Bible
Study: Songs 2, 8 to 14. And Luke 1, 39 to 45.
At the
very heart of our celebrations at Christmas is the fact of God’s love for us
collectively as a human race and individually as his personal children. That God
comes to us in the person of his son Jesus Christ as a baby is a testimony of
his deep love which like that of a lover goes to any extent and is prepared to
make any sacrifice just to be with the one who is loved.
No wonder
then, our first reading today comes from the Songs of Solomon, a book which
uses very raw terminology in speaking about love and the best way to read the
book of Solomon is in the context in which it appears in our liturgy today; the
context of God himself being the lover and we the beloved. Any other reading of
the songs of Solomon that excludes God as the lover only amounts to some form
of erotic imagination which can never exist anyway in reality, between humans.
Now, to
assist us with a correct interpretation of the entire book of Songs, today’s
selection is juxtaposed with the Gospel passage about the visitation of Mary to
Elizabeth.
“The voice
of my beloved, behold he comes leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the
hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Behold he stands behind
our wall gazing in at the windows… My beloved speaks and says to me: Arise…”. “In
those days, Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country.” Do you see a
connection here? The feet of Mary carrying God in her womb moving with haste to
the house of Elizabeth becomes the one leaping upon the mountains, bounding
over the hills. “And she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.”
Mary is
pregnant with Jesus who is God and love itself, and behold she is standing in
front of the house of Elizabeth and she calls out in greeting. Mary’s voice
becomes that of Jesus himself, being a young stag calling out in love. Her
voice becomes the voice of the beloved spoken of by Solomon in the book of
songs. Her voice brings joy and Elizabeth unable to hold herself responds “For
behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the child in my womb
leaped for joy.”
Nothing brings
as much happiness and joy as the sound of a lover’s voice. Even if the lover in
question were to be a fellow human being, you know how restless you become if
you do not hear that voice a whole day yet that is a person who may break your
heart at any time someday. How about if we channel our love to the one whose
love is true, the one who will never give up on us, the love whose love for us
is not predicated on our own goodness or what he stands to gain from us? How
about if we respond in love to love itself and long for his voice as the songs
of Solomon says?
When we
engage in prayer, do we do so as people who are in deep communication with a
lover? Do we allow our prayer spring from the heart? Or do we pray because we
have been told to do so or because we want other people to hear us praying that
they may praise us or fear us for being holy? When Jesus says we should go into
our rooms, shut the door and pray in secret, he was telling us to do exactly
what lovers do, they go into their room, shut the door, free themselves of
distractions and communicate in secret.
The greatest
difficulty we often encounter in spiritual life is the difficulty of accepting
the fact that God loves us deeply in a way that no one else and nothing else
can ever love us. We tend to have a distrust in God’s love and we are more
prone to give our heart to persons or things rather than God himself because we
assume God is too invisible to become the direct object of our love. We only
begin to grow spiritually when we start developing eyes to see God beyond what
our physical eyes can carry. We only begin to grow in spiritual life when we
start loving God by longing for his voice in the scriptures daily. When last
did your take time to read your Bible as a love letter written directly to you
by God himself?
Christmas
is more than eating and drinking. It is the coming of love into the world.
Christmas is a love story, a meeting of a lover and the beloved, an incarnation
of love in flesh and blood, an intermingling, a marriage so to say between the
lover, God and the beloved, you. Christmas is about your true love coming to
you. All other loves are simply imitations of the real. God alone love you so
today, just long for your love, enjoy his presence, talk in love terms to him
in prayer, spend time with your love in prayer and meditation and do so in a
secret and quiet place free from the distractions of the world as Jesus himself
often did when he went to a quiet place to pray, and at times spending whole nights
alone in deep prayer.
Let us
Pray:
Lord
Jesus, I love you, deepen my love for you daily. Amen.
Good morning.
Be Happy. Live Positive. Have Faith. It is well with you.
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