3 OSB Connections
  • Home
  • Seasonal Reflections
    • 2018 Advent Reflections
    • Advent Reflections
    • Lenten Reflections
  • Who We Are
    • Emmanuel Monastery
      • Emmanuel News
    • Saint Gertrude Monastery
      • Saint Gertrude News
    • Saint Benedict Monastery
      • Saint Benedict News
  • Oblates
    • Oblates Emmanuel
    • Oblates Saint Gertrude
    • Oblates Saint Benedict
    • Special Events
  • Facing Forward in Hope
  • Poetry Page
  • 3 OSB Reads
  • Links
  • Home
  • Seasonal Reflections
    • 2018 Advent Reflections
    • Advent Reflections
    • Lenten Reflections
  • Who We Are
    • Emmanuel Monastery
      • Emmanuel News
    • Saint Gertrude Monastery
      • Saint Gertrude News
    • Saint Benedict Monastery
      • Saint Benedict News
  • Oblates
    • Oblates Emmanuel
    • Oblates Saint Gertrude
    • Oblates Saint Benedict
    • Special Events
  • Facing Forward in Hope
  • Poetry Page
  • 3 OSB Reads
  • Links

Christ is born to all of us today

12/25/2017

Comments

 

Christmas Day 
Ellen Cronin, Oblate, St. Benedict Monastery, Bristow, VA

Picture
Sandy Spring Meeting House, MD

Christ is born to all of us today (1)
​
Growing up in a Quaker Meeting community, with our expectant, waiting worship, with no ritual and relatively few words, I learned to enter a silence of God and to listen and look. Over years I became aware of the light, light from outside the large windows of the Quaker Meeting House, a light sometimes covering all of us in worship and sometimes radiating from one person, and the light within, light everywhere! Later when I read his Journal, George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, provided words to affirm my experience:
​
“Christ it was who had enlightened me, that gave me his light to believe in, and gave me hope, which is himself, revealed himself in me, and gave me his spirit and gave me his grace, which I found sufficient in the deeps and in weakness.” (2) And the words of the Prologue of the Book of John especially have resonated for me: “He was with God in the beginning…. What has come into being in him was life, life that was the light of men, and light shines in darkness and darkness could not overpower it…. The Word was the real light that gives light to everyone…. To those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God” (New Jerusalem Bible, John 1: 2, 4-5, 9, 12)
Picture
Light shining through everything
I have loved reading the poems of Ann Weems at Christmas.
One is “Christmas Comes”:
​
‘Christmas comes every time we see God in other persons.
The human and the holy meet in Bethlehem or in Times Square,
for Christmas comes like a golden storm on its way to Jerusalem-determinedly, inevitably….
Even now it comes in the face of hatred and warring- no atrocity too terrible to stop it, no Herod strong enough, no hurt deep enough, no curse shocking enough, no disaster shattering enough.
For someone on earth will see the star, someone will hear the angel voices, someone will run to Bethlehem, someone will know peace and goodwill:
The Christ will be born!’ (3)
 
George Fox also wrote, “I … saw there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness. In that also I saw the infinite love of God.” (4)
 
For reflection: How will my priorities change as I receive the babe Christ this year?
Picture
​1. “The Nativity Kerygma” in Seasons of Celebration by Thomas Merton, pp.101-112.
2,4. The Journal of George Fox, ed. John L. Nickalls, p.12 (2), p.19 (4).
3.  Kneeling in Bethlehem by Ann Weems, 1980.
Comments

      Subscribe to our blog

      [object Object]
    Submit

    Archives

    January 2018
    December 2017

    Categories

    All
    1st Sunday Of Advent 2017
    2nd Sunday Of Advent 2017
    3OSB
    3rd Sunday Of Advent 2017
    4th Sunday Of Advent 2017
    Advent Reflections
    Advent Waiting
    Benedictine
    Benedictine Listening
    Christmas Day 2017
    Epiphany 2018
    Gaudete
    Journey
    Journey Of The Magi
    Joy
    Light
    Prefer Nothing To Christ
    Quaker Meeting
    RB 72
    Sitting In Silence
    Straight Path For The Lord
    TS Eliot Poem
    Yes Like Mary

Three OSB Connections
Lutherville - Ridgely - Bristow
  • Home
  • Seasonal Reflections
    • 2018 Advent Reflections
    • Advent Reflections
    • Lenten Reflections
  • Who We Are
    • Emmanuel Monastery
      • Emmanuel News
    • Saint Gertrude Monastery
      • Saint Gertrude News
    • Saint Benedict Monastery
      • Saint Benedict News
  • Oblates
    • Oblates Emmanuel
    • Oblates Saint Gertrude
    • Oblates Saint Benedict
    • Special Events
  • Facing Forward in Hope
  • Poetry Page
  • 3 OSB Reads
  • Links