Monastic Mumblings, a Friar's Journey

10th Day of Christmas

Today is the 10th day of Christmas and for just about every one the holidays are over and people are back to the January grind.  The first bills and financial hits of December are coming due and people are groaning under what they spent over the last couple of months.   This is a common idea in our culture and people joke about it and just consider it "part of the season"

Is that what Christmas means to most Americans? Bills, over indulgence, weight gain?

I pray that we see the Season as more than one day and as more than the shallow view that our culture gives it.  I pray that the new Light of this season illumes our whole year.

Almighty God, You have poured upon us the new Light of your Incarnate Word:
Grant that this Light, enkindled in our hearts, may shine forth in our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord, Who lives and reigns with You, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

9th Day of Christmas - God Among Us

I wanted to share a portion of Presiding Bp. Schori's Christmas message, it spoke to me, perhaps it will speak to you.

God loved us so much that he came to dwell among us, to tent among us in human flesh... There is a wonderful echo there of God’s presence in the tent while Israel wandered in the wilderness. The gift of the Incarnation says that God is willing to take on the human tent of flesh and be one with and among us.

That frail tent of flesh proves capable of holding divinity, but also capable of yielding up its spirit. Irenaeus and Athanasius insisted that the gift of Incarnation was that “God became human, that we might become divine.” You and I are bearers of the image of God, and you and I share in Incarnation, for Jesus has walked this way before
us. God is born in us as well.

The vulnerability of being born in obscurity, to a peasant refugee couple, in an out of the way place, says to us that God is with us in the smallest parts of life — perhaps a reminder that we, too, may discover God in those humble and unexpected places if we are willing to go in search.

Where are we looking for God today? In the halls of power, on a suburban Church "campus", or in an "unexpected place"?

8th Day of Christmas - Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord

Today we celebrate the moment when the new born Christ Child first shed His blood for us. Every Jewish male was formally named and circumcised on the 8th day after his birth. God the Word, Incarnate submitted Himself fully to the Law to fulfill that Law for us.  This first blood shedding is a time to remember martyrs and others who have died for us. 

I also want to remember the cost of war, for now in Iraq over 3000 American men, and women have died.  I saw this at Obsidianwings and felt that on this day where we remember the first incidence of God bleeding for us, we might remember those who have bled and died for our country. May God have mercy on us all.

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Fidelium animae † per misericordiam Dei requiescant in pace.
May the souls † of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.