DAILY DEVOTIONAL

Saturday, December 1, 2018

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”  The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be known as the Son of God.”– Luke 1:34-35

I choose to not speak of the mystical birth of Christ, the mystical coming together of realms human and Divine, but of the experience described here by the angel. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow.”  From one perspective this speaks of the activity of God; but from another perspective this speaks of the human experience of God.

We do go out and “get” the Holy Spirit, rather the Holy Spirit comes to us and if we allow ourselves to experience this nearing of God, the Holy Spirit enters into us.  Though many people speak of dramatic happenings when the Spirit comes upon them, I have found that among the saints of history, the human experience is one of profound Wonder and a sense of inner transformation.  The imagery of a woman experiencing the awareness of her being with a child forming within her speaks of this Christmas experience of having the Holy Spirit come upon you in a most intimate way.  It speaks of the Wonder in experiencing the power of Life-Creation taking place within one’s own life, a creation of a human child of God.

When the Christian faith becomes a code of laws and rules, when the Christian faith becomes a battle over doctrine, it loses this experience of Wonder, this Christmas Wonder, this Christmas Wonder of the human and the Divine mutually creating New Life.

Always in Christ’s Service,

Fr. Charitas de la Cruz