29 November
Dear friends,
“I feel that my mission is about to begin: my mission of making others love God as I love Him, my mission of teaching my little way to souls. If God answers my requests, my heaven will be spent on earth until the end of the world. Yes, I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth.”
These are the well-known words of St. Therese of Lisieux, who passed away at the tragic age of only 24. She was known for her “little way,” which can be summarized as “doing small things with great love” (words echoed by Mother Teresa, who was named after St. Therese). St. Therese believed she was a “little soul” who did not wish to make an enormous change in the world. Instead, she focused on the little things and aimed to do them well: chores, everyday tasks, random moments spent with people, and speaking words of kindness. What I find intriguing about her story is her embrace of shortcomings, failings, and vulnerabilities. In fact, it is through her vulnerability that she finds God.
It is that time of year again—the time when heaven and earth come together, when the big becomes small and the small becomes incomprehensibly big. This season invites us to eagerly await God’s redemption of the cosmos from the intimate setting of a crib in Bethlehem. We are confronted with the mystery that God is both infinitely large and intimately near: God of the cosmos and microcosm.
During this Advent season, the crib of Jesus in Bethlehem becomes, in the words of theologians Jaap Du Rand and Dirkie Smith, a paradigm of God’s grace. When we look into the small crib, we discover the vastness of God’s grace. This becomes our reference point—indeed, our paradigm—for everything we know about ourselves and about God. Throughout this season, we will journey through the profoundly apocalyptic Gospel of Luke and relate it to the epistles written by Paul for small communities. In many ways, we will try to connect the grand work of God to the small details of our daily lives.
The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, captures the profound nature of God’s infinite and intimate essence in his poem “Advent Calendar.”
He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.
He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.
He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.
He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.
Marius Louw
ERC Minister