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It is January in the year 2013. Time passes. My oldest granddaughter turned twenty-five yesterday. My mother turns ninety-three next week. Christmas is over and the cold stillness of January surrounds us. I have put away the Christmas things… except for a candle to light at suppertime. Time passes, falling through the years like a waterfall, a river of light.

Most of these new year days have been filled with tapping my keyboard and developing small callouses on the tips of my fingers. I am typing and editingThe Life of Raymond Raynes by Nicholas Mosley (1961). Last year I edited Father Raynes’ retreat addresses given in Denver in 1957, called The Faith, Instructions on the Christian Faith. His words express the truth and joy of Christianity in a way I could understand, in a way, for that matter, most of us could understand. He speaks practically, reasonably, at times reminding me of C. S. Lewis, another Anglican apologist. Recently, Nicholas Mosley (Lord Ravensdale) gave our church publishing group, The American Church Union, permission to reprint the biography (thank you, Lord Ravensdale!), and now as my eyes capture the letters and words on the yellowing pages and I tap them onto the keyboard and into the document file and they mysteriously appear on the screen, I feel as though I have fallen into another world, the world of Mirfield in the north of England, home of the Community of the Resurrection. Yesterday I began a chapter set in South Africa and now I move through the dust and poverty of Sophiatown where the Community of the Resurrection established missions, schools, clinics.

Father Raynes was indeed a missionary. He brought the light of Epiphany, the manifestation of God on earth, into the homes of folks in the English countryside. He brought Epiphany into the hovels of Sophiatown in South Africa. He himself carried this light of Christ in his body, in his words, in his daily deeds. He glowed, he was embodied with Christ. I wish I had known him, yet I have been blessed to spend time with his biography, to shift these words from page to computer screen. Some of the words are his own, taken down in quotations, some of the words are his biographer’s, Nicholas Mosley. But the words move from the page into my mind and heart just as they move from the page through my fingers onto this screen. Father Raynes often said, “Life is a love-song we sing to Jesus.” Indeed – Father Raynes himself was a love song sung to Jesus. And the tune is a beautiful one, mellow, haunting, one that pulls me into his own heart. This is how God loves us – through real things, through real people. We call this the sacramental way.

Manifestation. Light. Telling the good news. Living the good news. And what is the good news? That God came to earth to be one of us, to bring us home to Heaven. No small thing – this promise of Heaven. No small thing – God’s love for us. No small thing – this immense and rich meaning granted to my time on earth. No small thing – hearing the music and the laughter and the joy of this sacramental way of knowing God.

I considered these things this morning in our parish church.  St. Peter’s in the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland is a quiet oasis of holy contemplation, a place of rejuvenation. It is a place of singing great hymns and hearing ancient chants drift through the air. It is a place where we meet God, receive Him in the Eucharist. This beauty of holiness continues even as our preacher speaks from the central aisle, manifesting God’s love among us, enlightening us. It continues until the crucifer and torchbearers recess to the bright narthex doors, until the moment when the tall tapers on the altar are silently snuffed by the acolyte.  It continues to the moment when the organ booms the postlude and we leave our pews to greet our sisters and brothers, our family in God.

Manifestation. Light. Seeing God. Worshiping Him in the beauty of holiness amongst family and friends united by that light, by God’s manifestation to we gentiles in the first month of the Year of Our Lord two thousand and thirteen.

Epiphanytide is a short season this year – there is only one more Sunday. Soon we will consider Lent. But for now, in this moment in time, I shall be glad for God come among us, shining through us, and especially his shining through Father Raynes.

Our two cats are creatures of the earth. The red tabby, just a tad overweight, sleeps a great deal, and craves affection when awake. He hears us enter the house and is soon nuzzling and purring around our legs. The black-and-white longhair, a tad underweight, sleeps less and mourns our absence by dragging small stuffed animals around the house as she wails piercingly (we caught her doing this once when she couldn’t find us). When we return home we discover the baby white chicken on the stairs, the red ladybug near my office chair, the orange bumble bee by the front door. Laddie and Lady Jane are simple creatures with simple desires. They do not ask the meaning of life, or how to become happy, or why must we die.

But we humans do ask these questions. We wonder, we ponder, we plan, we record, we make lists. We read symbols called letters that form larger symbols called words that make up long phrases assembled to make paragraphs and pages and books. We follow a train of thought with these symbols as we build cities of ideas in the landscapes of our minds. We also, like cats, sleep and eat and love and desire friendship and community. But we are far more, for we reflect our Creator.

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, when we celebrate the Wise Men following the bright star to worship the heavenly king born among men on earth. Our Jewish-Christian preacher, our new rector, stood in the center of the aisle this morning and described the long road the star had taken in time, from Abraham to the People of Israel to the Messiah born in Bethlehem. The numbers were many as the twelve tribes grew, but over the years a single tribe was chosen, a single family line was chosen, and a single woman was chosen to bear the Son of God, born to the People of Israel, in this moment in time. And we too, all others in the world – Gentiles – can now follow the star, that light in the darkness, to the Christ child.

The light in the darkness. We began in Advent with John’s promised light in the darkness. And now we end the twelve days of Christmas with that same image of light shining in the dark night.

The earthy things of creation are made new. The star recreates the manger of earth and beasts and childbirth in the hay to become something far greater than the natural order it seems to be part of. The star in the heavens bathes our planet in light, bathes us in light. We are pulled into eternity of time and space by such a star. And by such an incarnation. And by such a God.

God is born among men on earth. The supernatural intersects the natural. Our own spirits made in God’s image are called to understand, to believe, to meet this Heavenly Father, to hallow His Name.

I was thankful today in church for our new rector who understands this artful (and powerful) journey God made through time with his People of Israel. Our new rector understands the grand and glorious nature of the drama that has gone before us and he looks forward to the drama that will comes to each of us. He knows we are in the middle of the drama now, in the present. We need only see in the light.

The mother of a dear friend is dying. She will soon be part of the future drama, that great adventure of heaven when Christ will take her hand and lead her, bathing her in his love. And we, left behind on earth, will take part in the drama of the present with every Eucharist, every prayer, every sacramental offering as the new People of God, the Body of Christ. For that child born in Bethlehem, the culmination of the journey of the Children of Israel, has grown to become the Body of Christ on earth, the Church.

So we leave the rich and wonder-filled seasons of Advent and Christmas and enter Epiphanytide, the season of light. Like cats, we continue to eat and sleep. We continue to love and to be loved. But unlike cats, we partake of the holy as we worship together in church. Together as the Church we journey into a new year.  Together as His Body we follow the light of the bright star in the heavens, on the altar, as eternity grows within us.

When I returned to our local church this morning, I asked a friend, “How did the pageant go?” Being away over Christmas weekend meant, alas, missing our Christmas Pageant.

And I loved her answer. “You know,” she said, grinning, “it was just amazing. All the pieces fitted together, they all came together. The costumes were laid out with names and everyone put on their costumes and, well, it all just came together!  It was wonderful. One minute there were piles of clothing on the table and the next minute it seemed we were acting out a pageant!”

And so it did come together. But I was sorry to have missed seeing the great story of Bethlehem told in our parish sanctuary on the red-carpeted steps leading to the altar. I knew that Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and she said be it unto me according to your word. I knew that Mary, when the days were accomplished that she should be delivered, traveled to Bethlehem where there would be no room in the inn, that she gave birth to the savior in a manger cave. Shepherds surely kept watch and guarded their flocks by night until a heavenly host appeared, singing glory to God and on earth peace among men. On this first noel the angels, I knew, sang joy to the world, the Lord is come, let earth receive her king! And the shepherds went on to seek this king born in a stable outside Bethlehem.  All of this happened, I was sure, on the red carpet leading to the altar where candles flamed.  I could see it. I could hear the music.

But this morning as I entered the warm nave and gazed upon the crèche nestled in its bed of greens, I thought how all the pieces came together like my friend said. They came together in Bethlehem two thousand years ago – the centuries since Adam, since Abraham, since the days of Moses and the exodus from Egypt. The pieces, those wandering Children of Israel, were pulled through the wilderness and finally into the promised land. Slowly, piece by piece, thread by thread, a new moment in time formed, the moment of the Incarnation, when God became man.

Just so, I thought, in my own life God has taken the pieces of my days and years and pulled them together to this present moment in time. Sometimes the shards of my experience, those fragments of me, do not always fit perfectly together.  For I am a daughter of Eve and prone to rough edges – anger, envy, pride, for starters – so the new vessel, the amphora of me, is not always what God may have intended. Nevertheless, he buffs those rough edges with love and mercy and forms a new me, again and again. And hopefully, certainly, he lives inside, taking possession.

The vessel of our parish has gone through some rough shatterings in the last few years, and we have pulled far flung pieces together, uniting them with love, with the strength of God. There have been moments when the task seemed far too large for us, but we were faithful, or tried to be, falling on our knees, admitting our helplessness. We worshiped together, we shared meals together, we taught our children about the love of God. Over the months and years we have re-fired our our broken fragments to make a rough amphora of a parish, a vessel to hold God’s children, his own body of Christ. Now, we welcome a new rector come among us. He will shepherd us, pulling us into future time, and we are thankful.

The first days of those Twelve Days of Christmas  that we celebrated this last week extended Tuesday’s Feast of the Incarnation. We remembered St. Stephen, the first martyr, on Wednesday, then honored the life of St. John the Evangelist on Thursday. Friday we mourned the Holy Innocents, those children slaughtered by Herod as he searched for the child-king to slay him.

As Christ’s body, we tell the story. We assemble together the words, phrases, deeds, and people that make up the story.  The fragments form a whole. Time is realized. The past, present, future, are drawn into this point of infinity, eternity, in Bethlehem two thousand years ago, when God intersected human history.  And God intersects our own time too, today. He makes us whole. He draws all of the minutes and seconds of our lives, together in him, in his son, Jesus.

And this is why we say, Merry Christmas. The pieces come together. We become whole.

It is Christmas time and I’ve traveled into the mountains to see my son, no longer a child but a man, a husband and father, with a son and daughter of his own and a dear wife. It is Christmas, or  nearing Christmas, this fourth Sunday in Advent, and I am grateful for this mysterious reunion.

While it is said we do not choose our family, even so it might also be said that our family is chosen for us – that God in his infinite mercy balances our waywardness with other personalities, temperaments, and habits that become part of our family. In the crucible of family we forge who we are, who we are meant to be. We learn to love, and in the process we learn love’s definition. We learn to be forgiven and to forgive.

Sometimes family is biological, sometimes not. Family are the folks to whom we are bound, whether it be genes, faith, proximity. Family are those folks who God places in our path in each and every moment.

And so we approach the moment of Christ’s birth, that child in Bethlehem…In the beginning was the Word and the Word was made flesh… and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

I find myself this fourth Sunday in Advent, the Year of Our Lord 2012, in Boulder, Colorado. It is dry, but today cold winds rose, sweeping the streets and battering the walls and windows and biting our cheeks as we walked the two blocks to church. We attended a Presbyterian Church, the denomination of my childhood, the church of my pastor-father. The large brick edifice encompassed the full block, it seemed, growing from a historic chapel to meet the needs of a growing community searching for God. We entered the lobby – large and high with a giant decorated fir in the center. Crowds mingled, lingering or arriving, dropping off children in classrooms upstairs and pulling identification tags from computer screens. We stepped into the sanctuary (nave as the Catholics say), a theater that surrounded a stage. Soon the area was packed with worshipers, many like myself, coming from afar – either coming home or visiting family in their homes. There were twinkling wreathes along the walls. The dais was covered with thick candles flaming. Stage left three purple candles and one pink formed a circle high upon a brass pedestal. Three burned brightly. The fourth waited for the ceremonial moment of lighting.

The service began – O, Come All Ye Faithful… Hark: The Herald Angels Sing… we affirmed the Creed, sang the Gloria, all familiar to this Anglo-Catholic. The remaining purple candle was lit. The preacher stood in the center of the stage and preached on the first verses of John, In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God…

There were no kneelers on which to kneel in prayer. We sat, heads bowed, hands clasped. There was no Holy Eucharist celebrated. But even so I knew that I worshiped the same God of Abraham, the God of all Christians, the God of these Presbyterians, the God of my own Anglicans. We shared the glorious belief that the Word – the Second Person of the Trinity – had always been in existence, but in time he became flesh and dwelt among us, this Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary, who healed and cast out demons and walked on water. This God who humbled himself to be born in the hay among the animals in a cave outside the village of Bethlehem.

Why did he have to come to us like this? the preacher asked. To lead us, he answered. But he could have added that he came to take us with him. He came to join our flesh with his, to, in a sense, reverse the incarnation, to pull us into him, into him and up and to heaven, to sing with the angels and worship the Father. For of course, the Incarnation is the beginning of the great redemption realized in the Resurrection, a resurrection made real from that moment in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb to the hour of each of our own deaths and resurrections. For, those who believe in him will be resurrected with him. That is why he came to us.

Just so, we forge words, sentences, love letters with our families and and all those we find in our path through life. We are given each of them so that we may learn what love is.

My family is like most families, I think. Some get along better than others. There are moments of frustration, impatience, and there are moments of wonder and delight. There are moments of simple exhaustion and sometimes selfishness. So it was good to worship together today, sitting side by side in the pew and giving this time to one another and to God. We formed a bonding triangle with God, and as we move through the next few days to the great Festival of Christmas, this love will mold us to be better than we are now. We sang together, we prayed together, we stated our belief together as we stood side by side in the pew. We listened to the preacher speak of the remarkable Word made flesh, dwelling among us, full of grace and truth.

The Word made flesh, dwelling among us.  He came to down, he pulls us together, he brings us back up with him.

And so we look forward to Christmas Day, when we shall have great and glorious reason to make merry!

The fog rolled in last night and cocooned our house, soaking the patio with its blanket of water. We draw closer to Christmas, today this third Advent Sunday, almost the shortest day of the year and the longest night, the winter solstice.

I have read that historians calculate that Christ was born in the summertime, since the shepherds were watching their flocks by night and even in the Near East it gets cold in the winter. Had it been winter, the shepherds would have herded their sheep inside, it is reasoned.  But Emperor Constantine in the fourth century chose to sanctify the existing celebration of the solstice with this new celebration of Christmas, and the worship of the Son-God soon replaced the the worship of the Sun-God.

And it is fitting, it seems, to be given this shining star of hope in the midst of the darkest season of the year. In December light is limited both by hours of daylight and by weather – fog, rain, snow, leaden overcast skies. I speak of course of northern California and other northern climates. Where winter is really winter, the light of Christmas is nearly blinding. (I suppose this would not apply to Australia.)

Advent – these four weeks in which we await the advent, the coming, of Christ, his mysterious and miraculous incarnation – is a quiet soul-searching time or perhaps should be. It is a time of reflection, of trying to see through the dense fog of the culture blanketing our souls just as fog drenches the outside of my house. Our eyesight is often dim. We do not always see clearly.

In these four weeks we are given serious topics to consider, to try to see: death, judgment, heaven, hell. The Scriptures assigned are full of dire warnings. Israel is warned to seek righteousness or be conquered, slaughtered, sold into slavery, with many gory details in the text. We are startled by St. John’s visions of the Apocalypse, the future coming of Christ when he will judge the living and the dead. In sum, we have vivid accounts of past judgments and future judgments. Are these words simply fear-mongering?

Some would say so. Yet running through these lessons are also the lessons of good news, the news that Christ is coming, Christ came, Christ is here among us, Christ will come again. For we learn that Christ judges, and we must not forget this lesson. But he is also merciful, and we must embrace this as our greatest hope. Believe, he says, again and again, and be saved. It’s that simple. Believe in heaven, in redemption through him. So today we lit a pink candle in our Advent wreathe, breaking the cycle of penitential purple. We do this because today is Rose Sunday, the day we contemplate heaven. Today is also called Gaudete Sunday, Latin for “Rejoice,” a day in which we sing Paul’s rejoicing and encouraging words to the Philippians (4):

Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice. Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.

We need this reminder that the Lord is at hand. We need this reminder to pray. The past six months in America we have seen a great violence in our schools and communities. We have seen young men so captivated by evil they have obeyed its voice. Somehow these young men didn’t hear the voice of our God of love, a voice ringing through the years, days, hours, minutes, singing his love song to us. Somehow there was a void in their hearts, minds, and souls, a void that should have been filled with goodness and mercy, but was left empty and open to evil. Somehow these young men became consumed with anger, an anger encouraged by our culture, and they were given the weapons to express that anger. They did not believe in judgment, heaven, and hell. They believed in death, that death solved the problem of their pain and anger.

Without judgment, can there be justice? Without judgment, can there be mercy? In the end God will sort us out; in the present God will help us sort it out through the incarnation of his Son.  But how? As Paul says, through prayer, through regular supplication to God. Our prayers, as our preacher said so beautifully this morning, are in time but also in eternity, never lost in God’s great landscape of love. And, he said, our prayers are the salve of righteousness that will bind and heal the wounds of our culture. Our prayers, he explained, continue the Incarnation in Bethlehem into our present moment.

In the morning we plant our feet on the floor and we say “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…”. In the evening we lay our head on the pillow and say the same prayer of praise, thanksgiving, confession, petition, intercession, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…” This is the prayer Our Lord taught us to pray and so we pray it again and again, and again and again we bring his healing love to our world to burn away the fog and light up the dark with his life. Simple prayer. Simple love. Simple ways to heaven.

Our preacher asked us in the pews, “If Jesus walked in through the door right now, and said, ‘Come, it is time to go…’, would we be ready?” Have we made amends with our neighbors, forgiven them and asked them for forgiveness? Are there things and people and deeds in our life still surrounded by fog that we don’t want to see? Drenched by fog?

Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell. The four last things. Are we ready for the Baby in the manger to come to us? He is coming soon – in Bethlehem in great humility, but later too, in glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead.

Come, Lord Jesus, Come.

I am away and not at home. I have left behind shopping, decorating, making lists, writing cards, planning. I have not pulled out the six Christmas boxes that usually get opened in the first weeks of December – the mistletoe, the tree lights, the wreathes, the mini-sleighs and stuffed angels and candles set in greenery. I have even left my Advent candle set at home – the three purple candles and the one rose candle – that I would ordinarily be lighting at mealtimes. I now wonder if we will have a Christmas tree this year.

In a way I have truly retreated to a desert. It is quiet here by the sea, where my room opens onto a lawn which meets the beach which slides under a pounding surf. We have moved from the cliffs of northern Maui to the Kohala Coast on the Big Island of Hawaii, a good place to retreat, to rest, read, and write.

I miss all of the hustle and bustle at home. I miss the decorations and the Advent candles. But a new reality has slowly come over me, immersed as I am in the Book of Common Prayer daily offices, the four daily Scripture readings appointed for Advent, and the first verses of John I have determined to memorize. And also, I am immersed in the quiet of this natural world.

For the most part these assigned daily readings are full of Isaiah’s prophesies, morning and evening, and in my mind I can hear his voice, against the roar of the sea, as I turn out my light at night, his cries into the darkness, his prophetic warnings to Israel… “Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near… Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord…” (6,7) and then Isaiah’s glorious words of hope…  “For you shall go out with joy, and be led out with peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands…” (12).

The Office of Morning Prayer includes the first chapters of Mark, describing Christ’s early ministry. Our Lord Jesus heals and he casts out demons. Crowds follow him, pressing in. As he preaches in a home in Capernaum, “there was no longer room to receive them, not even near the door.”  Four men who had brought a paralytic to be healed and could not enter, uncovered the roof, broke through, and let him down into the room. Christ forgives his sins because of his faith, then heals his body to show he has the power to forgive. It is one of the most dramatic stories in Scripture. It was one of my favorite as a child, although I didn’t fully understand it at the time.

It was a double healing, one of soul and one of body. This is what Advent teaches us, the miracle of incarnation, our souls wrapped in flesh. In these weeks of waiting we ponder our souls and bodies, knowing they will be separated in death but united once again through the Incarnation: O death were is thy sting, O grave, where is thy victory? (I Corinthians 15:55 )

We walked a mile up the coast today. The dusty path was steep and took us through parched, dry land with twisted and gnarled trees. The sun pounded and I could see a thin strip of sea in the distance. As I gazed at my wide-strapped sandals, I thought it was perhaps not unlike walking along the Sea of Galilee. In some ways I felt closer to those times than sitting by a fire at home, the cold creeping to the windows, the sweet piercing fragrance of Douglas firs, the world of a northern Christmas.

Here I am surrounded by a world of sea and sky, of black lava and parched earth, of breathless breezes, hot sun. It is a beautiful yet harsh natural world, a world gone wrong but a world redeemed by a baby in Bethlehem.

And so I wait and wonder, and hold close to my heart this great miracle of Christmas, our Creator coming to us, becoming one of us. I learn his Word by heart, engrafting him onto my mind and soul:

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth. (John 1:12-14)

Come, Emmanuel, come.

The surf has been high here on the northern coast of Maui, the skies blue, the temperatures high seventies. We have settled in to a condo walled with windows overlooking black-lava cliffs that rise above a rolling Pacific Ocean.

There is a gathering of the waters, a cresting, a pounding down and foaming onto the shore. The cliffs below my window are high and rugged, rock that once erupted and bubbled down a volcanic mountainside many years ago and cooled as it hissed into the sea, caught in an eerie sculpture. Now the rock has become a landscape from Hades, its craggy pinnacles and disorderly layers standing guard fifty feet above the sea. But the sea is not afraid and mounts its attack against the cliffs like a massive army, spraying, pounding, slowly eroding. As the waves rise eight to twelve feet I can see their glassy undersides running straight along the coast. Then the waters fall in a downward arc to slip into swirling white froth on the shore. I sit on the border between sea and earth, caught in this glorious skirmish.

The quiet breathless calm as the sea gathers up and swells and gently undulates, is pregnant with impatience in the still-quiet cresting. I wait for the crash, when the sea pounds the packed bed of sand, thundering down, and spews and whooshes its white foam into the salty air. These are the only sounds, here in my retreat from the hustle of the city to the silence of the shore. The breathless calm. The silent gathering. The crashing and pounding. The beat of my heart. The tapping of these keys.

Far beyond this drama of gathering and cresting and falling down, far and away out to the barely curving horizon where the sky embraces the sea, the turquoise waters deepen to a dark blue, the waves dipping sweetly like a child’s finger painting, innocent, pure.

The scene of the sea is part of the greater act, of course, the greater drama of life itself, of my own body and it’s small and large parts, the galaxies of cells of flesh and bone I cannot see, the genetic history I carry into the future from my ancestors, from Adam and Eve. The miracle of it all – this creation of our world in all its facets and notes and history – never escapes me: The intelligence and brilliance and design, the relation of the part to the whole, the whole a part of another whole, and on and on. It is a poem, a song, a perfect painting. It is our deepest longing led to its source. It is something that cannot be expressed in words, only the Word.

And so we who are souls incarnate in human flesh await the Incarnate One. We listen to the prophets call him to our earth. We light candles and create special spaces in our homes to remind us that he is coming, he is near, he is here. We sing him into our hearts, Emmanuel, God with us. He who made the seas and the earth, the Word, takes on our flesh, completes the poem, the song, the painting. He is coming like the great rolling waves that rise outside my wall of glass. He will pound on our souls, knock on our doors, asking to come in. Will we hear his knock, know his voice? Will we welcome him when he comes?

I shall prepare for his coming this Advent of the Year of Our Lord 2012. I shall re-learn the Advent prayer in my worn Book of Common Prayer:

ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.

I shall read a book that will be a star I can follow to Bethlehem. This year I’m rereading St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation¸ a profound essay written in the fourth century by one of the great church fathers, with a sensible (I love sensible things) introduction by C. S. Lewis. I received this slim volume a few years ago at a silent retreat held in the forested Russian River area of northern California. It will be, hopefully, a window to the crashing roar of creation and its Creator, the Word, the Incarnate One. It will be, with an extra measure of grace, a star to light my way through Advent to Christmas.

I shall try to say the morning and evening prayer offices, and I shall re-memorize the first few verses of John, the gospel assigned for Christmas Day:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

Advent. The coming of God to earth. The same Word that created the world now recreates the world. The Word made flesh. Incarnation. Come, Lord Jesus, come.

Thanksgiving weekend seems to me to be a door opening onto Christmas.

It marks the end – or close to the end – of the Church Year. And fittingly, it marks the end by giving thanks, expressing gratitude.

In our national thanksgiving this week we as Americans took part in small and large celebrations of gratitude. We considered those who first gave thanks for their freedoms in this foreign land. Those pilgrims gave thanks to God, a God of grace, and today, many of us still believe in a God to whom we may render thanks. Those not believing in God, I suppose, give thanks to a vague sense of fortune or luck or destiny, carrying the grace of gratitude in their hearts without an object for that gratitude, as though their grateful feelings linger in the air, lost.

Grace, gratitude.  From the Latin root gratia, favor, kindness, esteem. We feel favored, gifted, loved, and we respond with thanksgiving. We say grace at meals, thanking God for our food, and we pray for God’s grace in our lives, asking for his favor.

Christians have long associated action with grace, as though God could fill us and cover us with himself. He could shelter us. He could live inside us. We could be imbued with him.

And so it is fitting, that this door of Thanksgiving weekend opens onto the season of Advent, the preparation for the Incarnation at Christmas, God’s ultimate gift of grace to us.

My bishop often says to me, “All is grace.” These are powerful words. They are hopeful words. These words say that, in the end, God wins. In the end, God will act throughout our world and throughout our history, pulling all of us together.

The Gospel today, the Sunday next before Advent, described the feeding of the five thousand in John 6. Our Lord Jesus multiplies five loaves and two fish to provide enough to feed everyone with some left over. Our preacher commented profoundly on what happens after this miracle. Jesus says to gather up the fragments so that nothing be lost.

These also are powerful words, hopeful words. This gathering is the action of grace – for we as Christians, are imbued with God through Baptism and the sacraments. We are the fragments scattered throughout the world that will be gathered up. And not one of us, in time or space, will be lost. It is God’s economy of love.

There are echoes here of the good shepherd searching for the single lost sheep. The shepherd knows his own and the sheep know him. And the shepherd is the door to the sheepfold.

All is grace.

We enter the season of Advent. We are grateful for grace. At every Eucharist (from the Greek for thanksgiving) we offer our thanksgiving in the great action of the Mass. We offer and we receive back a hundred-fold. We unite with Christ so that one day we will know his voice, and he will gather us together from every corner of the earth.

And we too must gather. We must gather up the lost, bind the wounded, clothe the naked, feed the hungry. We gather and are gathered. We feed upon God and are fed by him. We give thanks as we walk through the door that has now swung open, as we step into the mysterious and marvelous season of Christmas.