This was a comment I placed on a blog called Paying Attention To The Sky some years ago. I was reading through some old files and I came upon the below poem, which is written along the same lines as the following reflection. I love Creation! It is totally beyond words what God has done for us in giving us this beautiful universe.
Liturgy
Standing still in fathering darkness
Stars show silent endless space
Moon’s crescent holds heaven’s own
And in our hearts falls love’s whisper
Whose light we see in self surrender
While dark mystery marks man’s weakness
Wonder shows his love
The stars are like angels that give witness to the vast expanse. The expanse, infinite, mysterious, not understood by our natural mind (known of but not about), is like the Father. The sun is like the Son, it shines on us and gives life constantly creating. The sun more than any other star of course bears witness to the darkness (darkness being a descriptor for that which is not known, not evil), revealing Being, so much so and so decisively that it is like the Son, and what is the Son but the revelation of the Father, the perfect expression of the Father. And light himself is like the Holy Spirit, the perfect expression of the Love between the Father and the Son, between the darkness and the sun, the darkness and the stars, the darkness and every just man. The darkness in this way is not an absence of good (as is evil) but rather a presence of unknown, mysterious, Being (dark to us), that being which is revealed by those who bear witness to it in Christ, and who allow the light to transform them into Being from being, Light from light, true God from God-man.
Gaze upon the starry night that you might wonder at the vast expanse, the beyond, that natural reflection of the infinite God, which calls us to live with the Son, in the light that communicates the Divine to each willing heart. Let us not be cast down but gaze heavenward as our minds question the beyond, and hope to gaze upon the face of God.
This reflection in nature is not metaphorical, but actual, a natural representation of the Divine nature (of course distinct from God!) meant by God to inspire in us the question which is only fulfilled in Him, beyond our natural powers. The importance of the sky is greater than perhaps we ever imagined.
I hope for that day when the angels will usher us in, revealing blazing Being in all its expressions, (each bearing witness to the Divine in its own way, essence), into the inner sanctuary of Light and Love, as we gaze upon the one whom our hearts love, and become immersed in that presence for which we had longed, gazing into the dark and distant skies of starry nights.
“For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them. Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. As a result, they have no excuse; for although they knew God they did not accord him glory as God or give him thanks. Instead, they became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless minds were darkened. While claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for the likeness of an image of mortal man or of birds or of four-legged animals or of snakes.”
I was resting in the doctor’s office room at the urgent care I went to for a physical. The waxy protective paper covered the pillow as well as the bed I was laying on. Rest doesn’t exactly come easy in that environment, but I had to get my blood pressure down a little bit to fulfill the parameters set down for passing the physical. I wasn’t terribly optimistic it would work! I asked Jesus that if it pleased his will he might calm my soul and slow my heart. The more I thought about “just relaxing” the more I felt nervous about not being able to. But then our Lord answered my prayers. As I lay there listening to the beating of my heart a thought entered my mind. In the past I have heard Jesus speak to me in my inner being (not very often!), but it wasn’t exactly like that. I felt like it was more like an inspired thought that Jesus gave me. It went thusly:
This tweet’s relevance to the subject of my blog struck me immediately as it concerns the act of announcing Christ to the world. We often think of the Annunciation in terms of the angel announcing the good news to Mary, but Gabriel is not the principal announcer in this scene. Mary is the one who announces, more than anyone else (other than God himself of course), the good news that Jesus has been conceived, born, grown into a man, nailed to a cross, and finally, risen from the tomb. Gabriel simply by the grace of God arranges things in such a way as to make Mary’s announcement possible. Her words of acceptance call God down from heaven, her humility gives the WORD a home in her womb, in her heart and in each of ours. The words of our Beloved Mother give voice to the Word God wishes to speak to us more than any others. That Word is a person even as you and I are persons; his name is Jesus Christ and he is from a little town called Nazareth, his father is named Joseph and his mother is named Mary.
If your answer is yes you are in very grave spiritual danger as am I and anyone born into a kind of spiritual prosperity. In Scripture so often the people who fit this description are the people too arrogant to realize their extreme poverty before God so as to open their deepest heart to his purifying graces. Religious people are tempted to pretend as though they have it made, that all they have to do is follow along with the exterior dictates of their religion, and they will reach salvation. The reality is that God calls us to something much deeper, to a realization of our radicalized poverty and wretchedness before God. If we don’t accept this reality we put our souls in grave danger as the experience of spiritual poverty is the only means of receiving the riches of God’s grace.
A couple of days ago I was getting a strong spiritual message from the Blessed Mother, a message of comfort and assurance in the midst of uncertainty. I was sitting at the kitchen table looking out the windows as a wonderful afternoon rain fell. I was looking at a large concrete statue of the Blessed Mother, and I remember thinking how beautiful she looked. And not only that! She was also smiling. In the moment I made a mental note that I had never seen a statue of the Blessed Mother smile like that. It seems like very few statues have smiling expressions, they all usually have a serious or solemn sort of look. But other than that I didn’t think anything of it thinking that the expression was just peculiar to that statue.
annunciationblog.com 