MORE THAN AN ENTIRE GALAXY (Christmas Eve 2024)
My body clock
has altered significantly in the past few weeks. For most of my life I have
found it difficult to fall asleep, often lying awake until three or four in the
morning and then finding it very hard to get up when I need to. Now sleep comes
more easily and I’m wide awake around 4am. By five I’m having breakfast and
then a very calm movement into the day. It gives me five hours of solitude and
it seems like a deepening solitude is what God is giving at this time.
Sunday morning brought me down to Rock-a-Nore in the hope of seeing the sun rise and after an hour of waiting, it obliged beautifully. A prophecy, a prelude to the more wonderful dawning that visits us from on high at Christmas.
The wind was incredibly bitter, so I
took shelter behind the Southern Water pumping station for a time, taking
photographs, praying, pondering. Thinking about dear friends who are bearing
serious illness; thinking about the little baby whose funeral I had on Friday;
feeling for her devastated parents, her dignified and brave older sister.
The seagulls,
a great big flock of them, are in an uproarious mood. And there are lovely
memories of times spent down here with family and friends.
There’s a
silence in me now, a peaceful silence but I’m looking for some astonishment. I
want to be amazed for Christmas. To be excited. Like a child is excited.
We had it a
couple of weeks ago at Mass with the children. Talking about joy. Gaudete
Sunday. They described what joy does to them. You can’t sit still, you jump up
and down, you sing, you dance, you clap your hands – some of the things they
said. And we sang, “if you’re happy and you know it…” and one little lad jumped
up and down in front of me and with true excitement declared, “this is the best
day ever!”
And this
morning I read something astonishing on the BBC website about the NASA Parker
Solar Probe which today, Christmas Eve 2024, is to come closer to the sun than any
other human made object has ever done. It was launched in 2018 and travels at a
speed of 430,000 miles per hour which is faster than anything else has ever
done and they say such speed is like flying from London to New York is less
than 30 seconds.
The immensity
of the universe always astonishes me, the infinitely greater immensity of God
the Creator and the awesome fact that this Almighty One comes to birth as a
tiny baby in a little manger in a stable in Bethlehem. It’s really difficult to
take that in and I wonder if I have become too used to the idea, the reality of
it.
And, while I
am astonished by what NASA does, by the universe, I am most deeply moved by
what is human, touched by who a child is, what a child can do to me. All the
children here affect me deeply as do my little ones at home. Their innocence,
their purity.
It is six-year-old
Cole who is on my mind. I sent all my little great nephews a video of me
switching on the lights of my eensy-weensy Christmas tree. It brought a smile to Rian and Cole
responded with a video message, “I love you Eamonn and…I love
you.” His beautiful face looking out at me from my phone. And last night his Granny Eve told me how, when she had read to him his
bedtime story and his eyes were heavy with sleep, his hand came up from under
the duvet, he blessed himself and said his prayers. He does that without fail,
without having to be told, he does it even when the adults forget all about it.
“I love you God” is one of the beautiful prayers he says.
That touches the spot, does more than an entire galaxy.
It is the wisdom of God to astonish us with the whole of creation but to profoundly move us by becoming a little child and by moving us to change us, transform in a way that astonishment cannot.
Come Lord JesusCome Divine Child of my heart
Come to the Stable that I am
To the Manger of my soul
What is offered here
Is something less than you deserve
A lot less than I would like
It is all that I have
All that I am
But Bethlehem the least
is all You require
And so it is with me, with us
You are warmly welcome
to where we are and how
"I AM already here" you reply
Happy Christmas, and a blessed and Hope filled Jubilee Year of 2025
which will mark 2025 years since the birth of Jesus. And thank you for reading
this!
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