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Mary!
Discalced
Carmelite Friars
166 Foster
Street
Brighton,
MA 02135-3902
Christmas,
1996
Dear Friends,
Last year at this time I was
telling those of you I hadn’t been in touch with since the previous Christmas
that I had moved from our Monastery in Brighton, MA, back to Peterborough,
NH. I probably told you, too, that our
Provincial Superior and his Council had decided to close the Retreat House
there and sell the property, for lack of sufficient number of Friars to sustain
a viable community life there. Well,
here I am to tell you that the property has been sold and I have moved back to
Brighton. I arrived here on December
10, and managed to settle in by the end of the next day. I have my old room back, and it is so nice
to be here.
Those of you who have had to
move, though, know that moving is not easy.
I’m thinking not so much of the physical and psychological effort
involved, which can be considerable and intimidating, but of the necessity of
having to go from a place wherein one has been quite happy.
Many folks who were aware
that I would be leaving soon after the place was sold thought that I would miss
the very beautiful grounds with its magnificent views of mountains (Grand
Monadnock to the West, and Pack Monadnock and North Pack to the East), but that
was not the case. To be truthful, I
left the physical environment without the least qualm.
At Peterborough I had to
“live” in three separate buildings, something I don’t relish, even when the
weather was most benign. My
bedoom/office was in one building, the Chapel where we friars gathered for
prayer, recitation of the Divine Office and Mass was in another, and we had to
go up to the Retreat House, another building, for our meals. Thankfully, everything here in our Brighton
Monastery is under one roof. At my age,
and I will be seventy years old on my next birthday, that makes a significant
difference.
Then of course, the winters
in New Hampshire have been quite severe in recent years. Here in Boston, near the ocean, the
temperature is always five to ten degrees warmer than in Peterborough, so that
when it does snow, the driving conditions improve much more rapidly.
Another advantage of being
here is that I don’t have any weighty responsibilities. It is so nice now to be able to call another
Friar Fr. Prior, and to be able to pass the buck to him. Thank you, Jesus, for these favors.
Nevertheless, moving was not
easy. And the pure and simple reason
for that was my having to depart from dear friends with whom I had formed a
close spiritual kinship based on devotion to Jesus Eucharistic and to the
Blessed Virgin Mary. I will very much
miss being together with them for Eucharistic Adoration and the recitation of
the Rosary. But then, there is the
Scriptural truth: Love is stronger
than death. That is, death cannot
separate us from the ones we dearly love because they remain in our
hearts. What then, is a mere 75 miles?
Now that I am back in
Brighton, I will continue in the office of Mission Procurator and continue to
be spiritual assistant to several communities of Secular Carmelites. As a member of this Community of the
Espousals of Mary and Joseph, I will be taking my turn discharging various
external and internal house ministries.
For me, life as a Discalced
Carmelite was never dull. In
Peterborough, it did tend to be too hectic to suit my nature. Now I will have more time to savor the
diverse and interesting round of events that fill up my days.
Forgive me for talking so
much about myself. But having done so,
it occurs to me that there have been many changes in your lives since last
Christmas. God grant that whatever they
have been, they have been such as to draw you closer to Him and to others, and
caused you to be ever more grateful for all the evidence of His and their love
for you throughout the past year.
* * * * * * *
Having had to speak of
moving at this time of year has caused me to reflect a little bit upon a move
that the Person of Jesus had to make.
That move, of course, was from Heaven to Earth. He moved from being in the form of God to
being in human form. He had to leave
His abode within the Godhead, and became obliged to relate to His Father and
their Holy Spirit in a new and different way.
That surely must have been very difficult for Him. In effect, while He, the Second Person of
the Most Holy Trinity, was on Earth, He truly was in exile. Could He, in His Humanity, have possibly
regretted having to make that move?
Perhaps I am displaying a
bias in stating the subject as I have.
Was He really obliged to make the move? Did He experience that obligation as something He would rather
not do? Did He really have to
(was He really forced to) become Incarnate?
It seems to me that we
experience obligations and having to do something as forced upon
us and distasteful only when they are not done freely. We do things most freely, of course, when it
is LOVE that moves us to engage in them.
There is more than one
reason why Jesus would have not regretted becoming Incarnate. One is that His LOVE inspired Him to seek identification
with us, whom He loves to the point of foolishness.
Another is that authentic
LOVE seeks the best interests of the loved ones more than oneself, especially
more than one’s personal ease and convenience.
By becoming Man, Jesus was able to meet and satisfy our Supreme best
Interest, which is to be reconciled and reunited with Our Heavenly Father,
Whose friendship we had lost, and from Whom we were separated because of
Original Sin.
Still another is that He so
earnestly desired to have the Blessed Virgin Mary as His Mother. If He could desire to be united to the rest
of us in love, sinners that we are, how much more must He have yearned to
establish between Her and Himself the closest possible bonds of love that can
exist between two human beings, namely between Mother and Child? Besides, as Daughter par excellence
of His Heavenly Father, and as Most Beloved Spouse of His and His
Father’s Holy Spirit, she became for Him a Heaven on Earth. Surely Her Immaculate Heart exercised such a
powerful attraction upon Him, that He must have become Incarnate in Her at the very
first moment that it was possible for Her to conceive.
But was there nothing
repugnant to Jesus about the thought of becoming Incarnate? Well obviously, there were so many things. For example, He came unto His own [people]
and His own received Him not.
Again, The Light shone in the darkness, but men preferred darkness to
the Light.
Yes, Jesus knew He was to
experience most acutely the searing agony of having His LOVE rejected, to
having mere creatures preferred to Him, their Author. Even among those who accepted Him, He knew that so many of
us would so often pierce His heart with our neglect and our ingratitude. He knew that so many of us would serve Him
as mercenaries, seeking the Gifts of God rather than God of Gifts, which He is.
Not only in spite of all
that, but also because of all that, Jesus did indeed so desire to come
into this world as a little child. The
neglect, the ingratitude and the rejection that He foresaw only served to give
more clear and poignant evidence of His infinite Love for us. Yes, we can be sure that Jesus made His
move from Heaven to Earth most freely and willingly. He must have found such great JOY in doing
so.
Then, of course, Jesus knew that
His exile would end. And what an ending
it would be. Yes, it was preceded by
His Passion and death, but at the very moment His human soul left His human
body and returned to His Heavenly Father, He was able to escort with Him
through the now opened gates of Heaven so many souls of the just who had been
languishing in Limbo, awaiting the fruits of the Redemption. Had He not chosen the JOY of coming as a
Baby, He would never have known the far surpassing JOY of returning as Savior
and Father of the world to come.
- * * * * * * * *
As I have been saying in
these past few annual letters, may this Christmas be your best ever.
With
love, in the Holy Family,
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