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The Mystery of
Christ by Father Thomas Keating Chapter 1 The Christmas-Epiphany Mystery
The "Visitation" of God is the experience of God's presence, the Ultimate Mystery making Itself known in the Word made flesh. This is the meaning of the Christmas-Epiphany celebration. Introduction The Christmas-Epiphany Mystery is the celebration of the transmission of divine light. The liturgical season begins with Advent, a period of intense preparation to understand and accept the three comings of Christ. The first is his historical coming in human weakness and the manifestation of his divinity to the world; the second is his spiritual coming in our inmost being through the liturgical celebration of the Christmas-Epiphany Mystery; the third is his final coming at the end of time in his glorified humanity. On the feast of Christmas, the joyful expectancy exemplified by the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist and Isaiah--and shared by us in the Advent liturgy--comes to fulfillment. Christ is born anew in our hearts through the increase of his light within us, and the consequences of our union with him begin to unfold. In the feasts that follow, all that is contained in the explosion of divine light at Christmas is gradually revealed, culminating in the feast of Epiphany which is the fullness and crowning feast of the Christmas-Epiphany Mystery. In the clear light of Epiphany, faith in the divinity of Jesus and in our incorporation in him as members of his mystical body is the light (our guiding star) that empowers us to follow him and to be transformed into him. While the theological idea of light still predominates on the feast of Epiphany, the theological ideas of divine life and love also appear, pointing to the great mysteries of Easter and Pentecost yet to come. We experience by anticipation the life-giving grace of Easter and the transforming graces of Pentecost. The liturgy commemorates, along with the coming of the Magi, two other events which symbolize the graces of Easter and Pentecost: the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan and the changing of water into wine at the Marriage Feast of Cana. Jesus sought baptism at the hands of John not for himself, but for us, the members of his mystical body. His descent into the waters of the Jordan prefigures his passion and death and his rising out of the Jordan and the descent of the Spirit prefigure his resurrection and his gift of the Spirit at Pentecost. Thus, in the Baptism of Jesus the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation are prefigured and bestowed in advance. He purifies his people and prepares them for union with himself. The union established between Christ and us in Baptism and deepened by Confirmation is consummated in the Eucharist, the sacrament of divine union. The Eucharist and its transforming effects are prefigured by Jesus' changing water into wine at the Marriage Feast of Cana, while the wedding party symbolizes the joys of divine union, the ripe fruit of the transforming graces of Pentecost. Here is a summary of the teaching of the liturgy in the Christmas-Epiphany Mystery:
The Christmas-Epiphany Mystery
Advent is the celebration of the three comings of Christ: his coming in the flesh, which is the primary focus of the feast of Christmas; his coming at the end of time, which is one of the underlying themes of Advent; and his coming in grace, which is his spiritual coming in our hearts through the Eucharistic celebration of the Christmas-Epiphany Mystery. His coming in grace is his birth within us. This coming emphasizes the primary thrust of the liturgy, which is the transmission of grace, not just the commemoration of an historical event. Thus, the liturgy communicates the graces commemorated in the liturgical seasons and feasts. These center around the three great theological ideas contained in the revelation of Jesus: divine light, life and love. Each season of the liturgical year--Christmas-Epiphany, Easter-Ascension, Pentecost--emphasizes a particular aspect of the mystery of salvation, God's gratuitous self-communication. The rest of the Liturgical Year flows from these major themes and investigates their practical implications. The Liturgical Year begins with the theological idea of divine light. And what is this light? You find out by attending the liturgy, provided you are properly prepared and provided that the liturgy is sensitively and reverently executed. Each liturgical season has a period of preparation that readies us for the celebration of the climactic feast. The feast of Christmas is the first burst of light in the unfolding of the Christmas-Epiphany Mystery. Theologically, Christmas is the revelation of the Eternal Word make flesh. But it takes time to celebrate and penetrate all that this event actually contains and involves. The most we can do on Christmas night is gasp in wonderment and rejoice with the angels and the shepherds who first experienced it. The various aspects of the Mystery of divine light are examined one by one in the days following Christmas. The liturgy carefully unpacks the marvelous treasures that are contained in the initial burst of light. Actually, we do not grasp the full import of the Mystery until we move through the other two cycles. As the divine light grows brighter, it reveals what it contains, that is, divine life; and divine life reveals that the Ultimate Reality is love. Epiphany is the crowning feast of Christmas. We tend to think of Christmas as the greater feast, but in actual fact, it is only the beginning. It whets our appetite for the treasures to be revealed in the feasts to come. The great enlightenment of the Christmas-Epiphany Mystery is when we perceive that the divine light manifests not only that the Son of God has become a human being, but that we are incorporated as living members into his body. This is the special grace of Epiphany. In view of his divine dignity and power, the Son of God gathers into himself the entire human family past, present and future. The moment that the Eternal Word is uttered outside the bosom of the Trinity and steps forth into the human condition, the Word gives himself to all creatures. In the act of creating, God, in a sense, dies. He ceases to be alone and becomes, by virtue of his creative activity, totally involved in the human adventure. He cannot be indifferent. Any theology that suggests that he is unconcerned is not the revelation of Jesus. On the contrary, the meaning of the life and message of Jesus is that the reign of God is "close at hand": the whole of God is now available for every human being who wants him. Epiphany, then is the manifestation of all that is contained in the light of Christmas; it is the invitation to become divine. Epiphany reveals the marriage between the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ. It also reveals God's call to the church (meaning us, of course) to be transformed by entering into spiritual marriage with Christ and to become fully human. The coming of Christ into our conscious lives is the ripe fruit of the Christmas-Epiphany Mystery. It presupposes a presence of Christ that is already within us waiting to be awakened. This might be called the fourth coming of Christ, except that it is not a coming in the strict sense since it is already here. The Christmas-Epiphany Mystery invites us to take possession of what is already ours. As Thomas Merton put it, we are "to become what we already are." The Christmas-Epiphany Mystery, as the coming of Christ into our lives, makes us aware of the fact that he is already here as our true self--the deepest reality in us and in everyone else. Once God takes upon himself the human condition, everyone is potentially divine. Through the Incarnation of his Son, God floods the whole human family--past, present and to come--with his majesty, dignity and grace. Christ dwells in us in a mysterious but real way. The principal purpose of all liturgy, prayer and ritual is to bring us to the awareness of his interior Presence and union with us. The potentiality for this awareness is innate in us by virtue of being human, but we have not yet realized it. All three comings of Christ are built on the fact that we are in God and that God is in us; they invite us to evolve out of our human limitations into the life of Christ. Christ has come, but not fully: this is the human predicament. The completion of the reign of God (the pleroma) will take place through the gradual evolution of Christians into the mature age of Christ. Meanwhile, every human being and every human institution, however holy, is incomplete. The Annunciation
Advent is like the time of pregnancy when a new life begins to make itself known. The light of Christmas grows in each of us as the Advent season progresses, manifesting itself through flashes of insight that bring intimations of the dazzling light of the Christmas-Epiphany Mystery. Mary is the key figure at Advent. In this text we hear the Angel Gabriel's announcement of her future motherhood. As far as we know, Mary was a girl of fourteen or fifteen, living in a backwater town. Nazareth did not have a good reputation judging by what Nathaniel had to say of it later: "Can anything good come out of that place?" (John 1:46) It seems that Mary had been called by God to dedicate herself to him by a celibate commitment. At the same time, she was in the ambiguous position of being "engaged to a man named Joseph." We do not know the details of this relationship or what their agreement was. Celibacy was a rare choice in those days, especially for a woman. The fact that Mary was free to be innovative and flexible with respect to the popular expectations of her time and milieu is an indication of her spiritual maturity. Her choice of virginity presupposes a conviction about what God wanted to do. She apparently persuaded Joseph to go along with this idea. In the Jewish customs of the time, she was already committed to be his wife by virtue of their engagement. Then comes the surprise visit of the messenger of God. As many of the parables will later point out, God's action is unexpected. Sometimes the surprise is delightful, as when one finds a treasure hidden in a field. At other times, if God makes known some demand or challenge, the surprise is experienced as the end of one's world; one's little nest is shattered. Such events occur regularly in the lives of Mary and Joseph. This is only the first time that God, without being invited, intrudes into their lives and turns them upside down. The acceptance of what Jesus later preaches as the reign (or kingdom) of God involves the willingness to allow God to enter our lives in any way he pleases and at any moment--including now. Not tomorrow, but now! The reign of God is what happens; to be open to that reign is to be prepared to accept what happens. That does not mean that we understand what is happening. Most trials consist of not knowing what is happening. If we knew we were doing the will of God, trials would not bother us so much. Here Mary is faced with one of God's favorite scenarios; it might be called the double-bind. The double-bind does not consist in the choice between what is obviously good and obviously evil--that is a temptation--but of not knowing which is good and which is evil. The dilemma may arise in another form: one cannot decide which of two apparent goods is God's will. For a delicate conscience, this causes deep trouble. The turmoil comes from wanting to do God's will and not knowing what it is. As a consequence, one feels torn in two directions at once. Two apparent but opposing goods demand one's total adherence, and both seem to be God's will. People on the spiritual journey regularly find themselves in such double-binds, which may even become more searching as the journey proceeds. This is the kind of dilemma that occurs in a vocational crisis such as, "Shall I enter a contemplative order? I have duties to others that seem to be important, and yet I feel a consistent call to solitude." The attraction to solitude in an active ministry is one of the classical double-binds in which those in active ministries often find themselves. persons in cloistered communities experience the reverse. Here is another scriptural example that shows how searching this trial may become. John the Baptist had staked his integrity as a prophet on pointing to Jesus as the Messiah, the one who was to save his people from their sins. After John's confrontation with Herod, he was thrown into prison. He stands for everyone who suffers for the cause of justice and truth. In solitary confinement, separated from his disciples, he may have fallen into a depression. He began to have doubts about whether he had pointed out the right man. Jesus ate and drank with public sinners. Both he and his disciples did not observe the customary fasts. Could Jesus, who made friends with prostitutes and tax collectors and who encouraged the free and easy lifestyle of his disciples, really be the Messiah? Was John tempted to think, "Have I made a terrible mistake?" Here was a holy man nearing the end of his life, yet undergoing the worst crisis he had ever had to face. Notice the agonizing double-bind. John had pointed to Jesus as the Messiah, but Jesus was not acting as the Messiah was expected to act. Accordingly, John sent his disciples to Jesus to ask, "Are you the Messiah or do we look for another?" The question suggests the full extent of the problem of conscience that he was enduring. Should he now disclaim the one he had previously proclaimed to be the Messiah? That was his great doubt. He could not decide which course to follow. So he sent his disciples to question the very person upon whose identity he had staked his own prophetic mission--the one, to use his owns words, "whose sandals I am not worth to loose." In the presence of John's disciples, Jesus worked a series of miracles that he knew would reassure John, fulfilling the prophesy of Isaiah which speaks of the blind receiving their sight and the poor having the Gospel preached to them. That was the resolution of John's double-bind. Why did John suffer so terrible a trial right at the end of his life? The double-bind is sometimes designed to free us from the last vestiges of cultural conditioning, including our religious cultural conditioning. The means that we needed in the early part of our spiritual journey (but which we may have come to depend on too much) are gradually removed. One of the classical ways of removing them is a double-bind that forces one to grow beyond the limitations of one's culture, the influences of early childhood and one's early religious background. Family, ethnic and religious values are important and may support us for a certain time and to a certain place in the spiritual journey, but not to the place of total freedom that is God's ambition for each of us. Perhaps it was John's preconceived ideas about asceticism that God wanted to demolish in order to free him in the last days of his life to accept God's coming in any way at all, including through the eating and drinking and compassion of the actual Messiah. Jesus, by the miracles he worked in the presence of John's disciples, thus said to John in answer to his question, "My friend, you did not make a mistake. I am the Messiah. But the Messiah is not limited to your ideas of what he should do and how he should behave." That solved John's double-bind. Even holy people can be stuck in preconceived ideas or prepackaged value systems that are hard to let go. They may have strong expectations regarding how God should act or about how the spiritual journey and prayer should develop. War, persecution, bankruptcy, loss of a love one, divorce, change of vocation, illness and death are all experiences that God uses to shatter their ideas of expectations. When you are absolutely certain God wants two things that seem to be completely opposed, you are in a classical double-bind. Jesus himself endured the greatest double-bind there ever was in the Garden of Gethsemani. He, the innocent one, was asked to become sin for our sake; he who knew the goodness of God as no other human being has ever known or can know it, was asked to accept the inevitable result of identifying with our sins, namely, the sense of total alienation from God. The experience of the double-bind hit Mary, as we saw, at the age of fourteen or fifteen. She had set up a plan for her life according to what she firmly believed was God's will. Along comes the Angel Gabriel and says, "God wants you to be the mother of the Messiah." Mary was greatly troubled by the message of the angel. The underpinnings of her whole spiritual journey were shaken. She could not understand how God could have led her to believe that he wanted her to be a virgin and then be told by his messenger, "I want you to be a mother." "How is this to be since I know not a man?" was Mary's response. Notice the discretion of these words. She does not say she won't do it, but she delicately raises the problem of how it can be done since "I do not (and will not) know man." In other words, she takes her dilemma and respectfully places it in God's lap. "You created the problem," she seems to say, "Please solve it. I'm not saying yes. And, I'm not saying no. Please tell me how this problem is to be resolved." The angel then goes on to explain, "The Holy Spirit will overshadow you." Her motherhood, in other words, is going to be outside the normal course of procreation. She will be able to consent to it because God is creating something absolutely unheard-of in human experience: a Virgin Mother. The news the angel brought and its consequences completely disrupted Mary's plans for her life. Her mother soon became aware of her mysterious pregnancy. Joseph was so upset over it that he thought about giving her up. In other words, this pregnancy turned her life upside-down. Instead of being a respectable young woman engaged to Joseph, who now appeared to be someone who had engaged in premarital relations. She became one of the many disreputable people in her disreputable town. The same God who had inspired her to choose a celibate life made her the mother of the Messiah. As human beings, we cannot presume that God will do something that has never been done before (although the angel said, "Nothing is impossible with God.") But we can be sure of that if we allow the creative energies of the double-bind to do their work, at some moment we will find ourselves in a higher state of consciousness. Suddenly we will perceive a new way of seeing all reality. Our old world view will end. A new relationship with God, ourselves and other people will emerge based on the new level of understanding, perception and union with God we have been given. The beginning with God. During Advent, as we celebrate the renewed coming of divine light, we receive encouragement to open to God's coming in any way that he may choose. This is the disposition that opens us completely to the light.
We observed that Mary, after questioning the angel, carefully surmounted her double-bind by a leap of confidence. Her dilemma was resolved in an absolutely unexpected way by her becoming simultaneously Virgin and Mother, demonstrating that there is no double-bind impossible for God to resolve. Even John the Baptist and Mary could not escape from God's enthusiasm to make them holier still. Difficulties give God the opportunity to refine and purify our motivation. They give us an opportunity to make a greater surrender. God prepares us for the reception of his word the way a farmer tills a field in order to prepare it for the seed. God's preparation is like a tractor harrowing the field. Going one way, it tears up the soil and turns it over; going the other way it does the same as it criss-crosses the field. But everywhere it goes, it turns up new rocks buried unnoticed in the soil, each a possible destroyer of forthcoming seed. Advent is a time of preparation. God prepared the soil of Mary's heart with incredible graces, culminating in the double-bind that enabled her to attain a new level of self-surrender. In order to bring forth in her body the Word of God, she first had to conceive and bring him forth spiritually. If you see somebody performing virtuous activity, this presupposes an enormous amount of preparation. He brought Mary to this point where he could fulfill his eternal plan. Paul says, "At the appointed time, God sent his Son, born of a woman." Mary's union with God was so great that she was able to bring God physically into the world. All the images of the Old Testament referring to God's presence are crystallized in her. Having received the Word of God physically into her body, Mary contributed out of her human substance to the formation of the new divine-human person. The birth of Jesus was also the advent of a new aspect of time. The Greek word for "the appointed time" is kairos. The kairos is eternal time breaking into chronological time; it is vertical time cutting across horizontal time. As a result, the whole of the Mystery of Christ is totally available at every moment. The liturgy celebrates certain special events in order to sensitize us to the fact that every moment is sacred. Time is time to grow, nothing else. Time is time to transform all the elements of life so that we can manifest Christ in our chronological lifetimes. The example of Mary is saturated with symbols of the most arresting kind to awaken us to the proper human response to the Eternal Word coming into chronological time and transforming it. The pleroma or "fullness of time" that Paul speaks of, when Christ will be "all in all," depends on our personal contribution as living cells in the body of Christ. The present moment is the moment in which eternity (vertical time) breaks into our lives. Thus, ordinary life, just as it is, contains the invitation to become divine. Mary shows us, by the coming of the Eternal Word into her body, what to do with vertical time. Once we grasp that fact that the Word of God is living within us, we realize that we are not alone. We are lived in by God. God is living in us not as a statue or picture, but as energy ready to direct all our actions moment by moment. Hence, the necessity of a discipline of prayer and action to sensitize ourselves to the divine energy which Paul calls Spirit or the pneuma and which we translate as God. What is Mary's first response to the gift of divine motherhood? She goes to see her cousin Elizabeth who happens to be having a baby and who needs help with whatever you do when you are getting ready for a baby: making diapers, preparing the bassinet, knitting little socks and bonnets. That is what she figured God wanted her to do. It never occurred to her to tell anyone about her incredible privilege. She simply did what she ordinarily did: she went to serve somebody in need. That is what the divine action is always suggesting: help someone at hand in some small but practical way. As you learn to love more, you can help more. Mary did not go to counsel Elizabeth; she did not go to evangelize Elizabeth; she went to prepare the diapers. That is true religion: to manifest God in an appropriate way in the present moment. The angel had said that Elizabeth was soon to have a baby. Mary said, "Is that so? She must need help; I'll go at once." She went "in haste," manifesting her eagerness to be of service without any thought about her own condition, including, I presume, what Joseph or her mother were thinking about her unexpected pregnancy. Mary entered the house of Elizabeth and said hello. The Presence that she carried within her was transmitted to Elizabeth by the sound of her voice. In response, the baby in Elizabeth's womb leapt for joy; he was sanctified by Mary's simple greeting. God's greatest works take place without our doing anything spectacular. They are almost side-effects of doing the ordinary things we are supposed to be doing. If you are transformed, everybody in your life will be changed too. There is a sense in which we create the world in which we live. If you are pouring out love everywhere you go, that love will start coming back; it cannot be otherwise. The more you give, the more you will receive. Following Mary's example, the fundamental practice for healing the wounds of the false-self system is to fulfill the duties of our job in life. This includes helping people who are counting on us. If prayer gets in the way, there is some misunderstanding. Some devout persons think that if their activities at home or their job get in the way of praying, there is something wrong with their activities. On the contrary, there is something wrong with their prayer. Contemplative prayer enables us to see the treasures of sanctification and the opportunities for spiritual growth that are present day by day in ordinary life. If one is truly transformed, one can walk down the street, drink a cup of tea or shake hands with somebody and be pouring divine life into the world. In Christianity motivation is everything. When the love of Christ is the principal motivation, ordinary actions transmit divine love. This is the fundamental Christian witness; this is evangelization it its primary form. The early Christians seem to have taken evangelization in too literal a sense, preaching the word of God as if it were an end in itself. Because they were holy, their preaching had great effect, but not as great an effect as the witness of the martyrs of blood, and later, the martyrs of conscience. The essential thing, if one wishes to spread the Gospel, is the transformation of one's ordinary actions become effective in communicating the Mystery of Christ to whoever comes into one's life. A sanctified person is like a radio or TV station sending out signals. Whoever has the proper receptive apparatus can receive the transmission. What Mary teaches us by her visit to Elizabeth is that the sound of her voice awakened the transcendent potential in another person without her saying anything. She was simply Mary, the ark of the Covenant; that is, one in whom God was dwelling. Thus, when Mary said hello to Elizabeth, the child in her womb leapt for joy. His divine potentiality was fully awakened. So was Elizabeth's. She was filled with the Holy Spirit. This is the most sublime kind of communication. Transmission is not preaching as such. Transmission is the capacity to awaken in other people their own potentiality to become divine.
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