All babies look like Winston Churchill! The
story goes that a friend once remarked to Churchill, "Winston! How
wonderfully your new grandson resembles you!" and Churchill immediately
replied, "All babies look like me. But then, I look like all babies."
Whether
a true story or not, the phrase “all babies look like Winston Churchill”
entered popular culture as a way of saying that, although we naturally look to
see the characteristic features of both parents’ families in the face of a new
born child, all newborn babies look very similar because at that stage the
distinctive characteristics of their face have yet to develop fully.
Think
about that in relation to the story from Luke’s Gospel (Luke 2: 22-40) that we have heard read
this morning when Simeon and Anna both knew that the six week old baby in
Mary’s arms was God’s Messiah, the one who would bring salvation to all
peoples. Now, at that time all six week old babies had to be brought to the
Temple in Jerusalem. So there would have been other babies there on the same day
and Simeon and Anna seem to have both been regular visitors to the Temple
looking out for God’s Messiah. They might have seen thousands of six week old
babies over the years that they had spent in the Temple. How did Simeon and
Anna know that baby Jesus was different from all the other babies that they had
seen brought into the Temple?
It
was the Holy Spirit that led Simeon into the Temple on that day so that he could encounter
Jesus and it was the Holy Spirit that had assured him that he would not die
before he had seen the Lord’s promised Messiah. In addition, Simeon was waiting
– looking out, praying for, expecting – Israel to be saved. He was expecting
God to reveal the Messiah to him before he died and so he would have been
constantly looking for signs of the Messiah. So, we have a combination of the Holy
Spirit’s revelation and Simeon’s expectation – his active looking - that reveal
the Messiah to him in a six week old baby boy.
Often
God’s work in the world and in other people is not easy to spot. God works in
and through the ordinary and everyday, through the people and things around us
and we need to be looking out for signs of his activity and presence. We need
to be listening for his Holy Spirit to prompt us to look at some ordinary thing
or ordinary person in order to see God at work.
In
the film American Beauty, Ricky shows
Jane a blurry video of a plastic bag blowing in the wind among autumn leaves.
As they watch he explains that "this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like
a little kid begging me to play with it. . . . And that’s the day I knew there
was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force, that
wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid. Ever." "Sometimes,”
he says, “there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like
my heart’s going to cave in.” To encounter God as that incredibly benevolent
force that wants us to know that there is no reason to ever feel afraid, we need
to pay attention to the beauty of the ordinary, overlooked things in life, like
a plastic bag being blown by the wind. As Saint Augustine
said, “How many common things are trodden underfoot which, if examined
carefully, awaken our astonishment.”
Jean Pierre de Caussade was a French Jesuit priest and
writer known for his work Abandonment toDivine Providence and his work with Nuns of the Visitation in Nancy, France. De Caussade coined a
phrase to describe what we have just been talking about. He called it 'The
Sacrament of the Present Moment,' which ‘refers to God's coming to us at each
moment, as really and truly as God is present in the Sacraments of the Church
... In other words, in each moment of our lives God is present under the signs
of what is ordinary and mundane. Only those who are spiritually aware and alert
discover God's presence in what can seem like nothing at all. This keeps us
from thinking and behaving as if only grand deeds and high flown sentiments are
'Godly'. Rather, God is equally present in the small things of life as in the
great. God is there in life's daily routine, in dull moments, in dry prayers
... There is nothing that happens to us in which God cannot be found. What we
need are the eyes of faith to discern God as God comes at each moment - truly
present, truly living, truly attentive to the needs of each one.’ (Elizabeth Ruth Obbard, Life in God's NOW, New City, 2012)
‘To pay profound
attention to reality is prayer, because to enter the depths of this moment is
to encounter God. There is always only now. It is the only place that God can
be found.’ So, 'Contemplative prayer is the art of paying attention to what is.’
(Simon Small, 'From the Bottom of the Pond', O Books, 2007)
Brother Lawrence was a member of the Carmelite Order in France during
the 17th Century. He
spent most of his life in the kitchen or mending shoes, but became a great
spiritual guide. He saw God in the mundane tasks he carried out in the priory
kitchen. Daily life for him was an ongoing conversation with God. He wrote: “we
need only to recognize God intimately present with us, to address ourselves to
Him every moment.”
As a result, "The
time of action does not differ from that of prayer. I possess God as peacefully
in the bustle of my kitchen, where sometimes several people are asking me for
different things at the same time, as I do upon my knees before the Holy
Sacrament.”
“It is not needful to have
great things to do. I turn my little omelette in the pan for the love of
God. When it is finished, if I have nothing to do, I prostrate myself on
the ground and worship my God, who gave me the grace to make it, after which I arise
happier than a king. When I can do nothing else, it is enough to have
picked up a straw for the love of God.”
“We ought not to be
weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness
of the work, but the love with which it is performed.”
This sort of
spirituality - the sense of the presence of God in all things, and the
possibility of honouring God in every action is also found in our hymn books.
We sing:
‘Teach
me, my God and King,
In all
things thee to see,
And what I do in any thing,
To
do it as for thee:’
‘A servant with this clause
Makes
drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,
Makes
that and the action fine.
This
is the famous stone
That
turneth all to gold:
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for
less be told.’
If we practising the
presence of God in the sacrament of the present moment, as Brother Lawrence and
Jean Pierre de Caussade teach
us, then we will be like Simeon and Anna, able to signs of God’s
activity and presence all around us. Because, as Bill Fay sings, when our eyes are open and our hearts are
expectant:
‘There are miracles,
In the strangest of places
There are miracles,
Everywhere you go
I see fathers,
Hold a little child's hand
I see mothers,
Holding a little child's hand
I see trees, trees,
Blowing in the wind
I see seeds,
Being sown by the wind
It's a cosmic concerto,
and it stirs my soul.
I see grandmas,
Blowing kisses into a pram
I see grandpas,
Scratching their head in amazement
It's a cosmic concerto,
and it stirs my soul
It's a cosmic concerto,
and it stirs my soul.’
Let us pray: Help me become attentive to this
moment which will never come again. May I know you in the sacrament of the
present moment seeing that you are there in life's daily routine, in dull
moments, in dry prayers. More than that, that all is in you, all is held in the
palms of your hands. May I see the present moment as though I were walking on
my hands, seeing the world hanging upside to know dependence and rest in the
Maker’s hands. Amen.
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Bill Fay -
Cosmic Concerto (Life Is People).
