Tag: Gift

His meaning is Love

Baubles on the tree. photo by Mr.G.

Love is His meaning

A school teacher once asked her class what was special about Christmas and a little child shot up a hand.   “Jesus has the birthday and we get the presents”.    Very perceptive – or was it simply hopeful! 
It is also a profound truth because that is what happens.  

At the heart of Christmas is a Gift and the present above all other presents that we receive is Love.  The whole meaning of Christmas is summed up in that one gift.  In the birth of Jesus right through to his glorious Ascension, God is giving us a living testimony of how much He loves is.  

The 14th century English mystic, Julian of Norwich was given a number of visions of the love of God.  She meditated on these in the quietness of her cell and she left the world the fruit of these meditations in her book Revelations of Divine Love.     At the very end of the book she deals with the questions of what our Lord’s meaning is – what his purpose is towards us – and she comes up with the answer; “Love is His meaning”.     It is worth quoting her in full:

I had often wanted to know what was our Lord’s meaning.  It was more than fifteen years after that I was answered in my spirit’s understanding.  ‘You would know our Lord’s meaning in this thing?  Know it well.   Love is His meaning. Who showed it you?  Love.  What did he show you?  Love.  Why did He show it?  For Love.     Hold on to this and you will know and understand love more and more.  But you will not know or learn anything else – ever!’
So it was that I learned that love was our Lord’s meaning.  And I saw for certain, both here and elsewhere, that before ever He made us, God loved us; and that His love has never slackened, nor ever shall.  In this love all His works have been done, and in this love He has made everything serve us; and in this love our life is everlasting. Our beginning was when we were made, but the love in which He made us never had a beginning. In it we have our beginning.   All this we shall see in God for ever.  May Jesus grant us this.  Amen.  

Love was His meaning.  That message shines out from the crib as much as it was later to shine out from the cross.  It gives us the meaning and the purpose of God for us but it also shapes the purpose of our own lives.  

Christmas can be a time for sentimentality; for momentary truces in the battles we wage against each other for dominance, power or control. This is true between Nations but it can also be true in families. We can be filled with goodwill towards people for a time but it is often fragile. Real love, however, takes the hard road from Bethlehem to Calvary and never deviates.  Real love demands costly forgiveness, repentance, understanding, compassion and a bearing towards one another that imitates the love of Christ.    
Too often, as now, our world fails to show that love; too often, sadly, so do we.     Yet if we are to look towards the Bethlehem crib and understand its power and meaning, then only genuine Love will give it to us. As Christians we believe and experience God’s Love for us in Jesus Christ which awakens our love for Him and a sharing of that love with each other.   If that is lacking, the meaning of Christmas is lost and so are we.

[Mr G]

Your Love

Bless us with Love, O Merciful God;
That we may Love as you Love!
That we may show patience, tolerance,
Kindness, caring and love to all!
Give us knowledge; O giver of Knowledge,
That we may be one with our Universe and Mother Earth!
O Compassionate One, grant compassion unto us;
That we may help all fellow souls in need!
Bless us with your Love O God.
Bless us with your Love.

– Author Unknown

St Nicholas, Giver of kindness and love

Shrine of St Nicholas, Bari. Photo by Mr G

SAINT NICHOLAS. Feast day 6th December

A story told by Victor Hoagland, C.P.

Saint Nicholas, the 4th century saint who inspired our modern figure of Santa Claus, was born near Myra, a port on the Mediterranean Sea serving the busy sea lanes that linked the seaports of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Ships sailing these waters, laden with grain and all kinds of goods, found safety in the port from raging storms and menacing pirates.

Nicholas came from one of the city’s wealthy merchant families, but he was not spoiled by his family’s wealth. His mother and father taught him to be generous to others, especially those in need. So Nicholas came to see that helping others makes one richer in life than anything else.

One day, by chance, Nicholas heard about a rich man in Myra who lost all his money when his business failed. The man had three lovely daughters, all wishing to get married, but he had no money for their marriage. Besides, who would marry them, he thought, since their father is such a failure? With nothing to eat, the man in desperation decided to sell one of his daughters into slavery. At least then the rest of them might survive.

That night before the first daughter was to be sold, Nicholas, with a small bag of gold in his hand, softly approached their house, and, tossing the gold through an open window, quickly vanished into the darkness.

The next morning, the father found a bag of gold lying on the floor next to his bed. He had no idea where it came from. “Maybe it’s counterfeit,” he thought. But as he tested it, he knew it was real. He went over the list of his friends and business associates. None of them could possibly have given him this.

The poor man fell to his knees and great tears came to his eyes. He thanked God for this beautiful gift. His spirits rose higher than they had been for a long time because someone had been so unexpectedly good to him. He arranged for his first daughter’s wedding and there was enough money left for the rest of them to live for almost a year. Often he wondered: who gave them the gold?

But by the end of the year, the family again had nothing, and the father, again desperate and seeing no other way open, decided his second daughter must be sold. But Nicholas, hearing about it, came by night to their window and tossed in another bag of gold as before. The next morning the father rejoiced, and, thanking God, begged His pardon for losing hope. Who, though, was the mysterious stranger giving them such a gift?

Each night afterwards the father watched by the window. As the year passed their money ran out. In the dead of one night he heard quiet steps approaching his house and suddenly a bag of gold fell onto the floor. The father quickly ran out to catch the one who threw it there. He caught up with Nicholas some distance away and recognized him, for the young man came from a well-known family in the city.

“Why did you give us the gold?” the father asked.

“Because you needed it,” Nicholas answered.

“But why didn’t you let us know who you were?” the man asked again.

“Because it’s good to give and have only God know about it.”

Because of his kind , generous and loving nature,  he was later elected as Bishop of Myra. His shrine is in the Church at Bari, in Puglia, Italy, cared for by members of the Orthodox Church.
Today he is known to children as Santa Claus (derived from Saint Nicholas)

Chocolate Gold coins are popular at Christmas. It has been suggested that these are symbols of St. Nicholas’s gift

Father Victor Hoagland, C.P.

Father Victor Hoagland, C.P. is a Catholic priest and a member of the Passionist community. He resides at the Immaculate Conception Monastery, Jamaica, New York. He’s the author of numerous spiritual books and videos, among them: The Book of Saints, Following Jesus Christ, Mary the Mother of God,  Daily Prayers, The Way of the Cross and Pilgrim Churches of Rome.

BLOG

Father Victor is a blogger and writes online at The Victor’s Place. You can hear him read this story, with illustrations, on YouTube.
Click on this link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADevygB9jNs

“God is our life,
God is our fulfillment,
in Christ God comes to give us life
and life to the full.”

~ Father Victor Hoagland, CP

All is Gift

My friend Joyce Smith has sent me another picture tweet of a Gannet in flight. The caption is by Henry David Thoreau. Joyce writes:
Dear Friends, This graceful gannet witnesses to beauty in our present lives as well as to our future hope.
With my love and prayers, God bless, Joyce

I was inspired by the photo to try and capture my feelings in a poem.

All is Gift.

Gannet soars,
taking a path between earth and heaven.
Grace in flight buoyed up by the whisper of God’s breath
A joyful beauty here.

She reminds us of God’s creative love fashioning the world
spreading signs and reflections of His heaven –
brooding under, over and within Creation.
Entrusting this message not to us but to a creature of His artistry.
The gentle flap of her wing carries her through clouds,
across an ever-moving  sky,
from time to time she drops to kiss an azure sea,
beak dipping
foaming wave forming, where love breaks.

Gannet carries a gift from God,
A message from His heart ;
“Enjoy the freedom of grace-filled life.
I glide around you revealing the beauty above, below and within you
for I am always there.”

Look up and see, look down and feel.
Look within and breathe.
Live for a while in true harmony with all that I have made.
But know,
(and here Gannet flies away to spread her wings of beauty),
that all is gift.

[Mr G]