5th Sunday of Lent (A)

Dhikr for the 5th Sunday of Lent (A): The Raising of Lazarus

Text: And when Jesus had said this, he cried out in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" (John 11: 43)

Meditation: The drama of raising Lazarus from the dead confronts us anew of the same question asked of Marta and Mary… "I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

1st step: Write the text or Dhikr (the Arabic word for REMEMBRANCE) in your heart.
2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...
3rd step: Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

Falling Upward

FALLING UPWARD

The soul has many secrets. They are only revealed to those who want them, and are never completely forced upon us. One of the best-kept secrets, and yet one hidden in plain sight, is that the way up is the way down. Or, if you prefer, the way down is the way up….

In Scripture, we see that the wrestling and wounding of Jacob are necessary for Jacob to become Israel (Genesis 32:26-32), and the death and resurrection of Jesus are necessary to create Christianity. The loss and renewal pattern is so constant and ubiquitous that it should hardly be called a secret at all.

Yet it is still a secret, probably because we do not want to see it. We do not want to embark on a further journey [the second half of life] if it feels like going down, especially after having put so much sound and fury into going up [the first half of life]. This is surely the first and primary reason why many people never get to the fullness of their own lives.

(From Richard Rohr, OFM's Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life pp. xviii-xix)

God's Presence

When we go into the Presence, we find someone not against us, but someone who is definitely for us! The saints report, “Someone else is holding me.” “Someone is believing in me.” That’s what people who pray always say. “Someone is for me more than I am for myself.” “Someone is with me more than I am with myself.” Meister Eckhart, the medieval Dominican mystic (c. 1260-1327) says, “God is closer to me than I am to myself.” The great ones are in agreement: the mystical Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Hindus—at that level the language is the same. God is a lover.

Prayer is being loved at a deep, sweet level. I hope you have felt such intimacy alone with God. I promise it is available to you. Maybe a lot of us just need to be told that it is what we should expect and seek. We’re afraid to ask for it; we’re afraid to seek. It feels presumptuous. We can’t trust that such a love exists. But it does!

(From Everything Belongs, pp. 134-135)

4th Sunday in Lent (A)

Dhikr for the 4th Sunday of Lent (A): The Blind Man of Siloam

Text: Then Jesus said, "I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind." (John 9: 39)

Meditation: Jesus Christ becomes the lens for seeing and not seeing… Through him we do see/not see the poor, the needy, and the injustice and the wrong against neighbors. Lent is a season for seeing…


DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

1st step: Write the text or Dhikr (the Arabic word for REMEMBRANCE) in your heart.
2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...
3rd step: Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

A Quest for God and Identity...

We can begin to understand the bigger story we are a part of when we engage with the unique Christian sense of time, process, and journey. This perception is presented beautifully in the Grail quest; it’s the story of a young man searching for God and himself. Through ongoing trials and temptations, the young man pushes toward God, almost without knowing it. God leads him forward through family, failure, violence, visitors, betrayal, sexuality, nature, shadow, and vision. God comes to him “disguised as his life” [as Paula D’Arcy likes to say].

Everything on this journey is necessary and grace-filled. For the man on the quest, the universe becomes enchanting—an effect that good religion accomplishes. There are no dead ends, no wasted time, no useless characters or meaningless happenings. All has meaning, and God is in all things waiting to speak and to bless. Everything belongs once we are on our real quest and asking the right questions.

(Adapted from Richard Rohr's On the Threshold of Transformation, p. 9, day 7)

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Dhikr for the 3rd Sunday of Lent (A): The Samaritan Woman

Text: "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." (John 4: 13-14)

Meditation: We have drunk of the well of Jesus… We shall never be thirsty again and that water in us will become a spring welling up to eternal life!

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

1st step: Write the text or Dhikr (the Arabic word for REMEMBRANCE) in your heart.
2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...
3rd step: Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

Grace is Everywhere

According to a certain theology, when we sin we are punished, and when we are good we are rewarded. This makes sense. But it isn’t what the sages, saints, or Scriptures tell us about God. This “theology” is designed to urge us to save ourselves, and unfortunately this is the theology that many people live by: we get back as good as we give to God. This means that our salvation depends totally on us and on our ability to become perfect, or at least good. Thank God, it’s not true.

This is not what Jesus teaches us. It’s much truer to say that our weakness and brokenness bring us to God—exactly the opposite of what most of us believe. It can take a lifetime, even with grace, to accept such a paradox. Grace creates the very emptiness that grace alone can fill.

St. Paul stated this with elegant concision: “’For power is made perfect in weakness.’. . . For whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

Adapted from Richard Rohr, OFM's On the Threshold of Transformation, p. 235, day 226

2nd Sunday of Lent (A)

Dhikr for the 2nd Sunday of Lent (A): Jesus is transfigured!

Text: “And he was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, conversing with him.’ (Matthew 17: 2-3)

Meditation: In the following of Jesus, we, too, are called to be transfigured… NOT as dramatic as Jesus… but equally true – lives transformed unto the image and likeness of God!


DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

1st step: Write the text or Dhikr (the Arabic word for REMEMBRANCE) in your heart.
2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...
3rd step: Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

9th Sunday inOrdinary Time (A)

Dhikr for the 9th Sunday in the Ordinary Time (A)

Text: Jesus said to his disciples: ‘not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father in heaven’. (Mt. 7: 21)

Meditation: Our deeds proclaim our values! We build life on rock meaning to base life and hope on things that are solid, and enduring. We build our house on values and things that will not be carried away with the winds of the times.

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

1st step: Write the text or Dhikr (the Arabic word for REMEMBRANCE) in your heart.
2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...
3rd step: Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

An Invitation to a further journey...

No one goes into their spiritual maturity completely of their own accord, or by a totally free choice. We are led by Mystery, which religious people rightly call grace. Most of us have to be cajoled, seduced, or fall into it by some kind of “transgression,” believe it or not, like Jacob finding his birthright through cunning, and Esau losing his by failure (Genesis 27).

If one walks the full and entire journey, such people are considered “called” or “chosen” in the Bible, perhaps “fated” or “destined” in world mythology and literature. But always they are the ones who have heard some deep invitation to “something more,” and who have set out to find it by both grace and daring. Most get little reassurance from others, or even have full confidence that they are totally right. Setting out is always a leap of faith, a risk in the deepest sense of the term, and yet an adventure, too.

(From Richard Rohr, OFM. Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, pp. xvii, xviii, xix)

8th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Dhikr for the 8th Sunday in the Ordinary Time (A)

Text: "Consider the sparrow, they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds. Consider the lilies how they grow, they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these" (Mt. 6: 27-28).

Meditation: If God takes such care of the birds in the air, and ensures their feeding, and sees to it that the lilies of the field are magnificently adorned, how much more then will our heavenly Father take pains to see that the disciples shall not go wanting, since they are more precious in the divine sight than the birds of air and the flowers of the field?


DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

1st step: Write the text or Dhikr (the Arabic word for REMEMBRANCE) in your heart.
2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...
3rd step: Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Dhikr for the 6th Sunday in the Ordinary Time (A)

Text: "You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, 'You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.' But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment" (Matthew 5:21-22).


Meditation: The Christian disciple consists in the victory over anger, resentment and ill will. The challenge is to go beyond the prescription of the letters of the law, among which is that of not killing.


DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

1st step: Write the text or Dhikr (the Arabic word for REMEMBRANCE) in your heart.
2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...
3rd step: Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

Exodus of Southern Sudanese affects the Catholic Church in the north

By Elario Zambakari

1st February 2011, on the eve of the just concluded Southern Sudan Referendum, thousands and thousands of the internal displaced southern Sudanese who were here in Khartoum and the other big cities in the north started going back to the south.
North Sudan has only two Catholic Dioceses: Khartoum archdiocese and El Obeid. Most of the Christians in these dioceses are southerners and now with the exodus to the south one can tell from the attendance during Sunday masses how Khartoum archdiocese will be without these Christians.

Some of the parishes have been closed due to the fact that the Christians are no longer there. According to Fr. George Gangara, the education secretary of the archdiocese of Khartoum some of the Catholic schools are already closed due to the fact that the students have gone back to the south.

The archdiocese had opened many primary and secondary schools for the internally displaced persons who came from the south with the war had intensified in that region in the early 1990s.

Nearly all the diocesan priests of Khartoum are southerners. Khartoum being the place where Daniel Comboni died, there are more less 30 different Missionary congregations of Priests, Sisters and brothers.

The results from the referendum held from 9-15 January were published on 30 January. The announcement was made from Juba, capital of the future State and based on examination of 100% of votes, 98.83% of the nearly 4,000,000 voters wanted independence.

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Dhikr for the 4th Sunday in the ordinary time (A)

Text: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3)

Meditation: The Beatitudes, strangely enough, remind us of the real keys to happiness… Yes, BLESSED are the poor; those who mourn; the meek; they who thirst for righteousness; the merciful; the clean of heart; the peacemakers; and they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness… they have the kingdom of God!

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

1st step: Write the text or Dhikr (the Arabic word for REMEMBRANCE) in your heart.
2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...
3rd step: Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

Results of the South Sudan Independence Referendum

Sudan 1/22/11
South Sudan people vote for independence

Sudan, - With most votes counted in Southern Sudan's referendum, 99% of people have opted for independence from the north, officials say.

Official results are due next month but correspondents say the outcome of the week-long poll is not in doubt.

However, the former rebels now running oil-rich Southern Sudan have urged people not to celebrate yet.
President Omar al-Bashir has said he will accept the result of the vote, which was held after years of war.
A journalist in Juba says this is the news many in the south have been waiting to hear - that the number of votes cast in favour of independence has passed the required 50%.

The results were published on a website published by the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission, and officials have confirmed they are genuine.

It says that 83% of votes in the south have been counted, along with 100% of those in the north and the eight foreign countries where polling was held.

Just 1.4% of people have voted for continued unity with the north.

More than 3m ballots have been counted so far, with several hundred thousands still to come.
Southern Sudan Referendum Bureau spokesman Aleu Garang Aleu said counting should be finished on 31 January and final results announced on 14 February, after any appeals had been dealt with.

Our correspondent says southern leaders are waiting for these results to be declared and accepted by the north before the giant party being planned begins.

If the result is confirmed, the new country is set to formally declare its independence on 9 July.
The mainly Arabic-speaking, Muslim north has fought the south, where most are Christian or follow traditional religions, for most of Sudan's post-independence history.

In order for the referendum to be valid, more than 50% of voters must back secession and at least 60% of registered voters must take part.

Election officials have previously said that the 60% threshold had been passed.

The great divide across Sudan is visible even from space, as this Nasa satellite image shows. The northern states are a blanket of desert, broken only by the fertile Nile corridor. Southern Sudan is covered by green swathes of grassland, swamps and tropical forest.

Sudan's arid northern regions are home mainly to Arabic-speaking Muslims. But in Southern Sudan there is no dominant culture. The Dinkas and the Nuers are the largest of more than 200 ethnic groups, each with its own traditional beliefs and languages.

The health inequalities in Sudan are illustrated by infant mortality rates. In Southern Sudan, one in 10 children die before their first birthday. Whereas in the more developed northern states, such as Gezira and White Nile, half of those children would be expected to survive.

The gulf in water resources between north and south is stark. In Khartoum, River Nile, and Gezira states, two-thirds of people have access to piped drinking water and pit latrines. In the south, boreholes and unprotected wells are the main drinking sources. More than 80% of southerners have no toilet facilities whatsoever.

Throughout Sudan, access to primary school education is strongly linked to household earnings. In the poorest parts of the south, less than 1% of children finish primary school.

Whereas in the wealthier north, up to 50% of children complete primary level education.

Conflict and poverty are the main causes of food insecurity in Sudan. The residents of war-affected Darfur and Southern Sudan are still greatly dependent on food aid. Far more than in northern states, which tend to be wealthier, more urbanised and less reliant on agriculture.

Sudan exports billions of dollars of oil per year. Southern states produce more than 80% of it, but receive only 50% of the revenue, exacerbating tensions with the north. The oil-rich border region of Abyei is to hold a separate vote on whether to join the north or the south.

(Source: ANGOP INTERNATIONAL Angola International News Service)

South Sudan Independence Vote: Facts and Figures

South Sudan independence vote: Facts and Figures
BY ASSOCIATED PRESS | LAST UPDATED: JAN 10, 2011 - 9:53:51 PM

THE VOTE: Southern Sudan is voting whether to become independent from the north as part of a 2005 peace deal that ended a war stretching more than two decades. The south is widely expected to vote for secession.

THE LAND: Sudan is Africa's largest country geographically, about one-quarter the size of the United States. Southern Sudan alone is roughly the size of Texas. Many of Sudan's neighbors are volatile countries: Libya, Eritrea, Chad, Central African Republic, Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. Sudan's long, porous borders are easily crossed by rebel groups.

THE PEOPLE: Sudan has a population of about 44 million. The north is mostly Muslim, while the south is populated by those who are mostly Christian and animist. Dozens of languages and dialects are spoken, but northerners mostly speak Arabic while the southerners tend to speak English.

THE ECONOMY: Sudan is one of Africa's largest oil exporters and the sale of crude is its chief foreign exchange earner. The oil fields are located mostly in the south but the pipelines to take them to the Red Sea run through northern territory. Agriculture employs 80 percent of the work force; Sudan exports products like cotton, grains, livestock and fruit.

HISTORY: A rebellion first began in the south in 1955, the year before Sudan gained independence after joint British-Egyptian control. Fighting lasted until a 1972 peace agreement, which failed to resolve the fundamental issues.
Fighting resumed in the early 1980s and about 2-million died over the next two decades. The 2005 peace agreement granted the south autonomy for six years, at the end of which a referendum on independence was to be held.

Rebels in the western region of Darfur and in the northeast also have rebelled against the Khartoum-based government, accusing it of concentrating wealth in the hands of a politically privileged Islamist elite and ignoring development in outlying regions. U.N. officials say up to 300,000 people have died in Darfur since 2003 and 2.7 million have been forced from their homes because of the conflict.

What to Expect after the South Sudan Referendum...?

SULIMAN BALDO JANUARY 5, 2011

It is a foregone conclusion that southerners will opt for independence from the North in the January 9 referendum on self-determination. How the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) will react to the secession of the resource-rich south and whether the internal cohesion of the southern Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement(SPLM) will survive beyond the referendum, on the other hand, are fuelling deep anxieties locally, among Sudan’s Arab and African neighbors, and within the international community. It was difficult enough getting to this juncture; intense regional and international pressure on and cajoling of the parties into signing the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement(CPA) were required to ensure a peaceful process.

Preparations for the referendum started late and negotiations on critical issues proceeded slowly. Mediated by the African Union (AU), the talks on the status of the disputed Abyei region and the inter-related issues of north-south border demarcation, citizenship, and the sharing of oil revenue inched forward haltingly, with both parties showing little disposition to compromise. Initially, Khartoum hardliners appeared to be spoiling for a fight over the predictable outcome. Particularly distressing were statements made by several NCP government and party officials calling for the expulsion of the estimated two million southerners living in the north in retaliation for a vote for secession. While the NCP later reined in statements from officials overtly hostile to southerners, it did continue to use citizenship as a political tool in the final status negotiations; the north will deny southerners living there the freedoms of residency, work, movement, and property extended, for example, to Egyptian residents in Sudan.

The hardening of positions on citizenship would hurt populations on both sides of the border, as many southerners are economically integrated in the rural economies of adjacent northern communities, mainly as agricultural and manual laborers. A likely response from the SPLM to the threatened massive denaturalization and expulsion of southerners living in the north would be to attempt to block the seasonal migration of northern pastoralist groups whose livelihoods depend on spending part of the year in the south with their animals, a sure recipe for disaster. In order to ensure the wellbeing of their populations, the NCP and the SPLM will need to agree on a soft border, allowing free movement and economic exchanges, as recommended by AU mediators.

Divisive public statements and hostile official propaganda notwithstanding, pragmatic considerations pushed the SPLM and NCP to agree, however reluctantly, on outstanding issues. Southern Sudan remains entirely dependent on oil revenues, which must be split equally with Khartoum under CPA provisions, while Khartoum too had come to rely on revenues from the southern oil fields, which represent three quarters of national oil production. Khartoum’s interest in an agreement was obvious, but the SPLM needed the agreement because the south is landlocked and must depend on refineries and pipelines in the north to get the oil to market.

By year’s end, the NCP appeared resigned to the prospect of an independent south Sudan. Fearing a predictable weakening of its grip on power in the rest of Sudan following the separation of the south, however, it pulled out of the Darfur peace talks jointly mediated by the AU and the UN and facilitated by Qatar. The security situation has deteriorated in Darfur as government forces seek to crush and punish the supporters of the Justice and Equality Movement and the two factions of the Darfur Sudan Liberation Movement. Such groups are biding their time, hoping that an independent southern Sudan will back their demands for genuine power- and wealth-sharing arrangements for Darfur as well as meaningful reparations for victims of the war, which the government has been reluctant to concede so far.

Moreover, other large minority groups in the Nuba Mountains and the South Blue Nile, states where the SPLM was a governing partner with the NCP during the six-year transition but where it has not demobilized tens of thousands of its fighters, have strong ethnic and political ties to the south. Top SPLM leaders recently made a thinly disguised threat to return to war if hard-won gains for minority interests in the north were abandoned after the referendum. Converging insurgencies in the Darfur, Nuba Mountains, and South Blue Nile regions would spell doom for northern Sudan, the other new state emerging from the January referendum.

In the south, two major concerns are whether the current unity of purpose created by the referendum will survive beyond it and how the independent south will achieve economic prosperity. Ethnic and political tensions that continue to stoke localized intercommunal violence in the region are likely to be further exacerbated in the emerging new state. SPLM leaders will need to cease high-handed dealings with opponents and independent voices and become more inclusive and accommodating of the multiple constituencies of the south to ensure peace and stability within the new state. Furthermore, the southern Sudanese have waited in vain for economic peace dividends during the interim period, as SPLM leaders wasted valuable resources on vanity projects and perks for the ruling elite. The new state will need to adopt transparent and democratic governance standards, as well as zero tolerance for official corruption, if it hopes to avoid the prospect of state failure.

Suliman Baldo is director for Africa at the International Center for Transitional Justice. Arab Reform Bulletin

D Day for South Sudan on the 9th of January 2011!

An official of Sudan’s referendum commission has reassured southern Sudanese that the 9th January referendum will proceed as originally scheduled despite attempts by opponents seeking dissolution of his organization ahead of the self determination vote.

George Benjamin, spokesman for the referendum commission, told VOA the program of preparations to organize a credible vote is in on course.

“As things stand now, we believe that the basis and the grounds were so flimsy for the claims made by those individuals and, therefore, it represents a weak case,” said Benjamin.
This comes as Sudan’s Constitutional Court decides next week whether to dissolve the referendum commission.

Several southern Sudanese groups recently petitioned the court seeking the dissolution of the commission after citing fraud and intimidation during the voter registration process.

But, Benjamin said the petition against the referendum commission is, in his view, ridiculous.

He also expressed confidence in the ability of the referendum commission to organize a credible vote next month.

“The commission is more than confident that it is proceeding with the process that is credible and that would be accepted to all parties. After all the registration process has recorded very high success. We had few complaints, and we also had few appeals before the court,” said Benjamin.

“The (voter) registry is being prepared and the ballot papers are on the way to all the stations and to all centers in all the states of the country and also abroad. And the stage is completely and confidently set for the polling to start on the 9th of January,” said Benjamin.

“I just would want to assure everybody that the process will continue and will proceed uninterrupted. So far, we have very few days to hit the 9th of January and almost all the critical stages have been covered; the registration has been covered and the appeals and courts have been covered,” said Benjamin.

“The ballot boxes have arrived on time and the final registry is being compiled, the polling officers are already under training and therefore. I think there is no need for southern Sudanese to feel worried that the process may feel interrupted. It won’t be interrupted.” (Source: VOA/ Dec. 30, 2010)

South Sudan January 9th Referendum

January 2, 2011 (JUBA) – The final registration result for referendum on independence published by the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission has put the region’s oil rich Unity state in the lead with over half a million voters registered.

Officials from the South Sudan Referendum Commission (SSRC) wait to register voters in Juba, south Sudan, December 8, 2010. (Reuters)

A total of 3.9 million southerners have been registered in southern Sudan, northern states and the Diaspora. 3.7 million people have been registered in the South alone while over 116,000 and 60,000 people were registered in northern Sudan and the Diaspora, respectively.

According to the final figures released Unity state has the highest registered voters of 500, 975, followed by Warrap and Central Equatoria states with 469,605 and 469,202, respectively. The two states with lowest registered voters are Western Bahr Ghazal and Western Equatoria with only 164,497 and 214,605 people, respectively.

In the public document released on Sunday by the Deputy Head of the Southern Sudan 2011 Referendum Taskforce Secretariat and Director of Policy and Monitoring in the Office of the President of the Government of Southern Sudan, Joseph Madak Both, the registration result has also revealed that out of the total voters registered 52% are female while 48% are male.

Madak called on the registered voters to turn out in the next six days and vote during the seven days exercise from 9th to 15th January.

Clarifying concerns about the folding of the voting paper that the ink for thumbing on secession choice may also print on unity choice after folding the paper, he said there was assurance from the referendum commission that the ink would quickly dry soon after the thumbing and would not print on the corresponding unity choice when folded.

Madak also said the Taskforce was assured by the Deputy Chairman of the Khartoum-based Southern Sudan Referendum Commission, Chan Reec Madut, who also heads the Juba-based Southern Sudan Referendum Bureau that there is no provision in the referendum act that guides or restricts how the paper will be folded. He said the referendum official explained that a voter can fold the paper the way he or she wants without using the folding that can correspond to the either symbol of the two options.

The Director of Policy Monitoring in the President’s office also called on the voters to be vigilant and keep their registration cards in order to determine their future on January 9. Madak further warned that there are some in the northern authorities that want to buy up to a million voter registration cards from southerners and destroy them in order to fail the required 60% turnout contrary to their public statements reiterating to let South vote freely and fairly in the referendum.
(Source: Sudan Tribune/ 02/January/2011)

The Feast of Christmas

Feast of the Incarnation

On this Christmas Day, let me begin with a quote from the twentieth-century writer G. K. Chesterton: “When a person has found something which he prefers to life itself, he [sic] for the first time has begun to live.”

Jesus in his proclamation of the kingdom told us what we could prefer to life itself. The Bible ends by telling us we are called to be a people who could say, “Come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20), who could welcome something more than business as usual and live in God’s Big Picture.

We all have to ask for the grace to prefer something to our small life because we have been offered the Shared Life, the One Life, the Eternal Life, God’s Life that became visible for us in this world as Jesus.

What we are all searching for is Someone to surrender to, something we can prefer to life itself. Well here is the wonderful surprise: God is the only one we can surrender to without losing ourselves. The irony is that we actually and finally find ourselves, but now in a whole new and much larger field of meaning.

(Adapted from Preparing for Christmas with Richard Rohr, pp. 45, 71-73)