Wednesday 26 December 2012

Iceland Cheer Fr. Edward OP. "... Divine Person was truly born of his human mother - through the hypostatic union!"

Dear Fr. Edward,

Reciprocating, the beautifully worded greeting,

Blessings in Domino; whose Divine Person was truly born of his human
mother - through the hypostatic union!
Thank you being so alive and articulate to celebrate the Nativity of the Lord.


 The title for Boxing Day is so prosaic  The hours of the day are better signakised our "Christmas Octave."
Your kind Christmas Card reflects well your 'adoration' poem. 
I am interested to learn the name of the Old Master.
Heather celebrated Midnight Mass with us, and then wended her way the children and grandchildren in Edinburgh, And  we keep the Card, poem and homilies for her.
Peaceful New Year.
fr. Donald
Nobility lies in the Magi, 
standing and kneeling,

Nobility lies in the Magi, standing and kneeling,
as well-crammed into the space, yet there expanding.
The outside dark is forgotten;
the inner light prevails
with such delicacy and depth.
The pigment - "king's yellow"? -
is moulded to the forms of the robe-hang
with shading and patterning,
heightened by the white of
ermine, Babe's body and the Virginal face
with its calm, intense smile,
in which time and eternity are held in adoration.


With every blessing for Christmas and the New Year from fr Edward O.P.

Fr. Edward. O.P.
Blogspot :http://www.nunraw.blogspot.co.uk |
domdonald.org.uk 
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: edward ...
To: Donald Nunraw ....
Sent: Monday, 24 December 2012, 20:11
Subject: Christmas Blessings
Dear Father Donald,
A very happy Christmas to you and the Community!
I am enclosing a Christmas Card home made with a poem home composed
together  with my Christmas letter, and my two sermons for Christmas Day.
The letter explains why I shall be late with sending Heather's card by
ordinary mail.
I hope that you would be able to pass a copy of the card to her -
unless you are rushed off your feet, which is most probable..
We have had some very mild days, and this evening the snow has returned.
Blessings in Domino; whose Divine Person was truly born of his human
mother - through the hypostatic union!
fr Edward O.P.
-- 
Father Edward Booth O.P.
Austurgata 7,
IS-340 Stykkishólmur,
Iceland.

Christmas Midnight Mass 2012
            If we set apart the personal gifts which we give and receive at Christmas, its celebration does stir mankind's tradition of its celebration which means that we are all being touched by the mystery of Christmas, which in thinking about we are meditating, and at the heart of our meditating, there is a a real contact with the mystery. This, in being celebrated, takes us nearer not to our subjective memories and impressions, but the objective presence to us of the birth of Emmanuel in the middle of the Jewish Kingdom, and in fact in the middle of this world of people derived from the ancient pagan races, all of which have by now received the message, which is also commemorated in the Gospel. The Christian people is a people of rectified good will, and as an historical people they are always poised to communicate the Gospel divinely intended to be communicated to all men; here at the beginning of the third millennium, already communicated to all the peoples of the world, sometimes passing over the same territories more than once to navigate the communication of the Gospel to where it had been earlier communicated, but had become lost in wars and social changes. For the events of the gospel in their essential reality always contains the eternal youth of the Gospel, deriving from the eternal youth of God.
            This Gospel is not an abstract Gospel. It is communicated in this world through angels and through men. It is a Word in the fullest possible sense: for its essence lies in the divine conception through the Holy Spirit in Mary, on whom the high secrecy of the divine schekinah had descended, in which the conception of the eternally begotten Son and Word of God as a man took place in a chosen Woman: she as the furnisher of his subsequent immortal manhood. She, the living flesh-giver and the intermediary through whom God gave a human living soul. She is therefore Flesh-Giver and Soul-Mediator to Emmanuel, “God-with-us”!          
            The scope of this event is best appreciated from the position of Mary herself  as “Mother-of-God”.      Preaching on the birth of herself a Greek Archbishop of Crete, Andrew, at the beginning of the eighth century and so contemporary with the English Monk-Doctor of the Church, Bede, pointed out the linkage between the Immaculate Conception and Birth of Mary herself, which he said was the initiation of deiformity in this world, and the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem. This was a double birth characterised by the heights of divine purity participated by her. Certainly they show together the centrality of the double event which took place within the body of Mary. That establishes Mary at the centre of this divine giving birth. So ought we to empathise with Mary, and together with her empathise with all of the physical and spiritual consequences, which are all benefits for all men.          
            Meanwhile on the bleak hill-tops a group of shepherds was guarding  their flocks during the night, guarding them from robbers and marauding animals. They were surprised by the breaking through the beaurtiful heavens of the even greater beauty of the angelic creation, who announced to them personally and meaningfully the birth in Bethlehem, telling them to go down to the little town   and to see and worship the World-Saviour who had been born there, and their annoucement passed into a song of Angelic praise, making the scene in the heavens more beautiful still. The Shepherds were well-chosen, coming from the town of Jesse and the birthplace of his exuberant and powerful son, David., who himself was shepherding his father's sheep, when Samuel the priest was looking for the man who would take over the kingship of Israel from Saul, who had revealed great flaws in his character. As he was summoned to be inspected by Samuel, so these shepherds were summoned to see and worship Emmanuel, bedded in a  manger. At the sight of Emmanuel and his Mother and Guardian they could not be restrained from passing on their angelic revelation, until the moment came when they must return to the hilltops, totally consoled and glad. They were singing and their voices were  still heard from the increasing distance as they returned with a spring in their steps and peace and joy in their hearts, as the first visitors to the divine Child – humanly he may have been asleep, but in his divinity he heard  and understood and accepted the praise of their hearts. Amen.


Christmas Mass of the Day 2012
            The beginning of the Gospel of Saint John. It passes from the ultimate beginning to the appearance of John  the Baptist, the prophet now emerging from a long hidden stay in the Judean desert, and motivated to announce the coming of the Messianic Saviour
            The evangelist, Saint John (the disciple “whom Jesus loved”) reduced everything as comiing from a creative will, a will which accompanied its creation.
            To describe this he chose the simplest words. He kept the whole structure and reality of creation in a creative movement. But creative movements in the cosmos must have defined spheres to which they are related: with features that are either in movement or are at rest, They announce themselves to the eyes of observers by relative movements. The observers could be either angelic spirits and have their own characteristic categorisation arising from their spirits. Man and the animals have eyes whose task is to recreate the cosmos within themselves. Man had his own collection of models of groups of stars; he could name these groups, these constellations according to the knowledge which he had. Naming them meant possessing them through knowledge. This was clearly a task by which he bonded himself to the cosmos. But this was not the primordial origination which must have drawn on a creative moment which must have had a model.
            The universe must have been created, It had aspects of unity and aspects of  plurality in the perception in which God saw it with his totally comprehensive and simple knowledge. It was a concession to the most primitive forms of life that God could see backwards through the evolving Universe into the distant past. Here the observers' vista saw the closest things as the most recent and then marking a receding  The most recent were the least evolved.
            At least we can attribute to John the desire to see things in their most ultimate and intimate state. He would have expected to deduce from the characteristics of the things which had emerged, a conception of their source; there should be a likeness which was derived from a source.
            But the conception of “Beginning”: was it to be identified with God or was it a reality found within God? For in one sense, in which God was conceived as being absolutely without beginning, there could be no divine totality distinguished from God, existing in God. And  in another sense in which God is conceived as Creator that postulates a source of creation, derivable ultimately from God, John writes “[The Word] was in the beginning with God.”  And John adds, “without him was not made anything that was made. In him was life and the life was the light of men.” “This Life and Light” were in God. Already the possibility of the light being opposed to darkness, in which case even if the “light shines in the darkness the darkness does not comprehend the light”.
            God sent into this world a man – John the Baptist – who “came as a witness to the light”, without being that light. From his presence among men they could be helped to be aware of this light, shining in the world: a copresence of the light with  John as its interpreter and as a communicator of faith. The World was already homely by the spiritual presence of the Word, fillimg it with beauty and with blessing.
            But more was now given to it when the Word was made flesh – from the flesh of the chosen Virgin Mary. That arouses in all men a desire to be visited and enlightened by that Word. And in that state the World remains, changed only by the advance of the Gospel message over the centuries until the Word, now as the “Word made Flesh”, Emmanuel: God with us, the Son of God and man's Redeemer, will return in all of his Glory at the end of time, so that he like us and we like him will be taken into heaven to dwell there for ever. Amen.
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