Posts
Today’s text
Matthew 2:10-12
The sight
of the star filled them with delight, and going into the house they saw the
child with his mother Mary, and falling to their knees they did him homage.
Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts of gold and frankincense
and myrrh. But they were given a warning in a dream not to go back to Herod,
and returned to their own country by a different way.
Reflection
Once again, the wise men listened to their hearts.
Maybe they didn’t need a nocturnal warning to avoid Herod.
They understood his interest in a newborn heir was a threat to him, and
everyone knew Herod’s blood-soaked reputation.
Still, the wise men’s action protected the holy family and
gave them time to escape Herod’s soldiers. But they also protected their souls.
They listened to the way the Word of Mystery comes to us.
They took seriously that God is and God speaks.
They didn’t cut their minds off from their bodies, their
intellect from that deep internal intuition where one knows love and truth,
beauty and wonder. The wise men listened and knew to depart another way.
They listened to what their inner being was saying to them
as they went their way, knowing they could never go home the same way they’d
come. They may not have understood who Jesus was or what he would do, but they
knew they’d seen a heavenly promise fulfilled.
The light of the star had drawn them, and they believed something
ordained by the power and Soul of the Universe was unfolding.
Contemplatives and mystics of every tradition urge us to let
the surface chatter of our lives drop away so we might listen, … listen until
that deeper voice emerges from the center of the soul where our souls and the
Soul of God are like two sides of a coin.
Some call this the virginal point within us from which we
know our deepest truth, our truest voice, the worth and value of our lives, the
mystery of love and the reality that our lives are the speaking of another Life
into our little moment of time.
Every spiritual practice we might do seeks to clear away the
chatter so we can hear that voice that is both our truest voice and the Truest
Voice. That Voice speaks of the love in which we are held, and let’s us know
what we must do to be ourselves and know such peace and joy as we can.
It speaks in dreams, intuition, in nature and in sudden
surges of awareness that come over us. It speaks in moments when we just know something we truly need to
know.
The wise men listened, and the truly wise among us know to
listen beyond the surface noise of life, for there is another Voice speaking love
and truth.
As we hear, the heart grows quiet and assured, knowing the
wonder of life--and the certainty of Love and Life who bubbles at our core.
Pr. David L. Miller
No comments:
Post a Comment