advent SERIES 2024
Mystical nativity, Sandro Botticelli
EVERYDAY MYSTICISM
Mystery is mysterious. It is! Sometimes it comes in stillness when you’re alone. Sometimes it comes without drama and fanfare. Sometimes it comes as an epiphany, an awakening. And sometimes, it comes while you’re practicing the gifts of the Spirit. - Barbara Holmes
God abides in men, because Christ has put on the nature of a man, like a garment, and worn it to its own shape. He has put on everyone’ life…to the workman’s clothes to the King’s red robes, to the snowy loveliness of the wedding garment…Christ has put on Man’s nature, and given him back his humanness - From Flowering Tree, Caryll Houselander
We seldom notice how each day is a holy place/Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens/Transforming broken fragments/ Into an eternal continuity that keeps us - John O’Donohue (The Eucharist of the ordinary)
Mystical conversation, Odilon Redon
Introduction
The advent narrative exudes a variety of hues of mystery. Mystery may appear to us clothed in differing garments such as:
Stillness - Zechariah going about his duties/business, Mary interrupted by Gabriel
Drama and fanfare (and not!) - Angels appearing to shepherds, wise men bearing gifts. Childbirth and paying taxes.
Epiphany and awakening - the birth of Jesus, the echo from John in Elizabeth’s womb.
When practicing the gifts of the Spirit - Joseph’s dreams, Mary’s song.
Lives are interrupted, lives are intersected. Lives are snapped into action, lives are melded with the divine. The mystery of God is Christ, offers Paul in the book of Colossians, and further, the mystery is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Incarnation following incarnation.
We are sharers together in the promise in Christ, which is colour, joy and peace. Sharers here and now for Christ comes to each of us disguised as our lives*. Jesus wears our everyday life, inhabits it, delights in moving around in it and inspires it. Our nature is worn by him and our humanness is celebrated and healed.
John of the Cross writes of being seized by the same delight that is in God, being caught in God’s great being, and breathing God’s same air (Richard Rohr). He became what we are so that we might become what he is.^ And we become more like our true and bright selves.
Andrew Hook
Different authors will contribute to this series, one per each week in Advent, on the topics of Stillness, Drama and fanfare, Epiphany and awakening and When practicing the gifts of the Spirit.
*Paula D’Arcy ^ Irenaeus of Lyons
