THOUGHTS TO PONDER

‘COME, SEE THE OXEN KNEEL….’

By the end of this month we will have begun another liturgical year, with the arrival of Advent Sunday and the anticipation of the Incarnation and the Christmas season.  Assuming there was a summer this year (for it rained for six days out of seven on my ’summer’ holiday on the Isle of Raasay!), as I watch the season in nature change from summer to autumn, with its golds, reds, and yellows I’m realising that the Church year in many ways mirrors the changes.  Soon the clocks will ‘Fall’ back, and we will begin to move towards the darkest time of our year, and the shortest day….

Advent in many ways parallels the season of Lent. Both are times of preparation for that which is not yet but still to come, the coming of the Incarnate Christ as foretold by the prophets, especially Isaiah, - and later the great celebration of the new life of Christ at Easter.  During both seasons we are invited to a time of preparation, to reflect on our faith, and to discern what difference it makes or could make in our lives, by dying to what is superficial or life-denying and embracing the costly call to become more fully human.  I like the Jewish theologian Martin Buber’s insight: ‘Freedom is not worn like a cockade, it is borne like a cross.’

And so, at the darkest time of year we look forward to the light.  We prepare for the breaking into human life of inexpressible brightness.  Stories abound.  Some of them surely attempt to symbolise the Good News sweeping through first century Palestine, all signifying that something had impacted on the stage of human history which was to change it for ever.

I don’t like the fact that shops were displaying Christmas trees and chocolate Santas early in October.  I don’t like knowing that the season becomes increasingly commercialised each year.  But before I begin to sound like a female incarnation of Scrooge, let me add that I do like the sense of growing expectation, the chance to renew friendships, and maintain contacts with friends from other places.  I do like the generosity shown towards those for whom Christmas is just another day’s struggle. I do like the carol-singing (OK- and the mince pies which usually follow!), and all the times of celebration to which this community is much given!  Most of all I like that the world tends to become a little kinder, and we all – if we’re fortunate enough to have kept alive ‘the child within’- have another opportunity to revisit the stable and in wonder and awe ask ourselves once again:

’Who is he in yonder stall,

At whose feet the oxen fall?’

Mary McMahon