I did not think, three weeks ago when I started this exercise, that I would end it with nights of insomnia caused by the bounce-back from the sedatives the physicians gave me before their, ahem, invasive procedure. I didn't anticipate the sniffles, coughs, headaches, mild confusion, crushing depression and lassitude. (I am reporting, not complaining. This is light travail.) I completely failed to think of the dreaded "Christmas rush," that wonderful synergy between Satan and society which distracts us from contemplating the second or the first coming of our Lord.
So now I type, fearful of meaninglessness or, worse, of self-indulgent blather, cloaking spiritual triviality in a haze of bogus profundity. There was no angel to me or to anyone close to me. There was no voice or dream saying, "Arise, take the child and his mother. Flee!"
We speak of The Flight into Egypt, and haste comes to mind. And surely they did leave quickly. But once they were on their way, surely they plodded, one step after another, as we all do.
We have a name for where we hope we are headed. We have been told, we have reason to believe that we are headed toward safety. But we are still in flight. We cannot make much speed, but neither can we rest for long where we are. It is always brief and troubled rest, making the most of too little time, and then up and on.
All we know is that we are not staying here, cannot stay here. There is nothing here for us except distraction, perhaps momentary delight, perhaps bleak unpopulated wilderness. We may glance, may even take brief pleasure, but then it is wearily up and unsteadily on.
But there was a dream. There was an angel, a messenger who brought tidings. There was a voice, an "unfamiliar voice." Sometimes it seems that all we have is a dream. But there is also a child, a child of unimaginable preciousness. We do not know what will happen to the child or to us. But we know that we must move on.
IHS says, "Stay [μενετε] with me." But to stay with him is to move on, to leave behind what we know, to go where we know not, except that he travels with us.
I may wander. I may dither foolishly and write without meaning. But he travels with me. I will seek my abiding, my staying, where he is. There is no rest anywhere else.
There is no rest anywhere else.
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Pure truth!
“The Lord Is with You
Israel’s worst moments were when they conceived of themselves as alone, without God. As in the desert, when they sought strange gods to rescue them; or when they faced the hostility of Babylon and relied on their strategies rather than on God. This sad tendency goes back to Adam and Eve, who turned from God to follow the lie that they would be gods themselves, and became so blind to themselves that they hid when God came to be with them. While our hearts long to be with God, our sin makes us forget him and resist his advances toward us. Who will save us from this impossible situation? Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Mary said “Yes” to God’s desire to be with us. No one participated in God’s life and lived with God in such a humanly intimate way as did Mary. She is the dawn that promises what life can now be. Not a life of doubt and alienation, like an abandoned child, but a life with God; a union so deeply human that it begins to participate in the divine. Mary gives us the possibility to receive the greeting, “The Lord be with you.” Let us never take these words for granted, for they are now radically and unimaginably possible through Mary’s Yes.”
…Fr. Richard Veras (2012 Magnificat Advent Companion)