Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Decem­ber 21, 2008

Sunday of the Fourth week in Advent
Lectionary: 11
Rev. Lar­ry Gillick, SJ

PRE-PRAYER­ING

Find­ing presents to give is a great adven­ture, if you love the one to whom you will give the gift. The degree of dif­fi­cul­ty depends on the depth of love. A gift for the mail­man or busi­ness asso­ciate is no prob­lem. When we get down the list to fam­i­ly mem­bers and then those who are so close to our hearts we don’t know where they begin and we end, well that is more than a problem.

Gifts are expres­sions of a kind of pover­ty. The greater the love, the less the gift says it. The greater the love, the longer one looks for and can nev­er find. The greater the love, the more imper­fect the gift and accom­pa­ny­ing card can say.

These last few days of Advent we can pray while mak­ing lists and check­ing them twice find out whose more than nice. We can pray with the pover­ty of our ges­tures of love and smile at the impos­si­bil­i­ty of our being God. This Thurs­day, the Feast of the Nativ­i­ty of the Divine Gift, we will cel­e­brate the Per­fect Gift Whom the Giv­er gives again and the Gift does say it all. We can pray with our being the recip­i­ents of that Love wrapped in pover­ty bun­dled in abun­dance. We can pray as well with the recep­tion of love expressed in cards, emails, notes and smiles which are lit­tle sacra­ments prepar­ing us to be more recep­tive with­in our own stables.

REFLEC­TION

King David has a bit of a “hous­ing cri­sis” in today’s First Read­ing. He is back from the wars, liv­ing in lux­u­ry while the “Ark of God’ is in a portable con­tain­er. David has returned the Ark to Jerusalem in a great pro­ces­sion as relat­ed in the pre­vi­ous chap­ter from which our read­ing is tak­en. Jerusalem is now the Holy city because of this presence.

David begins think­ing that a tem­ple ought to be built express­ing this holy pres­ence. Nathan, David’s “pri­vate-eye”, receives a mes­sage from the Lord. We hear what Nathan heard from God.

There is a sig­nif­i­cant word-play or dou­ble-mean­ing embed­ded in this read­ing. David talks about “house” in terms of build­ing and the Lord speaks of “house” in terms of “descen­dants” of David. God scoffs at the pover­ty of David to build a place; God is not local­ized. There is a prophet­ic twist then, the “House of David” the fam­i­ly line will bring forth a spe­cial per­son­al pres­ence. “When David comes to die God “will raise up your heir after you, sprung from your loins and I will make his king­dom firm. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. The “house” then is to be the fam­i­ly down through the ages until this spe­cial per­son (the Mes­si­ah) takes up res­i­dence in the world and forms us into His House.

The Gospel is famil­iar to us. Jesus takes a flesh­ly posi­tion in favor of Mary and as a favor for us. Mary has a most human response; she is trou­bled and fright­ened. As with most of the “call nar­ra­tives” in scrip­ture, Mary has the per­fect excuse in response to the invi­ta­tion to be a moth­er. She is not mar­ried. The vis­i­tor has the per­fect solu­tion around her excuse. God will do some­thing that involves faith. She is aid­ed by a preg­nant bit of news that her cousin, who her­self is advanced in age, is going to have a child as well. Mary’s response to all this is a kind of, “Well, if Eliz­a­beth can then so can I, by the favor of God.”

The mes­sen­ger shares with Mary the name and mis­sion of this child-to-be. We hear that He will be from the “House of David”. He will be “Joshua” or “He Who Saves”. His king­dom will nev­er end, which ful­fills the proph­esy of Nathan in our First Read­ing. The stage is set then. All the ancient prophet­ic roads lead direct­ly to Nazareth.

I would say that hav­ing a vis­it from an angel with high praise for her and an exact part to play would make it some­what easy to decide to go along with the pro­gram. WE all have had expe­ri­ences of hav­ing to make deci­sions angel­i­cal­ly-unaid­ed. WE get sens­es or lit­tle urg­ings to move on down the road of faith and we won­der why Mary gets lots of cred­it, but are not our faith-jumps even more of trust. WE do move though and it is this life-walk, faith-leap that allows for the angels’ visits.

Mary went to vis­it Eliz­a­beth after Mary had agreed, sub­mit­ted, respond­ed or sim­ply believed. She took the road home and then in time took the road to Beth­le­hem where there were angels again and she heard about them from the shep­herds. All the time Mary was pon­der­ing, lis­ten­ing, reflect­ing, dis­cern­ing not only what had been said months before, but what was being offered, revealed, giv­en, and cre­at­ed for her and through her.

This is our pat­tern as well. Dis­cern­ment does not lead to deci­sion, that is only the begin­ning. The God Who calls is faith­ful and so we are invit­ed to pon­der, reflect and sense, as the road unfolds before our feet or wheels. There are “angel-moments” which are real, but not winged and feath­ery. They are faith-charged with a glim­mer of light which indi­cates and urges gently.

I would like some kind of God-o-gram reas­sur­ing me that I am doing God’s Will by being a Jesuit priest in Oma­ha, at Creighton Uni­ver­si­ty and the this-and-that’s of my life are, well what is best, what­ev­er that means. There are lit­tle “angel-moments”; I want bing-bang big­gos though. The whole prob­lem for me and us and was even for Mary, is that we want cer­tain­ty, “Gabriel-moments” and more than once. We want map-quest clar­i­ty and GPS guid­ance and then call that jour­ney, FAITH. David want­ed to build a house for God. God want­ed to build a house among us and did so by enter­ing the house of Mary, tak­ing up res­i­dence in the house of her womb, and now pitch­es His Tent among us as we walk the road of watching.

“The vir­gin is with child and shall bear a son, and she will call him Emmanuel.” Is. 7, 14

Rev. Lar­ry Gillick, SJ

Direc­tor of the Deglman Cen­ter for Igna­t­ian Spirituality

I entered the Soci­ety of Jesus in 1960, after grad­u­at­ing from Mar­quette Uni­ver­si­ty High School in Mil­wau­kee, Wis­con­sin and attend­ing St. Nor­bert Col­lege for two years.  I was ordained in 1972 after com­plet­ing the­o­log­i­cal stud­ies at the Toron­to School of The­ol­o­gy, Reg­is Col­lege.  I present­ly min­is­ter in the Deglman Cen­ter for Igna­t­ian Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty at Creighton and give retreats. 

I enjoy shar­ing thoughts on the Dai­ly Reflec­tions.  It is a chance to share with a wide vari­ety of peo­ple in the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty expe­ri­ences of prayer and life which have been giv­en to me.  It is a bit like being in more places than just here.  We actu­al­ly get out there with­out hav­ing to pay air­lines to do it.  The word of God is alive and well.