Knowing that God not only knows but experienced what it was to be a human being, composed of blood and flesh and bone, limited by all the things that limit us, should give us patience with our weakness and joy in our strength. In our prayers for help, we can say, “You know what it’s like,” and be confident that he does. But we can also look to the end of the story and know that by being one of us, he was able to raise us up to overcome those limits—and the final limit of death itself. As St. Irenaeus put it so well, “He became human so that we might become divine.”
Nature takes us directly to Life, her world and the inner world of love being in deep communion. She brought me there after the fire of loss when all I wanted was to die. In those days, I didn’t believe I could survive. She showed me how the sea holds light and shadow, and how sunlight rides on the rising waves, everything gleaming. I saw the ocean glisten in full sunlight, balancing sparkling vessels of light—small shimmering stars—on the ocean swells. The ripples of light reached past my weariness and confusion until I could see what I needed to learn. Everywhere, light is pouring through the deepest places.
The “small piece”—the blow and suffering of unwanted loss and change—was a darkness to which I brought many emotional habits and patterns: anger, a feeling of being jinxed or doomed, and a longing to escape this path on which I found myself. I know today that grief did not create these patterns; it only illuminated them. They were already there. Still, it felt as if grief were the only cause of my confusion and unhappiness. It was difficult to accept that if the soul is to mature, it must go through the darkness and beyond it. But it must. The “large picture” is only revealed by the dark’s hidden and sustaining light. Recognizing which habits and patterns kept me lost in a loop of reactivity was crucial. The old patterns were lifeless and offered only suffering. But the darkness was alive, and offered a reappraisal of everything I had formerly concluded about life and its meaning.
Like most people, I would prefer to escape deep loss and to avoid hard and challenging times. Yet the dark has given me gifts that are immeasurably deep. It was because I wrestled with the dark that I learned to see beyond what was happening on the surface of my life, and grew to understand that everything is more than it appears to be. In time I knew that the dark is not absent of light. Light moves within the dark at a great depth. With this realization came a glimpse of the inordinate beauty and power just beyond our sight.
Advent is a good time to reflect on the many gifts we already have, and even on the many material things that make our lives more pleasant and less difficult. But we don’t have to be very far along in the spiritual life to understand that having more isn’t going to fill an emptiness in our souls. Contentment is a great gift that we don’t always appreciate. It’s not as rare as we might think. Instead of asking whether we’re happy, perhaps we can get into the habit of asking how content we are. Contentment has in it an element of peace that’s greatly needed in our lives and in our world today. And the more content we are with what we possess, the more likely we are to hold those things lightly and to give to those whose needs are greater and more genuine than our passing desires. The prophet Isaiah speaks of prosperity and success being like a river or the waves of the sea: infinite but constantly in motion. We are to hold our treasures lightly, knowing that they come from God.
Advent reminds us that the One who has come into the world and is always coming into our lives in new ways is the source of our salvation. We don’t need novelty and “magic bullet” solutions to our concerns. We simply need to return again and again to the rock-solid foundation of our lives: God and God alone. The mystery of the Incarnation is that by entering into our time and into our world, Jesus can show us the way to the gift that is beyond all time.
The prophet Isaiah is the voice and spirit of the Advent season. In the eighth century before Christ was born, his words encouraged a people dejected and torn from their homes by soldiers of a foreign power. The people of Israel were carried off to Assyria, exiled from their homeland, driven out of the Promised Land. While God’s prophets, including Isaiah, had warned them time and time again that this would happen, until they were living the reality of the exile, they didn’t see the need to change their ways. But once the worst had happened, he changed his tone and his words brought comfort and hope to an afflicted people. He continued to call them to change their lives and turn again to their God, but he did it with gentleness and encouragement, with reminders of how very much God loved them, even in the midst of their suffering.
At different times in our lives, we find ourselves beaten down by circumstances—some beyond our control and some the consequence of bad choices on our part. We’re embarrassed by the number of times people have warned us that we were going the wrong way. We feel consumed by regret and remorse. At times such as these, we need to hear the word of God through the prophet Isaiah, reminding us that God is merciful, that God loves us just as we are, that in spite of our weakness and sin, God is always ready to welcome us home, to bring us back to level ground. If you’ve reached one of these valleys during this holiday season, don’t beat yourself up for the way you’re feeling. Remember that our resolutions to do better, our commitment to repentance and turning our lives around, all happen with God’s help.
