Tag Archives: Christianity

It’s been cold and rainy here in the Bay Area, at least cold by California standards. Wind chill. Woke to snow on Mount Diablo the other morning. Rather like our souls, feeling the cold and rain and wind of the world battering our Lenten journey.

We are called to sanctification, says Saint Paul to the Thessalonians in our Epistle today, and Lent helps us with that. We clean out our hearts and our habits and all the mess that we have made of our lives. We scour with honesty, disinfect with courage, and peek at what we have left. We repent of our pride and our unlove and our breaking the commandments without care. We desire to be made new, to be healed and made whole, by the greatest miracle worker of all, Christ Jesus, who in today’s Gospel, heals the daughter of the Canaanite woman who is “grievously vexed with a devil.” He does it from afar, because the woman believes, is faithful. (Matthew 15:21+)

We too, want that healing. We too, want to have that kind of faith.

And so with great difficulty I have tried to memorize my psalm, but the words slip away, so I placed it in my phone with easy access, banishing my excuses or at lease embarrassing them. “God be merciful unto us, and bless us, and show us the light of his countenance and be merciful unto us.” (Psalms 67)

Mercy, blessing, and light. Like the burning bush, perhaps. Light radiating from his face toward us, love enlightened. Sacrificial love, the kind of love we are to practice. Forgive my unlove, Lord. Teach me to love.

But can we love with a cluttered soul? We must clean things up.

I visited our Berkeley chapel this morning and afterwards looked into the basement of Morse House next door where we store things, all kinds of things (don’t ask). It needs cleaning out, sorting, reboxing. There were files that needed tending, histories that needed recording and saving for future generations.

I thought my soul must look like that if the light of the Father’s countenance were to shine upon it. Things forgotten, things undone, things done that shouldn’t have been done. And so I pray for the light to see the damage, the minutes, hours, days and years of living, all packed into memory files that need opening and scouring.

I have found that weekly Eucharists help with this, feedings to strengthen my soul. The Church is like a spiritual gym and must be enjoyed weekly if not more often. We have been given the great gift of Christ among us, solving our sufferings, leading us with the light of His countenance. In the Mass we confess our failings and receive absolution. We are clean when we step to the altar and receive Christ himself in the mystery of the bread and wine.

Thinking now of this morning, and the amazing contrasts between the ordered space of the chapel and the disordered space of the basement and the wailing wind outside, I am thankful for the good clergy we have, the faithful friends who worship alongside me, and the organ that sends notes of glory into the russet dome above, sent aloft with our soaring songs.

I am thankful for a moment of brilliant light that revealed who we are, children of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

“God be merciful unto us, and bless us, and show us the light of his countenance, and be merciful unto us…”

My novel, The Music of the Mountain, has received another endorsement, this one from the admirable writer in England, Francis Etheredge, bioethicist and theologian:

“In what is very nearly a dystopian novel, Christine Sunderland takes a much closer look at a person who encounters baptism. In this, the second of her books about a semi-mysterious mountain, she takes up the previous theme of hope amidst destructive trends in society. There are four people at the heart of the book. And, by contrast with an illegitimate, authoritarian, withering of justified dissent, these four are very much at the beating heart of both preserving and advancing a renewal from above.

So, the outer circumstances of the novel are as impenetrably destructive, as the inner group are personally engaged in the intimate struggle to love in the truth. At one point, while we know how each of the four have been affected by the cultural crisis in which they live, there is a pointed encounter between those living the inner life and those seeking to puncture it as abruptly, aggressively, and intimidatingly, as they are unjustified in doing so.

The book is about two men and two women, almost entailing the possibility of a double love story which, in a certain way, is unexpectedly but beautifully concluded. The elderly man, a widowed Anglo-Catholic priest  assists, like an emergency doctor, at the late but timely coming to Christ of an almost atheist, but probably agnostic professor of ethics who is wholly taken up into Christ. While the young man and woman, clearly taking a two stepped kiss to courtship, are equally traced through their first meeting to marriage and a family, albeit the latter is viewed from on High.

Just as the dialogue between those who love is intimately unfolding, just so there is an equally, painful incapacity to even talk, in those who execute the mandate to burn good books. Christine Sunderland’s novel expresses, in the likely reader’s tears, the very contrast between being open to the mystery of life and being hardened by the dictates of an impenitent hatred of what is good, true and beautiful.”

Endorsed by Francis Etheredge, Catholic married layman, father of 11, 3 of whom he hopes are in heaven, whose latest book is Transgenderism: A Question of Identity: https://enroutebooksandmedia.com/transgenderism/.

Reading and writing and speech itself are gifts given by our God of love, part of the miracle of being human and made in His image. They are graces, mysterious and real, that express who we are and who we are meant to be. They sculpt and carve greater truths through metaphor, symbol, story, and character. And, at the end of the day, they tell us what love is by showing us love, dramatizing love, making love real.

Just so, today’s Epistle is the stunning ode to love that St. Paul writes to the Church in Corinth (I Corinthians 13+): “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal…” This poetic chapter describes the nature of love (charity), what it is and what it isn’t, with words that paint images to help us see: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known…”

Sight is again repeated in the Gospel story of Christ healing a blind man. For that is what we are, blind, feeling our way through life, reaching for God, for Eternity, for Love. We know this intuitively but we must act upon it, sculpt our own souls with Christ himself.

And so we clean out our hearts, confess our sins, receive absolution, and step into Lent to rise on Easter Day. In this way we become part of the music, part of the hymn of love, speaking the words and singing the notes that pull us heavenward. In this way we learn to love as we are meant to love, and we become part of the mystery as we enter the miracle and see Him face to face. We are no longer blind, but can see.

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.

I have long found it interesting that the Jewish world before Christ knew who humankind was and is, knew their identity and mission expressed in rituals and rules. They knew they were made in the image of God, their Creator. Just so, they treasured life, children, families. When they erred, their God called them back to Him and set them on the path to life.

The Greco-Roman world also knew that humankind was not mere flesh, but owned a spirit, a soul.

And so Jesus, the Son of God incarnate, was born into the Roman world, a Jew in the messianic lineage of David. The time was ripe for the two cultures to merge, for the Roman world gave the life-changing message of Christ the forum to broadcast the good news, the gospel. It is in the Roman Mediterranean basin that the first Christian churches would be planted, secretly in homes, then building upon the graves of the martyrs, celebrating eucharists over holy bones.

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea He synthesized these worlds, baptizing Rome with Jerusalem, and opening Heaven to all mankind. 

Today’s gospel tells of John the Baptist who prepares the way for Christ’s birth, life, death, and life. The great followings that John attracted would shift to Jesus of Nazareth, as our preacher pointed out today. The Baptist prepared the way. And what did he say that prepared the world for the Savior? What could he possibly say that would be enough? Repent, he said, make his way straight. And with baptism, each follower said yes, I will change and I will make the crooked straight in my life.

And so the way was prepared in the hearts of many.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905), Song of Angels (1881)

Just so Advent prepares each one of us to receive the Lord of Lords, to kneel with the shepherds and bring gifts with the kings, to fly with the angels into the starry night of Christmas, Christ’s Mass.

Christmas, full of giving and singing and sharing for a brief time, gives us a taste of glory, the glory of the angels, the glory of life itself, the glory in a newborn baby.

Christmas says you needn’t be great or rich or powerful. In fact, it is better if you are lowly, poor, and powerless. Christmas says look at the baby and sing to him. Thank him. Love him. Invite him into your heart.

As Christina Rosetti wrote in her lovely Christmas sonnet, “What can I give him? I give him my heart.”

May we all experience the glory of the love of God this week, this sacred and holy time, when Christ Jesus came among us, bringing us life here and now, and forever in Eternity.

Come Lord Jesus, come.