Advent: 17 December 2022
Good morning,
We woke up yesterday to snow in St Andrews. For a few hours, the town was blanketed with snow, with white rooves, branches and pavements underfoot. As we’ve reached R in our Advent Calendar, what R was I able to photograph yesterday? How about red gowns in St Salvator’s Quad:
But R today is really for… Rejoicing. The angels brought news of great joy to the shepherds, and when the Magi saw that the star had stopped over Bethlehem, they were overwhelmed with joy. Christmas carols repeat the sounding joy: Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel; Joyful, all ye nations rise; O come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant; child of sorrow for my joy; as with joy they hailed its light; as with joyful steps they sped; Good Christians, all rejoice.
The quotations I have transcribed over the years which touch on joy sometimes have a hint of sorrow too.
Kathleen Jamie in Sightlines, describes a visit to a local pathology lab:
‘The natural evidence of our mortality,’ Professor Fleming called it. Heart and lungs, a colon that could be a pig’s. That’s the deal: if we are to be alive and available for joy and discovery, then it’s as an animal body, available for cancer and infection and pain. Not a deal anyone remembers having struck – we just got here – but it’s not as though we don’t negotiate.
The theologian Stanley Hauerwas, in his meditation on suffering, Naming the Silences, suggests It is odd, but I think true, that most of us are almost as ill-prepared to receive joy as we are suffering. Perhaps that’s what makes the shepherds and Magi so counter-cultural – they receive joy.
And finally, from the novel Leo the African by Amin Maalouf, a meditation on how all that is has meaning, concluding with rest and joy
Too often, at funerals, I hear men and women believers cursing death. But death is a gift from the Most High, and we cannot curse that which comes from Him… Yes my brothers, let us thank God for having made us this gift of death, so that life is to have meaning; silence, that speech is to have meaning; of night that day is to have meaning; illness, that health is to have meaning; war, that peace is to have meaning. Let us give thanks to Him for having given us weariness and pain, so that rest and joy are to have meaning.
With almost every exam over, I hope it is a time of rejoicing for students; and when marking is done, that can be a joyful day for academics. There is no doubt that our world this year has had much to bring sorrow – private griefs, and public events, war, oppression, money troubles and the overwhelming reach of climate change. But Advent is a time, both to look these realities in the face, and to prepare to receive joy. Jesus was born into a world with much the same realities – and he was encountered with joy. As this year draws to a close, I hope you find reasons and ways to rejoice.
Yours,
Donald.