2013-12-20       Des O'Donnell OMI               Previous articles by Des

(Comments welcome here)

My thoughts - Christmas 2013

Over the past few years, I have been stretching my mind with the new cosmology, which is moving horizons still farther away from our little universe, back to the big bang and forward to we don’t know where. The more I read, the more I sit in wonder, and prayerful awe, when I discover that our earth is an infinitesmal fragment, rotating on its own axis at 17 miles a second, circling an obscure star call the sun, in one of 1,000 billion galaxies scattered throughout a universe which may be one in many others. And we exist on the knife edge of probability. I thank God that I have lived to gasp before this great mystery.

Then we believers are immersed in the still greater mystery of the Incarnation, that just 2000 years ago of 15 billion, God has stepped into our almost invisible dot in the expanding universe. I find myself joining Professor Fredrick Crews to wonder ‘Why, we must ask, would the shaper of the universe have frittered away 15 billion years, turning out quadrillions of useless stars, before getting around to the one thing he really cared about – seeing to it that a miniscule minority of earthling vertebrates are washed clean of sin and guaranteed an eternal place in his company ?’ The beauty of the Christmas crib can no longer hold it all for me. I find myself gasping before ‘the mystery of God’ and the ‘mystery of Christ’ like Paul in Colossians. May you continue your journey into this mystery during Christmas 2013.

The ecclesial explosion called Pope Francis has revived my sagging adhesion to Rome, as he speaks about, writes about and witnesses to, ‘the joy of the Gospel’. He is an unambiguous follower of Jesus, and perhaps without knowing it, of Carl Jung’s advice, ‘The churches are too concerned with bolstering themselves as mass movements, and are insufficiently attentive to their real task of helping the individual achieve metanoia – the rebirth of the Spirit’. Francis is a modern Christmas to the confused world, and his massive mention on Facebook proves it.

May our 2013 Christmas lead to a renewed and perhaps a transformed faith in the God who ‘emptied himself’ into our tiny human planet.

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