December
18th, 2005
Approaching
Angel
Making
Room for Christmas
They’re coming! All those who don’t regularly get to church
will be coming next week. It’ll be like Bethlehem: exciting, crowded
and uh-oh, dangerously close to
re-enacting the first Christmas where a couple was told there was no
room for them.
Well this is St. Brigid’s -- there’s always room.
You see, we never know when someone will show up and experience a “nativity”
-- a birth of Christ in his/her soul. Others will be more like the shepherds
and magi-- making a one-night stop and then heading out for the hills
and their own country again. But even shepherds and magi are part of
the Christmas story and Mary and Joseph let them in to meet Jesus. And
so shall we. With joy (yes, it’s Joy to the World). They’re
coming! And so is the Lord!
Census
Continues
Of the approximate 6,000 families we usually send mail to, we’ve
received completed Census booklets from nearly 2,000. So we’ve
got a ways to go.
Is your booklet in?
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Past Columns:
Dec11: Mary For Us All
Dec 4:Smoothing Rough Roads
Nov 27: Rending the Heavens
Nov 20: Gobble Gobble
Nov 13: Talents Galore
Nov 6: Our Census Has Begun
Oct 30:Get ready, set...
Oct 23: This Time For Real
Oct 9: Parishioners Don't
Read This
Oct 2: What would Jesus Sign?
Sept 25: New Pastor
Sept 18: Welcome Gonzalo
Sept 11: New Beginnings
Sept 4: Spreading the Faith
August 28:World Youth Day
Words
August 21: Dressing Up
August 14: Harsh
Words
August 7: Tiny Whispering
Sound
July 31: Welcoming Rob
July 24:Wedding Bells
July 17: Summer Weeding
July 10: Ministry to Seniors
July 3: The Painters are
Coming!
June 26: The Last 25%
June19: Sommer in the
Summer
June 12: Great News Anoying
News
June 5: What's Essential
May 29: Setting Priorities
May 22: Painting Project
May 15: We are the Church
May 8:Mother of the Church
May 1: On Life and Death
April 24: Habemus Papam
April 17: The Spirit Abounds
April 10: Two men on a journey
April 3: He's baaack!
March 27th: Not the best
news...yet
March 20th: What are You
Doing For Easter?
March 13th: The Stench
March 6: To Tell or Not
To Tell
February 27: Dry Mouth Dry
Soul
February 20: Good to Be
Here
February 13: And he was
hungry?
Ash Wednesday '05
February 6: Ashes Already?
January 23: Catholic Schools
Week
January 16: Continued Charity
January 9: Migration
January 2:All is bright?
Columns from 2004
Columns from 2003
Columns from 2002
“Do not be afraid Mary,”
the angel said, “for you have found favor with God.” Easy
for the angel to say since angels know what God has in mind for us. But
in our human knowledge, we’re limited. And so despite the angel’s
urging, Mary had a lot to be afraid about.
For one thing, how do you explain
to your parents and to your fiancee that you’re pregnant? Do you
think they’d really believe the “angel” story? (Apparently
not, as we read in the scriptures.) And when an angel finally convinces
your husband to take you as his wife and then he announces that you’ll
be having the baby not amidst the women in your family whom you trust,
but rather in some distant town...isn’t there enough to be afraid
of in that scenario?
So many artists have portrayed
the annunciation as a calm matter-of-fact affair. Mary is reading or knitting
and the angel is painted as an expected guest. So perhaps our own imagination
of what happened in that encounter is colored by the artwork. What must
Mary have really experenced? If we enter into the mystery and anxiety
of that moment, her saying “yes” to God is all the more remarkable.
Perhaps that’s the lesson for us here...our life is interrupted
with fears. We often can’t see what the angels see -- the end of
the story. We’re caught up in the mystery of “now” and
we’re limited in our sight. Oh that we would have as much faith
and confidence in God to say “yes” to what God offers to us
as Mary did!
Next Sunday we’ll be telling
the Christmas story and contrary to the warm, light-emitting barns pictured
on our Christmas cards, we’ll hear a somewhat frightening story
of a couple about to give birth out in the street...no room for them except
in a place for animals....shepherds who barge in after Mary gives birth...
“Do not be afraid Mary.”
Easy for the angel to say.
