What Remains

What Do They Do at Christmas?

How do those living behind monastery walls celebrate Christmas? I used to wonder.

Do they 'celebrate' at all?

Click the following italicized lines for clues:

They decorate trees, deck the halls, and sometimes shelter kittens at their feet.

They gather around the Christmas tree.

They enjoy candles and tree lights. 

They have celebrations, sing carols, and wear funny hats.

They lift their hearts at Mass.

They contemplate the reality of Jesus Being With Us. 

They embrace the fulfillment of Advent's promise.

They give their hearts anew to God. And with them, so may we.

'Lord Jesus Christ, born in Bethlehem, come to us! Enter within me, within my soul. Transform me. Renew me. Change me, change us all from stone and wood into living people, in whom your love is made present and the world is transformed. Amen.' (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, quoted in Vultus Christi)

In the Arms of Our Love

'If we would please this Divine Infant, we too must become children, simple and humble. We must carry to Him flowers of virtue, of meekness, of mortification, of charity; we must clasp Him in the arms of our love.'

St. Alphonsus





Painting: Dvorak, Presenting Flowers to the Infant

A Daily Christmas

Painting: Jacob de Backer, 1555–1585, The Nativity



A Blessed Christmas to you and yours

A Triumph of Calm

'Never be in a hurry. Do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. 
Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, 
even if your whole world seems upset.'

St. Francis de Sales

Painting: BH Croats

Stir Our Hearts

 

'Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to prepare the ways of Thy only-begotten Son; 

that by His coming we may be able to serve Him with purified minds.'

             

Roman Missal, 5th to 7th century

Painting: Bernardino Luini

How To Find Christmas Peace?

'How to find Christmas peace in a world of unrest? You cannot find peace on the outside but you can find peace on the inside, by letting God do to your soul what Mary let Him do to her body; namely, let Christ be formed in you.... 

'As He was physically formed in her, so He wills to be spiritually formed in you. If you knew He was seeing through your eyes, you would see in every fellowman a child of God. If you knew that He worked through your hands, they would bless all the day through.'

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

Painting:George Bernard O'Neill, A Christmas Kiss

If You're Not Feeling Merry

It's a bad time of year to be hurting.  Not that there is a good time for pain, of course, but the weeks around Christmas and New Year's can be particularly poignant for some.

I suspect many of us have had such seasons. Times when we can't be with loved ones, or a relative or close friend has died, or we've suffered a miscarriage, or we're sick, or we've lost our job, or there is illness in the family.  Even the time of year can make us feel blue.  Here in the northern hemisphere, night falls early in these months of bleak midwinter. We may be struggling to adjust to the long, long, long dark.

For anyone reading this who is sad, in pain, or maybe just wishing the holidays would be over and gone - know that you're not alone. In fact, you are so 'not alone' that I'm going to ask a favor of everyone reading this.

Could we each take just a minute and offer a little prayer for anyone coming across these words who might be hurting?  If this gets to a number of people, that could amount to quite a few prayers.

May God lift burdens, heal pains, comfort loneliness, and soothe hearts. 

'We beseech You, Lord and Master, be our help and succor, save those among us who are in tribulations, have mercy on the lowly, lift up the fallen, show Yourself to the needy, heal the ungodly; convert the wanderers of Your people, feed the hungry, release our prisoners, raise up the weak, comfort the fainthearted, let all nations know You are God.'  (St. Clement of Rome)

'Cast all your cares on Him, because He cares for You.' (1 Peter 5:7)




This is a post from 2014. 
Painting: Viggo Johansen  

Is There Room in My Heart?

Sometimes, at this time of year, a question drifts into my mind. It's always the same. 

"Is there room in Your heart for Me?" 

I immediately think of innkeepers.  I think of a house in Bethlehem where travelers once lodged, where no room was found when the time came for Jesus to be born.

Christ is in my heart; this I know. But sometimes I wonder. Am I providing a place of welcome and adoration?  Or could it be that I've allowed my heart to become cluttered with so many other things that I have little room in my life for Christ Himself.

The inn in Bethlehem was not filled with "bad" people on the night Mary and Joseph arrived seeking shelter.  It had no room for the holy family only because others had gotten there first.

Does Jesus find little space in some of my days simply because the hours fill up with everything else first?

Do I get up in the morning and put off prayer until I get one thing accomplished, and then one more thing - and do I ever find that the day has sped by without my spending any time at all in communication with God?  I am deeply ashamed to admit that more often than I care to mention, this has been the case.

My heart seems, today, like a manger filled with clutter.  Sometimes it's as if there's no room in it for the most important Person in the universe.  Just imagine the "logic" of that.  And so I come today to Jesus, asking HIM to clear out all the distractions.  I ask our Blessed Mother, who so tenderly prepared a place for Jesus, to help prepare my heart to be a fitting refuge for my Lord. May she re-arrange my priorities as one might arrange pieces of straw in a manger.

As my Christmas gift this year, I ask that the same be done for you. I ask that all our hearts be prepared as places of loving refuge for the King and Messiah Whose birth we are about to celebrate. The world did not welcome Him when He came to earth as an infant; it does not welcome Him still.  You and I have the opportunity of welcoming Him in a world that does not do so.

May our hearts prepare Him room.





This is a repost from our archives. It is linked to Reconciled to You and Theology is a Verb for 'It's Worth Revisiting Wednesday.'

© N Shuman thecloisteredheart.org 

Please Use the Back Door

'Mary is now with child, awaiting birth, and Joseph is full of expectancy as he enters the city of his own family. He searched for a place for the birth of him to whom heaven and earth belonged. 

Could it be that the Creator would not find room in his own creation? Certainly, thought Joseph, there would be room in the village inn. There was room for the rich; there was room for those who were clothed in soft garments; there was room for everyone who had a tip to give to the innkeeper. 

But when finally the scrolls of history are completed down to the last word of time, the saddest line of all will be: 'There was no room in the inn.' No room in the inn, but there was room in the stable. 

The inn was the gathering place of public opinion, the focal point of the world's moods, the rendezvous of the worldly, the rallying place of the popular and the successful. 

But there's no room in the place where the world gathers. The stable is a place for outcasts, the ignored and the forgotten. The world might have expected the Son of God to be born in an inn; a stable would certainly be the last place in the world where one would look for him. The lesson is: divinity is always where you least expect to find it. 

So the Son of God made man is invited to enter into his own world through a back door.'

Venerable Fulton J. Sheen

In This Time of Preparation

‘Silence is so lacking in this world which is often too noisy,

which is not favorable to recollection and listening to the voice of God. 

In this time of preparation for Christmas, 

let us cultivate interior recollection, 

so as to receive and keep Jesus in our lives.’

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI 

Your Real Longing

We Interrupt Your Life To Say....

Sometimes the activities of Advent and Christmas can feel like an intrusion. Day to day life is more or less put on hold by an urgent need to shop and wrap and plan. Chairs and tables are displaced by, of all things, a tree in the middle of our house.  There is no time to do ordinary things, as everyday life is seriously disrupted for weeks on end. It can seem like a major interruption. 

A few years ago, the truth of it hit me. This is what Christmas has been since the instant of the Incarnation: an interruption. Please stay with me here, because our first reaction to the word “interruption” could be negative.  But interruptions are often quite positive, and this Interruption was the most positive of them all.

Think of it.  Mary was living a quiet, hidden life.  She was betrothed. Then one day an angel appeared to her, and with that Holy Interruption Mary’s life was changed forever. As was Joseph’s, as was yours, as was mine.

As we know, there was a Birth.  There were shepherds tending their flocks, and again an angel appeared.  A night of sheep-watching was interrupted.  

While most of the world went on unaware, a few men in the east noticed something out of the ordinary.  A sign in the sky.  Something signaling, to them, a wondrous Interruption – one so marvelous that they must drop any other plans they had and go in haste, and they must bring gifts.  These men were wise enough to know that somehow the world had changed, maybe even that the course of life on earth had been altered.

The change was so shattering that mankind took notice.  Calendars would later mark the divide.  

God Himself had split the heavens.  

We now measure time by the before and after of that Grand Interruption, in effect saying that yes, we see. We may not understand, really, but we recognize the wonder and the mystery of it. God interrupted the cycle of sin and death by breaking into our world (John 3:16).  Jesus broke into the flesh of man, shattering hopelessness with His power and mercy.

With Jesus' arrival in the flesh, God interrupted our misery.  He opened to us the path to salvation.   

When I feel stressed by Christmas interruptions, I try to remember what I'm celebrating. Death was interrupted by Life. Despair was interrupted by Hope. 

With His glorious interruption, God tore through the fabric of time.





 

This is a repost from our archives. It is linked to Reconciled to You and Theology is a Verb for 'It's Worth Revisiting Wednesday.
  
© N Shuman thecloisteredheart.org 

Painting at top: Carl Heinrich Bloch, The Annunciation
Painting at bottom: Blake, The Ancient of Days 

Dear Mother...

Painting used: Peter Paul Rubens, Immaculate Conception

Start Over...

'Don't despair over your shortcomings. 

Start over each day. 

You make spiritual progress by beginning again and again.'

St Francis de Sales

A Secret Told by Angels

Reopening The Advent Window

In the past, I've shared a post I called 'The Advent Window.' It seems only natural to do so this year (edited a bit) for Worth Revisiting Wednesday.

My 'Advent Window' opened when I was twenty years old. I was in what I call my 'God doesn't bother me and I don't bother Him' phase. There was, you see, so much to do... friends to hang out with, boys to date, parties to go to. I took no time to think about God; in fact, I was ignoring Him altogether. God, however, was 'thinking' of me, and began reminding me of Himself through a series of little seasonal things. A song heard on the radio, a nativity scene featured on the court house steps, Christmas songs piped into stores to draw customers, strains of O Come Let Us Adore Him wedged between Have a Holly Jolly Christmas and Here Comes Santa Claus. One song in particular stood out to me that year, with its announcement that 'Jesus the Savior is Born.' I didn't know what was happening to me when I heard those five simple words on the radio. I only knew my heart felt strangely warmed.

I've heard discussions about whether or not Christmas should be celebrated before the 25th.  After all, it's still Advent. In the Church, it is a time for quiet, for prayer, for gentle shades of purple. In the physical monastery, hearts wait in hushed anticipation.

But most of us live out in the red and green neon of the world. We're where bells jingle, songs jangle, nerves frazzle, patience frays. Because of my long ago 'Advent window,' however, I believe these weeks before Christmas bring moments when the love of Christ can be smoothly shared with neighbors, co-workers, family members, store clerks, acquaintances, friends.

In the midst of a secular, godless, 'we're-doing-fine-by-ourselves' world, there appears in this one season a window of opportunity. There is a slot, a crack in the Everyday. A few short weeks during which the whisper of God might be heard through carol or card.

In recent years, we have seen that crack narrow. The court house steps of my youth haven't seen a nativity display in years. But even now, somewhere between shoppers lined up for black Friday and the queues awaiting after-Christmas sales, there is still a window of opportunity. A time when someone rushing through a store might catch the strains of an old familiar carol, one she's heard every Christmas since childhood. Yet this time, the words sound different. She remembers a Babe in a manger, and her heart is strangely warmed.

This is a season when we can acknowledge (like at no other time) the One Who was born for us. After all, few friends would toss out cards that have nativity scenes on them. Neighbors visiting our homes won't be offended by the words of  'Silent Night.' It's all just part of the season, part of the holidays, part of the fun.

The Church will begin Christmas music and celebrations on the 25th, but out here in the world, the Advent window is now wide open.

This is when scenes and songs normally found only in Church can spill out into the world.

And who knows? Someone years from now might look back on a card you or I sent this season, and recall that 2015 was her own special Advent. We just never know.

The following video captures (externally) what can happen to us (internally) when the Advent Window begins to open...






(ads that might pop up on this video were not chosen by me)

This is linked to Reconciled to You and Theology is a Verb for 'It's Worth Revisiting Wednesday.'

© 2015 N Shuman
thecloisteredheart.org    

Tamed by God

 Click for Photo Attribution

In the Religious vocation, say the Lathrops in A Story of Courage, there is always something 'that tells of the heart once and forever pierced with the sword; the peaceful dwelling of a nature which has been touched and tamed by God.' (p. 4)

Even as one living in the midst of the world, I want to be touched by God, and I want to be pierced by His love, and I want to be tamed. It is, I think, an appropriate prayer for Advent.

Come, Lord Jesus, and pierce my heart with Your sword of truth.
Touch my wounded soul with your love.
Tame my wild, selfish nature, and claim me as Your own.
Make me into a peaceful, holy dwelling for Yourself.

(Because what I'd like to share next from A Story of Courage will be a multi-post 'visit to the monastery,' I will wait until after Advent to launch more fully into that). 


This post is part of our series 'A Story of Courage.' To continue in chronological order, click this line.