3rd Advent 2012, Birthing Trust

1 Thessalonians, 5, 1-8, 23, 24

About time spans and right moments, dear brothers, I have no need to write to you. You know very well yourselves that the Breaking of the Day of Christ comes like a thief in the night. When people say, ‘Now peace reigns, and all stands secure, then suddenly catastrophe breaks upon them, like the birth pangs of a woman with child, and there will be no escape for them.

You, however, dear brothers, are not to remain in darkness, so that the breaking of day will not surprise you like a thief. For you are sons of light and sons of the day. Our being is not filled with night and darkness. So let us not sleep like the others, but rather cultivate an alert and sober state of mind. Those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who are drunk are likewise of nightly nature. But since we belong to the brightness of day, let us be sober, clothed with the breastplate of faith and love, our head armed [protected] with the hope of healing….May God himself, however, the source of all Peace, hallow and heal your whole being. May your complete and undivided being,

Spirit

Soul, and

Body

remain pure and unclouded at the coming in the spirit of Jesus Christ, our Lord. You may trust in him who calls you. He it is who also lets you reach the goal. 

3^rd Advent

December 16, 2012

1 Thessalonians 5:1-8 and 23, 24

Birth of the Light, Roland Tiller

The darkness of night hides what is happening on earth. And the darkness of our unawareness hides processes that may be gestating quietly below the surface. And just as the inevitable rising of the sun reveals the myriad majesties of the earth, so too does the rising light of the Christ-Sun work to reveal our secret selves, what we are laboring to become, whether for good or for ill.

Today’s reading suggests that there are processes in the world that are generating what appear to be catastrophes. Yet Paul compares them to the inexorable onset of a pregnant woman’s labor, which heralds a new birth.

So also are there such events in our souls. There are seeming catastrophes in our lives that may have been gestating quietly beneath the surface of our awareness. Yet even here, something wants to be born in us through such events. What wants to be born is our awareness and trust in a beneficent Providence; an admiration and love for our own God-given destiny; a compassionate love for the destinies of others; and a healing of our destinies through the pangs of conscience.

The trials we undergo are the labor pangs we must endure so that Christ, the Lord of our human Destiny, can dwell in us; so that the Being of Love can be born in us; so that through us, He can work His Peace into the world.

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