My novel in progress, The Music of the Mountain, is set in the month of January 2023. It is a dark and stormy month, a time of short days and long nights. And yet January is a month of epiphanies, of new beginnings, of seeing what we didn’t see before. An epiphany is a sudden thought, a conclusion, an answer. January unveils these day by day, week by week.
But most of all, being the first month of the new year, time itself commands attention. What have we done or left undone in the past year? What do we regret? What would we do differently if we had the year to do over again? We make resolutions to be better.
It is unfashionable to admit fault, to judge oneself, to admit we are not all we should be. We are told that judgment is judged to be unkind, and above all, we must be kind to ourselves, looking for excuses, reasons why we didn’t love enough, circumstances that would send the judge and jury home for good.
Falling short of the mark hurts.
And so during Mass this morning I was glad to be reminded of my failings in the General Confession and the Absolution following. It is a crucial, cross-bearing reality, that we are human beings subject to moral law who will face God’s judgment one day, like it or not. I for one need reminding in this world of no fault, grievance, and victimhood.
And so we acknowledged and bewailed our manifold sins and wickedness we have committed by thought, word, and deed, provoking God’s wrath and indignation. We repent and are sorry. The burden is intolerable… we call on God for forgiveness.
It is good to be reminded of reality. It is good to repent on a regular basis after holding oneself up to the bright light of Heaven. In this way, we choose the best path to take in the new year. In this way we see ourselves as we are, not as we imagine, and allow God to carve away the darkness and bathe us in his light.
Today is the twelfth day of Christmas; tomorrow is the Feast of the Epiphany of the Lord. Epiphany, of course, is when the Magi or Wise Men arrive in Bethlehem, bringing gifts to the Christ Child. Epiphany, then, is the good news sung to the rest of the world, not just the shepherds and the holy family. We are included in this epiphany of light; we travel to the creche and kneel and worship too. We bring our gifts – ourselves. We too have followed the star in the heavens, wondering where it will lead. Could something so grand and cosmic as a star in the night sky shine upon the meager manger in Bethlehem? And yet angels appeared to the shepherds, the great choir singing to the lowly herders.
Christmas tells how the little becomes large, how flesh houses spirit. God becomes tiny and humble; kings follow a star and kneel before him.
To find answers to the human condition, the whys and the wherefores, look to the manger bed and see who kneels before the Christ Child. If kings and shepherds kneel, we can too. If they see, we can see too.
January is the month of the Holy Name of Jesus, so that we give the baby in the manger a holy glory by intoning his name, breathing the name, calling his name.
January is the month of life granted through this Holy Child, but it is also the month of death decreed with the slaughter of our own innocents through abortion. For half a century this month proclaims our grief, prays our petitions as we walk for life all across this nation.
The star is bright in the night sky as we embark on this year in time. We divide our time into months and days and hours, stepping through the squares on our calendars, trying to pay attention to each precious, passing minute. It is too much for our ashen earthiness, and so we take an hour on a Sunday to bundle the time into meaningful notes, and sing a melody of penitence, absolution, eucharistic feeding, and by the end of the hour we see epiphanies meant only for you and me.
We go to church for an hour each Sunday and kneel alongside the people of God, the bride of Christ. For in that humility, epiphanies are born, and we see again. We see the path laid out for us, at least for the next day and week, as we step into the woods of time, marking another year.
We are in the middle of Christmastide, those twelve glorious days of Christmas ending on Epiphany, January 6. 
And we try to be like the angels and sing to him in his manger. We sing of the miracle and mystery of that unlikely birth, we harken to the herald angels singing glory to the newborn king, we sing of a silent and holy night when away in the manger there was no crib for his bed, we tell of the little town of Bethlehem and what happened on that midnight clear when the glorious song of old was heard as angels touched their harps of gold, for Christ is born of Mary, and while mortals sleep, the stars proclaim the birth and peace to men on earth.
We teach our children the songs, so that they will teach their children. To help them remember, we dress them to play parts in a stable in Bethlehem. We clothe them with the story of the Christ Child. They act out the greatest story ever told, and each year they add to their own library of Christmas rituals and traditions.
There is the silent hush of valley fog enshrouding our house today. The mute world waits, hoping for a sign. A sign of what? A sign of life, life everlasting, before and to come. A sign that we are more than flesh, more than animals on the hunt to survive.
Today is Gaudete Sunday, or Rose Sunday, and Heaven Sunday too. The Third Sunday in Advent is rich with meaning as we prepare for Christmas and the Incarnation of God, come to us to live with us and in us. Such miracle and mystery often astounds me.
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice. Let your forbearance be known to all, for the Lord is near at hand; have no anxiety about anything, but in all things, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God.” (Wikipedia)
orld of faith, hope, love, and joy. It sounds too good to be true, but it’s true.
We light our three candles today, including the rose candle, and we recall our ultimate destination, Heaven. As we do, we experience a moment of Heaven on Earth. The candles flame, testifying to the Lord of Lords to come, to be born on Earth and reborn in our hearts.
The opening prayer that collected our small flock together on this brilliantly clear morning in a chapel in Berkeley was the “Collect for the Second Sunday in Advent”:
Advent’s daily prayer begins with “Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light…”. To memorize this prayer is to digest it, to send our words to God, expressing our need for re-forming, re-creating. And even as we pray the words, we become clothed in a protective garment, an armour of light, lighting the darkness.
Today is also the theme of Judgment. We shall be judged. The world shall be judged. But Christ takes our part if we desire Him; we are forgiven if we repent. And so we return to words – words to instruct our conscience, learning right and wrong, law and love. Holy Scripture becomes the textbook that teaches us where we have gone wrong, returning us to who we are and are meant to be. We need merely pray our words to Our Lord to be changed, to be redeemed, to be saved.
The nights have been clear and cold here in the Bay Area. We can see the stars and I reach to touch them, they seem so close. Advent is the time of stars in the heavens. Advent is when we follow the star to Christmas. We reach and we follow the star.
These are big things, subjects we would rather avoid. Especially judgment. We define deviancy down and further down, so that we can deny judging anyone and thus not be judged ourselves. And yet we know deep within there is a moral law all mankind senses, reckoning that a standard has been set, a standard we don’t meet. And with law there is judgment.
We light our first Advent candle in our Advent wreathe. It is only one small flame in the dark, but it will light the others, each week, until we see the light of Bethlehem, the light of the world, the light of Christ.
It is good we practiced gratitude for our blessings this past week. Gratitude humbles us. Gratitude says, we owe something to someone else. Indeed. We owe much to those giants that have preserved the West, and fought for our freedoms through war and peace. We owe much to our local church, filled with good souls who try to love us. We owe much to our own families who try to put up with us. We owe much to Our Lord who gave us life itself and continues to breathe life into each day we live.
We begin at the beginning, the first day of the Church Year. In this new year we open the gates of Jerusalem – and our hearts – to the Messiah as our Gospel reading describes. Today the story begins, and each one of us will play a vital part in the greatest drama of all, life overcoming death, eternally, minute by minute.
Today we celebrate the Holy Trinity, the three persons in one God, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, beginning the long green Trinity season of growth.
My father, a chaplain on board the Phoenix in the South Pacific in World War II, was a man of truth. Fresh out of Dallas seminary, he joined his ship in June of 1944 at the age of 28. He prayed and he preached and he pastored his young charges, as kamikazes dove into the sea around them. He returned to America even more dedicated than when he enlisted. 
For we are broken, with hearts both good and evil. But the Father reaches out to us with the Son, and the Son fills us with the Spirit. A trio of loves lives with each believer, a holy nesting birthing a holy voice that sings the song of the Holy Trinity to the world.
So on this Memorial Weekend we pause to praise the God of all memorials, the Lord of all lives, the Father of all freedoms. We remember with our sacred memory those who have gone before us, those who gave themselves for you and me. We tell our children these sacred stories, so that they will tell their children, so that the people of this great nation will never forget our brave soldiers.
The Feast of Pentecost, the celebration of he descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples gathered in Jerusalem, is one of the most dramatic scenes in the New Testament, and while I have always been astounded at the Gospel and Epistle for this Sunday, today I considered one phrase our preacher said.
And, as she was commanded, she named him Jesus, this Holy Spirit child, this quickening of Our Lord in Mary. She said yes, be it unto me according to thy will. (Luke 1)
The Spirit gave them the words, reversing the story of the Tower of Babel, uniting, not dividing, loving, not hating. With words.
Christine Sunderland
Christine Sunderland 