THE INCARNATION MILESTONE: God needs help.

Blessings, Praise, and Honor be unto Him that sits upon the Throne, Forever and Forever.

May we all wait in the presence of the Lord until He comes again in glory.  We are each different in how we approach our Lay Cistercian lives, but one in Christ Jesus. Christmas is not just a season, like commercial Santa Clause, but an ongoing reality that shapes how we each approach the unapproachable in humility, asking only that we be permitted to wait before the Lord, sitting at His feet to learn. Waiting means abandoning all my human impediments to God, whose only language is the silence in our hearts, thus collectively in the Church Universal. 

The Incarnation is one of many moments in the Christ Principle, but one that brings humans in to help God become human. Christ, the Mystic Hero, needed help to fulfill the will of the Father and the mission of Jesus on earth. In keeping with this theme, Mary helped God for all humanity; the Apostles helped Jesus, with the Holy Spirit, to sustain His Real Presence in each age with the message of Hope. The Church is this message of Hope and Love in each age. I use the unbroken Faith, Love, and Service reserved for me as a living presence in Eucharistic and Eucharistic Adoration. I always seek to grow deeper, consistent with my intelligent progression in complexity and consciousness. Life never stops. That is a clue about who God is, or as St. Thomas Aquinas would say, “Who God isn’t.”) Mary gave me an example of how I must approach the sacred.

If Mary were God, a divine being, as some claim, there would be no Incarnation because she was the archetype of Eve, the mother of humanity, not present in physical evolution. It was precisely because Mary was only human that humanity could, for the first time, be part of the ongoing intelligent progression that God had intended when creation put God’s fingerprints on each atom and molecule. 

Mary, the first disciple, the first human, said Yes to God when asked to be the instrument that ushered in a new paradigm. Mary changed the time but did not alter it. Because of her “Let it be done to me according to your word,” a dimension of time opened up to humans that was not there before. Before that profession of humility that she, the individual, made to the invitation of the Holy Spirit, she was the first human asked to help God the Almighty, and, not knowing the full extent of what would transpire, she said, “Let it be.” 

Now, humans have access to two dimensions of time. Chronos, or physical time of nature and what we know as human time, and Christos, the possibility of being an adopted son or daughter of the Father. This new time is unlike the automatic Chronos; our base of human existence depends on how I, the individual, become aware of the purpose of Christ’s birth and how I can take it into myself (within the time frame allotted to me). I must be both Chronos and Christos to use my human reasoning and free choice to be open to the ontic possibility of the manifest ability to know, love, and serve others because of what God the Son did for me (us): Deuteronomy 6:5 and Matthew 22:36.  

As a Lay Cistercian (certainly not limited to Cistercian spirituality, but guided and emboldened by its concepts of silence, solitude, prayer, work, and community), I am reduced by the progression that all my race must accept as reality that I must be born and then die. But something is different because of my Baptism, something I have only learned to appreciate later in life. All the Sacraments that I thought were routine and routed my mind with ordinary Chronos experiences were Chronos PLUS Christos, the two citizenships afforded me by my Baptism and Confirmation, sustained through my Eucharistic and Penitential practices to remain humble in the face of the degeneration of Orignal Sin.  All of this reduced to simply sitting in the presence of Christ and asking the Holy Spirit to overshadow me with that same energy afforded to Mary. I wait now for the Lord until He comes again in glory, in the Real Presence of the one I love, sitting next to Christ and just waiting for the whispers of God to be heard by my stillness, solitude, silence, abandonment, and my conversion of my Chronos to my Christos.

The product of my interaction with the Pure Energy of God is a renewal and realignment of my Chronos to fit my Christos. I wait with my life experiences to sit in the presence of Christ and long to listen to his heartbeat so that I can sync my heartbeat to His. Mary did this, and I am bid to do so also so I can receive the knowledge, love, and truth that fulfills the deepest level of what it means to be human, to experience love that knows no end and is the product of peace that Chronos cannot give. From his knowledge and love, which comes from God, I take it into myself as I am capable (capacitas dei) and only seek to be present to Christ daily as Chronos and Christos. Truth, Energy, Time, and Love are the crosscutting constants that bind us with the Divine Nature, albeit as adopted sons and daughters. Our heaven, the reward of taking up our cross each day and walking the path of righteousness, is what we take with us to Heaven after our mortal bodies (Chronos) and dust, and into that dust we have returned. 

Praise to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who will come at the end of the ages. –Cistercian doxology.

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