Monday, December 18th:
Yesterday, we lighted the candle of joy to shine alongside the candles of hope and peace. When you invite and receive the Holy Spirit of God into your life, Christ becomes real and God’s love transforms you, bit by bit into the image and likeness of God at the core of your being… The layers of sin and decay are cracked open and God allows you to remove the debris more and more as you enter into a journey of deepening Communion. Time, space and matter become different…
Jesus came in the fullness of time. He will come again in the fullness of time. Wherever Jesus, the Christ, is the time is brought to its fullness.
We often experience our time as empty. We hope that tomorrow, next week, next month or next year the real things will happen. But sometimes we experience the fullness of time. That is when it seems that time stands still, that past, present, and future become one; that everything is present where we are; and that God, we, and all that is have come together in total unity. This is the experience of God’s time. “When the completion of the time came [that is: in the fullness of time], God sent his Son, born of a woman” (Galatians 4:4), and in the fullness of time God will “bring everything together under Christ, as head, everything in the heavens and everything on earth” (Ephesians 1:10). It is in the fullness of time that we meet God.
Henri Nouwen
For further reflection…
At midnight the cry rang out: “Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!” – Matthew 25: 6 (NIV)