A Season of Silent Growth

Dear Friend,

On Tuesday morning I sat on the front steps of the Mission with a song rising in my heart: the world is waiting for the sunrise. Actually, it’s what I was doing - waiting for the sunrise, and not only me, but there was Father Larry and several dozen others - let’s call them “friends of the solstice.”

A sense of peace was filling my heart as I watched the horizon, even though I knew, as I suppose we all did at that point, that the “solstice window” was not going to work its magic on the reredos of the Mission Church, not this year, not with this blanket of grey clouds filling the sky. Undaunted, Father Larry stood up and spoke to us about the radiant dawn we were all waiting for, the dawn of an interior space, in our hearts - and maybe that’s where my sense of peace was coming from. 

“A Season of Silent Growth” some call it. The Gospel text we’d hear at Mass would reprise our Sunday proclamation of the Visitation, a great depiction of silent growth poignantly vocalized in the words attributed to Elizabeth: “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.” Maybe that was all of us, seated on those front steps, gazing into the darkness as the light did its best to break it open.   

The fulfillment did not come when we wanted it on Tuesday morning at 7:05 am, certainly not in the way we had expected it. But neither did the birth of our Lord and Savior. Yet for those with the eyes to see there was beauty and peace - even music in the heart! 

May that beauty and peace be yours this Christmas and all through the year ahead!

Gratefully,

Fr. Dan ofm, Pastor