. The scholars of our time try to make him out to be a kind, yet kookie sort of apocalyptic nutter. Sort of like Oral Roberts with his healings and miracles - which we all know are faked - but he's kinda nice, anyway. The new age turns him into all sorts of crap - ascended master, thaumaturge, Gnostic spirit pretending to be human, etc. None of these folks have Jesus and John says they are liars.

Who is a liar, but he who denieth that Jesus is the Christ? This is Antichrist, who denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father. He that confesseth the Son hath the Father also.

In verse 27 John tells the Church, though, "Let the unction, which you have received from him abide in you. And you have no need that any man teach you: but as his unction teacheth you of all things and is truth and is no lie. And as it hath taught you, abide in him." That word, Unction (in the Douay) or Anointing (RSV) gets parsed out into "What you have heard" by the NABRE. Msgr Knox says "Meanwhile, the influence of his anointing lives on in you, so that you have no need of teaching; no lesson his influence gives you can be a lie, they are all true." Anointing and Unction are good poetic images and the more prosaic language in the other two seems unneeded. Jesus' teaching is, in this case, the Holy Spirit, the anointing of the Spirit of God in our hearts teaches us the truth.

This is important. I've realized the real question one must ask another person who claims to be Christian is, "Is God able to reveal himself in a real way?"

Once an Episcopal Priest said to me, "Jesus has revealed to us what God is like" and for a while that satisfied me. But he called Mary "Christ's Mother" instead of "Mother of God" and he didn't want to call her that. Because Jesus was not "revealing" so much as teaching us about God - not revealing himself.  Jesus is, in fact, the Face of God: the eyes, beard, lips, nose, nosehairs, possibly lousy hair, sleepy-crusted eyelids, smelly onion breath, froggy in the morning voice, face, and presence of God here on earth.

The Jews came to John (as they later would to Jesus) and said, "Which of these die-casted roles are you? John's answer was, "you're rolling the wong dice." Naturally, this offended them - because they were in power and they clearly knew more than this Cohen upstart. But God is something very different than you've made him out to be. First off, look: there is the Lamb of God standing in muddy Jordan water with damp robes.

And if that's not what God is to you, then... well... we're on different paths.

Is God able to reveal himself? And is he able to do it in a way you don't want him to do it? It requires a paradigm shift. If you're not looking for that quasi-homeless, sleeps-in-the-dirt God that we have, you're going to find something totally different here. And you'll probably walk away.

Mommy, please?

Today's Readings:

• Numbers 6:22-27
• Galatians 4:4-7
• Luke 2:16-21

In the Douay, the RSV, or the NABRE with other Mass texts.

Maria autem conservabat omnia verba haec, conferens in corde suo.
Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart.
Luke 2:19b

Today is the beginning of a new year, a rejoicing in the secular mind. For us, of course, the year began with Advent, as we reset the clock to "BC" sorta, that we can celebrate all of Salvation History. And then Christ was born and now we celebrate his Mother 8 days after his birth.

The Liturgical Content of this feast (verses, antiphons, etc) are largely unchanged from the older missals when this feast was titled the Circumcision of Our Lord, but here it, the same day and the same Feast under the Title of the Solemnity of the Mother of God. That God needed to be Circumcised is, itself, a marvel. That God has a Mother, too, marvelous.

At no point in his earthly life was Jesus not God - eternally present on the Throne with the Father and the Holy Spirit. And yet.. and yet... born of a woman. All that knowledge, all that wisdom and power, was lost not to mortality, but to the unformed and nascent mind of a newborn. There are no words, there are few connected synapses. Even a Mother's face is just a shape... a good shape, the only shape he knows. God gave up all that so that in his eyes, for no small period of time, only Mary was all he saw. Only her voice, only her love. He cries, Mommy, please... long before the words are known, are able to be formed, just yell it out and there is feeding.

That's what it's like to be a baby. All you have is Crying and Feeding and Pooping.

See how God loves us? Infinite wisdom, infinite power, infinite eternity, in this unformed brain, weak muscles, loud voice, dirty diaper that looks somewhat like Winston Churchill, pardon the anachronism. God loves us that much.

The Epistle today talks about the Spirit of Sonship whereby we, too, may address God as "Abba". In Hebrew, the word for "Father" is the monosyllabic Av - from whence Avraham, or Abraham. But Abba, in Hebrew, is more like "Daddy." I've been told that in Aramaic it's reversed - which is fine. Jesus would have spoken Aramaic, but Paul would have made that clear if that were the case here. I'll stick with Daddy for one reason. There is one other place where the word Abba happens, outside of the letters of St Paul (here and in Romans 8:15). Do you know where it is? It's not the Lord's Prayer where Jesus calls him "Father". It's not at the raising of Lazarus, again, where Jesus calls him, Father.

It's in Mark 14:36 in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus calls out Abba! All things are possible for you...

I can't hear that even now. I didn't know it was there - or else I had forgotten or even blocked it out - because it makes me cry to hear our Lord say, "Daddy, please..." And sound maybe like a three year old... left alone in the dark for the first time. This is something only humans know. I've seen what I imagine to be fear in Animals. But I don't know if they know who to call out to. To cats or bears in fear call out to their parents? Or just call out in fear in general? Or do they not call out in fear?

Humans do. And it is a sign of our fallen world that the things that scare us the most are darkness and death. These things that are not supposed to be here, against us. But they are here scaring us as a result of the fall.

And here is God who made us all, kneeling in darkness and facing death and saying, "Daddy, please..."

See how much God loves us?

This very human God, unable to live without his Mother's milk, unable to face the darkness without crying, "Daddy..."

He knows us. He gets us. He is us.

This feast of Mary the Mother of God, is a celebration of her, yes, but it is a truth that her position is about her son - not about her. Her celebration is about him. Mary points us to Jesus. Or, as the Catholic Man Show said a couple of weeks ago, "Aim for Mary, hit Jesus." That God has a mother is a marvel. She is our mother, too. Let us only see her eyes and let her hear our cries. She will lead us to her Son where we can drink living water and be fed the bread of heaven.