Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim, Norway is a spiritual writer who understands the nature of the spiritual malady that afflicts our age, a sickness that runs so deep within us that most aren’t even aware we have it. He describes it as despair, as a kind of spiritual sadness. We are sad, he argues, because we don’t believe our aspirations for the transcendent can be fulfilled. In a Christmas homily he gave a few years ago, Bishop Varden says: “Christ came to us to show that this desire [for the transcendent] is not hopeless. On the contrary, the experience of needing more than life can give points to the fact that we are configured for something greater. I often think that the great tragedy of our time is that people no longer have concepts to understand and own their feelings of longing.” The solution, he argues, is “to return to the Word of God. It sets criteria by which to live, to think, and to aspire. If only people could see how revolutionary the Bible is! Christ Jesus is ‘the radiant light of God’s glory.’ He offers to give us a share of it. He, only He, represents the plenitude our inner emptiness awaits.”
Bishop Varden asks us to revisit the Sacred Scriptures, which tell the story of the transcendent Creator God who comes close to us at Christmas in the most disarming way – as a little baby. This little baby draws the world to Himself to offer us redemption, forgiveness for our sins, and a share in His divine life – which we call grace. As we approach His crib, the existential sadness is replaced by love for the little Christ child, which pulls us out of ourselves and fills us with peace, joy, and hope. If this story is true, Varden asks, “why then, do we live as if He were not there, as if we had not received, through the Church’s sacraments, the grace that lets His life become ours? It is time to recover the profound realism of Christian hope. We must rediscover that, when Scripture says we have ‘power to become children of God,’ then it is true. Only becoming such will satisfy our deepest needs.”
Living in the world as a child of God, however, means living as a contradiction to the spirit of the age. The Bishop explains: “The challenge Christ poses has never appealed to the majority. However, in each generation there have been exceptions – men and women, sometimes children, whose heart’s eyes have been opened to the transforming potential of God’s love; who have let themselves be transformed; and have thereby transformed society. They have become the pores by which grace, healing and gladdening, seeps in. You and I are called to be porous in this way, carriers into the world of Christ’s presence.”
As followers of Christ and bearers of His presence within us, we must help dispel all sadness by sharing with others His glory. The Bishop concludes, saying: “Let us then live accordingly, in never ending thankfulness.” There is no other remedy for what ails us.
From all of us here at the Parish of St. Cecilia-St. Gabriel, I wish a blessed Christmas to you and yours.
posted 12/23/23
The Parish of St. Cecilia-St. Gabriel 