Years ago when people talked of simple living and ecology they championed “Small Is Beautiful”. In some ways the Feast and Season of Christmas celebrates God’s dwelling among us in the small and the beautiful – in a condition a busy and commercial driven world at best disregards and at worst doesn’t even see.
How to celebrate the immensity and at the same time the smallness of this Divine Mystery – the mystery of Emmanuel, “God with us”?
The Christmas Event is not something to grasp intellectually – you can’t get your mind around it. This mystery is to be experienced; and the experience often is reflected in the creative work of artists: music, sculpture, poetry, film, novels and dramas, etc.
Find the mystery in an expression that works for you.
When I was in my junior and senior year at the college seminary it was the practice that students go to confession if not weekly, then every two weeks. Priests from neighboring parishes and institutions came on Tuesday afternoon to serve as confessors and spiritual directors to the seminarians. I was assigned to go to confession at the confessional on the first floor of Loras Residence. The priest confessor was the Headmaster of Saint Thomas Academy, Father John Roach – later to become our Archbishop. At the beginning of Advent 1962, he urged me to read Mr. Blue, by Miles Connolly. It is the story of a simple, loving, counter-cultural man who lives graciously, gives whatever he has to others and ultimately saves the life of another by offering his own. Father Roach told me that Mr. Blue was a ‘Christ-figure” and that the story is an unexpected insight into the Divine Mystery of the Christmas Feast. He assured me that he read the story every year and found it always inspiring.
I received that advice 60 years ago, the fall of 1962. For the past 60 years part of my preparation for the Christmas Season each year has been to read Mr. Blue.
I encourage you to find a creative piece of human wonder and imagination that speaks to you of the Divine Mystery.
Christmas expresses the longing hunger for God, and so it is with joy that I wish you and yours a blessed and gracious Christmas.
Years ago when people talked of simple living and ecology they championed “Small Is Beautiful”. In some ways the Feast and Season of Christmas celebrates God’s dwelling among us in the small and the beautiful – in a condition a busy and commercial driven world at best disregards and at worst doesn’t even see.
How to celebrate the immensity and at the same time the smallness of this Divine Mystery – the mystery of Emmanuel, “God with us”?
The Christmas Event is not something to grasp intellectually – you can’t get your mind around it. This mystery is to be experienced; and the experience often is reflected in the creative work of artists: music, sculpture, poetry, film, novels and dramas, etc.
Find the mystery in an expression that works for you.
When I was in my junior and senior year at the college seminary it was the practice that students go to confession if not weekly, then every two weeks. Priests from neighboring parishes and institutions came on Tuesday afternoon to serve as confessors and spiritual directors to the seminarians. I was assigned to go to confession at the confessional on the first floor of Loras Residence. The priest confessor was the Headmaster of Saint Thomas Academy, Father John Roach – later to become our Archbishop. At the beginning of Advent 1962, he urged me to read Mr. Blue, by Miles Connolly. It is the story of a simple, loving, counter-cultural man who lives graciously, gives whatever he has to others and ultimately saves the life of another by offering his own. Father Roach told me that Mr. Blue was a ‘Christ-figure” and that the story is an unexpected insight into the Divine Mystery of the Christmas Feast. He assured me that he read the story every year and found it always inspiring.
I received that advice 60 years ago, the fall of 1962. For the past 60 years part of my preparation for the Christmas Season each year has been to read Mr. Blue.
I encourage you to find a creative piece of human wonder and imagination that speaks to you of the Divine Mystery.
Christmas expresses the longing hunger for God, and so it is with joy that I wish you and yours a blessed and gracious Christmas.
Father Steve Adrian
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