Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 8 December 2019

Second Sunday in Advent

There is a real fascination with ancestry at the moment, people look into the history of their forebears for all kinds of reasons, but it all adds up to a keen search for our meaning and place in a very 'busy' world! If you ever get given one of those DNA ancestry kits, take the test, whilst it cannot give you exact names and dates, it does give some interesting surprises, in one way it can break down prejudice because what we often see if that some of our many ancestors were very different people to ourselves, often coming from places we do not expect, and yet they belong to us, who we are is a product of their ancient family life.

Ancestry, family, is something that the scriptures give to us for Jesus, particularly through his mother Mary's lineage. This is a very strong way of calculating parentage and ancestry, for a maternal line gives us a direct and solid link down the generations. I'm quite lucky because a French cousin has done a huge amount or research into our own French family ancestry, but mainly through the maternal side, so I can trace a matrilineal descent through all my 'mothers' roughly down to the 15th century. This gives me a deep rootedness in the Jura region of France, a bond to that place that is more than simply love of the countryside, it is about belonging, yearning for home, what the Welsh call hiraeth! That is partly what Isaiah does for us through Jesus' maternal ancestry!

Not all of us have been given that gift of knowing so much of our personal history, but we all understand that in some way, human and created life are bound up together, not necessarily in a common 'mother', but in the heart and mind and love of the Creator of all who is both 'mother' and 'father'. That is why Isaiah's prophecy of the Jesse tree, the saviour springing from the 'root of Jesse', has an eschatological quality, the ancestry of Christ has a strong lineage in human life, but it also part of divine life and takes us there through our 'adoption' as sisters and brothers of Jesus!

For in truth, Christ takes human life deep into our real origins as children of Adam and Eve, those friends of God, who were brought into life from 'dust', but who also shared that life with creation in all its richness. Isaiah reminds us in that this time of great concern for the future of all who live on our Planet, we cannot isolate ourselves from anything, we are all in this together! The vision of our true home, is of a community at peace and harmony with itself!

We must bow our heads in contrition for harming this creation, and in this Advent, pledge ourselves to try and restore this divine harmony, now and in the age to come! Let Isaiah's cadences etch themselves on our hearts and minds:

'Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the young lion shall browse together,
with a little child to guide them.
The cow and the bear shall be neighbours,
together their young shall rest;
the lion shall eat hay like the ox.
The baby shall play by the cobra's den,
and the child lay his hand on the adder's lair.
There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the LORD' (Is II: 6-9)

Amen, so be it!

Meditation:

A Spotless Rose

A spotless Rose is blowing,
Sprung from a tender root,
Of ancient seers' foreshowing,
Of Jesse promised fruit;
Its fairest bud unfolds yo light
Amid the cold, cold winter,
and in the dark mid-night.

The Rose which I am singing,
Whereof Isaiah said,
Is from its sweet root springing
In Mary, purest Maid;
For through our God's great love and might
The Blessed Babe she bare
In a cold, cold winter's night.

Words 14th Century

Advent, a poem by Thomas Merton

Charm with your stainlessness these winter nights,
Skies, and be perfect!
Fly vivider in the fiery dark, you quiet meteors,
And disappear.
You moon, be low to go down,
This is your full!

The four white roads make off in silence
Towards the four parts of the starry universe.
Time falls like manna at the corners of the wintry earth.
We have become more humble than the rocks,
More wakeful than the patient hills.

Charm with your stainlessness these nights in Advent, holy spheres,
While minds, as meek as beasts,
Stay close at home in the sweet hay;
And intellects are quieter than the flocks that feed by starlight.

Oh pour your darkness and your brightness over all our solemn valleys,
You skies: and travel like the gentle Virgin,
Toward the planets' stately setting,
Oh white full moon as quiet as Bethlehem!