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Winter 2009, Vol. 24, No. 2

Rejoice! You are Highly Favored

David J. Centner, OCD

Father Dave, former editor of Carmelite Digest, works in Washington D.C. on the staff of

Spiritual Life. He is also teaches Carmelite spirituality at the Washington Theological Union.

Christmastime announces peace on earth and joy, and often it brings stress in its train. Instead of refreshing us physically and spiritually, the holidays sometimes exhaust us to the point where we need a winter vacation to recover. It was not always so. In the Mediterranean world where our faith began, the fields turned fallow toward the end of the year as the sun’s circuit dipped deeply below the horizon. The long evenings and days with little field work urged rest and recreation on the people. And the yearly cycle of diminishing length of day followed by a “return” of the sun naturally reminded people of faith that Christ is the Light of the world. The Church made use of this fallow time to celebrate a season known as the Coming. This is a word our language left in its Latin garb so that we still call it Advent. The prayers and offices of the liturgy of the Roman Rite sing with an austere yet unmistakable joy. Though violet may be the color of the season, it is not the mournful violet of Lent. Rather it seems as if the Church has caught the blue-violet tones of the late autumn sky and wrapped us in faith’s cloak against the chill of the world.

We don’t notice the sun-slanting blue of the sky or take very much notice of the chill. Our brilliantly lit and snugly warm houses insulate us from the natural mood of the season. When we step outside in the lowering evening and let our senses come alive to the change in seasons, a different mood comes upon us. If we would but follow nature’s lead, we might pause in our busy lives, hug our cloak of faith more closely to us, and let our awareness turn inward to mysteries beyond telling. Jesus has come. Jesus will come. But most of all, he is present within us; and we bear him to the world. The Word of God came in the flesh. Et incarnatus est de Maria Virgine, et homo factus est. Our ICEL translation of these words of the Creed—“He was born of the Virgin Mary”—barely hint at the mystery we celebrate. One of the earliest pages of the New Testament intimates it in the simple phrase “born of a woman” (Gal 4:4), that Jesus is truly one of us. The Creed text, however, owes more to the later glorious prologue of the Gospel according to John. The Word was made flesh and became man. He remained God and became what he was not. And in so doing, he took our nature as his own. The Greek fathers saw in this the beginning of our deification.

The line that God the Father traces that leads from the Incarnation to our full entry into our heritage as children of God, when we shall be “God by Participation,” often vanishes from view. We wander in faith like wayfarers crossing mountains. As the vista changes, the road drops out of sight. At times, we push through forest, scarcely able to distinguish the trail; or we clamber over scree that obliterates the paths of those who have gone before us. Our life in faith becomes a spiritual scavenger hunt and our path a connect-the-dots route from feast day to feast day. Fatigued by the journey of life, we may complain or feel cheated—“Is this all there is?” Life reminds us that we are fragile earthen vessels, and how easily we forget the treasure we bear within (2 Cor 4:7). We need to remember and to give thanks.

The Church carries a memory for us in the Scriptures. When the words and deeds of God are proclaimed to us, we do not simply hear “salvation history” as if it were another academic discipline, like the history of the settling of the U.S. West. Rather, like Mary in the Gospel of Luke, we ponder on all these words and meditate on them in our hearts. They become our memory. Many of us can recall events in our early childhood. Though we may be sure that we experienced them, in some cases we only heard about them. But the telling of them left so vivid an impression that what was someone else’s memory became our own.

When the Church proclaims the Scriptures, it draws us into Jesus’ own memory. St. Paul tells us: “But we have the mind of Christ” (I Cor 2:16). In John’s Gospel, Jesus himself teaches us: “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you” (Jn 14:26). In remembering the words and deeds of God that reach their culmination in Jesus, we share in the mysteries that they reveal. God does for us now what he is doing in Jesus in glorifying him. There, seated at the right hand of the Father, he brings us with him and holds us in the eternal, life-giving “yes” of the God who creates and redeems us (2 Cor 1:20). This is why, for example, when we celebrate the Eucharist in memory of Jesus, we do not simply remember him; he renews in us and with us his offering of himself to the Father. And our Advent memories—our memories of the Coming—what are we to make of them? “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children” (Gal 4:4-5). Let us enter into the fullness of time and into the moment when God gave everything he has to give.

Luke tells us: “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary” (Lk 1:26-27). Our usual translations of the Annunciation story, as enshrined in the Angelus and the Hail Mary, hardly do justice to Luke’s sublime Greek text. Our versions are tied too closely to the more prosaic Latin, which once was the vernacular of the Western Church. We hear the Angel say “Hail, full of grace.” It repeats the polite Roman greeting: Ave. (And, though inaccurate, we love that word, for Ave is a palindrome of Eve; and Mary is the mother of all who live in Christ.)

(Note: Have you enjoyed reading this excerpt of the article by Fr. Dave Centner? You may obtain the entire article on “Rejoice! You Are Highly Favored” by ordering a copy of the Winter 2009, Volume 24, No. 4 issue of Carmelite Digest.)

Winter 2009, Vol. 24, No. 4 Table of Contents:

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