There is a meditation I often turn to when giving retreats and workshops. It’s by the late Indian Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello. It’s called “The Advent” and it’s an invitation to prayerfully consider God-at-work in our personal stories.
The meditation is sprawling. What do I mean? De Mello prompts us to consider the full breadth and depth of our own graced history, to put our own story alongside Christ’s. In so doing, we necessarily find ourselves finely woven within the fabric of God’s own sweeping narrative.
There are no small parts here.
The prayer begins like this: “The events of history were controlled for my coming to this world no less than for the coming of the Savior.” Whoa.
We’ve just spent the better part of a month preparing ourselves to receive Christ anew at Christmas. In so doing, we traversed stories from ancient times that foretold Christ’s coming, that set the table year after year for the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. We heard from angels and we walked with saints and we contemplated the holy words of the Blessed Mother. So much had to be put in place; so much had to go right.
Is it possible that God is just as intentional, just as meticulous, just as intimately present in the unfolding nature of our own stories?
When I share this reflection on retreat, there is a section — an invitation, really — that seems to always get people. It gets me. Near the end of the meditation, de Mello instructs us to “recall the song the angels sang when Christ was born.” Well, we can do that, no? Immediately, our minds jump to any number of songs and lyrics: hark! we hear angels singing from on high; we cry joy to the world; and, we go to tell it all upon the mountain.
Indeed, if you’ve been following along with our Advent series (and you can find the whole collection of reflections here), then you know that turning to song in preparation for Christ’s coming is a fruitful exercise.
But then de Mello turns the tables: “Have I ever heard the song the angels sang when I was born?” And the answer, from one retreat to the next, is a resounding, stunned and silent no.
And why would we have heard such a song? Angels don’t sing for us! We aren’t worthy of such heavenly hosts, and we certainly don’t want to waste their time.
And yet.
And yet, I imagine if we take a moment of prayerful silence as we stand at the threshold of years both old and new, we may hear that song. We may capture just a line here, a lyric there, a bit of the melody. Because the angels do sing for us; God delights in us. Christ was just born anew to live boldly within each of us.
And so, let us continue our season of songs and carols. But let us do so by first sinking into silence. Because in that silence, the angels still sing. And they sing a song for each of us, as unique as any snowflake.
May that song be a blessing, a source of sustenance, as you embark upon a new year.
