13 January: now you see him.

Mrs Turnstone, whose birthday this is, loves the fact that on 13 January the sun is visible in Greenland for the first time since the winter’s darkness took over. Let’s pray that we might be ready to observe the light we are given and to rejoice this day and every day.

And Happy Birthday to Mrs Turnstone!

Advertisement

20 December, Advent Light XX: a slow motion dawn.

Margate Beach on a Grey Day

Fr Tom Herbst OFM, an early supporter and contributor to this blog, died on 8 November. Here is one of his Advent reflections, well worth reading again and appropriate for the Solstice. RIP, Fr Tom, and thank you!

Here, well up there in the Northern Hemisphere, the approach of the Church’s great winter feasts is met by ever shortening days, grayish sunsets subtly shaded with pastel colour, and the gathering shadows of storm-rattled darkness. Even now, as I look out from the giant bay window in my flat toward a slate gray sea, it feels like a slow motion dawn rather than what the clock prosaically states is high noon. And the Church, in her time-tested wisdom, has properly situated the purple cloaked season of waiting and hoping within a test mirrored by nature herself- will the Son of Man ever return; will I ever witness the eastern blaze of a 5:00 AM springtime dawn seen through the very same bay window now shrouded in a feeble mist? One can hope, but for now all I can do is walk my two bemused dogs in the bookended darkness of a seven o’clock dawn and four thirty afternoon sunset.

I have had critics of the Church, harboring grave suspicions of pagan flashbacks, point out the total lack of biblical witness for the date of Christ’s birth, the unlikely probability of shepherds out in the fields in the dead of winter and, far worse, the close congruence of the decadent Roman Saturnalia with the newly minted Feast of the Nativity. Shopping frenzy beginning at mid-November and a near-universal expansion of waistlines don’t help- as a kindly Jehovah’s Witness picture framer said once, utterly confident that I would agree. It seems, though, as if the whole point has been missed. It is the ritual celebration of Christ’s birth and the expectation of God’s promise fulfilled – born of an indestructible hope- that are being celebrated and the vast stage of nature herself hosts the drama. Yes, the shortening days followed by the magic threshold of the Solstice, when that longed for flicker of light begins to wax stronger, formed the reason for the Saturnalia but this has been embodied by the small child laid in a manger; the hope for Emmanuel realized at last.

TJH.

13 December, Advent Light XIII: The bell strikes one.

The bell strikes one. We take no note of time 
But from its loss. To give it then a tongue 
Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke, 
I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright,
 It is the knell of my departed hours: Where are they? 
With the years beyond the flood.  
It is the signal that demands despatch: 
How much is to be done? My hopes and fears 
Start up alarm’d, and o’er life’s narrow verge 
Look down—on what? a fathomless abyss; 
A dread eternity! how surely mine! 
And can eternity belong to me, 
Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour? 


How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, 
How complicate, how wonderful, is man! 
How passing wonder He who made him such!  
Who centred in our make such strange extremes! 
From different natures marvellously mix’d, 
Connexion exquisite of distant worlds! 
Distinguish’d link in being’s endless chain! 
Midway from nothing to the Deity!" 

From "Night Thoughts" by Edward Young.


Edward Young was a contemporary of Samuel Johnson so did not know the mixed blessing of electric lighting! George Gilfillan, his editor of 1853, described,'his lonely lamp shining at midnight, like a star, through the darkness, and seeming to answer the far signal of those mightier luminaries which are burning above in the Great Bear and Orion.' Surely he had a few sleepless nights. We can turn to Saint Paul for further comment.

5 But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.

 But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him. (1 Thessalonians 5:2-10)