Don't Miss Christmas
A Humble Admonition from My Home to Yours
We get discouraged and feel despair because we brood about the past and the future. It is such folly to pass one’s time fretting, instead of resting quietly in the heart of Jesus. — John Beevers
Just a brief exhortation the Spirit has pressed heavily upon my heart, for me and for you and yours in light of this week’s celebrations.
Jesus really is the reason for the season.
Don’t miss that.
This past week, in the quiet of a Benedictine monastery library, I stumbled across an obscure French mystic from the seventeenth century, Jean-Pierre de Caussade.
He was never published in his lifetime. Nearly a century after his death, a community of nuns whose predecessors had sat under his spiritual direction gathered his notes (and theirs) and posthumously gifted his wisdom to the Church.
Abandonment to Divine Providence is a hidden classic of the contemplative tradition, and it has quietly focused my final days of Advent.
Caussade’s central claim is startling in its simplicity. Holiness, and the happiness that flows from it, is not difficult to attain.
“Holiness consists in one thing only: complete loyalty to the will of God.”
For Caussade, holiness is nothing more and nothing less than wholehearted surrender to God’s will as it presents itself in the present moment. God’s will is always near, saturating every second, indwelling every fiber of our being and the cosmos itself. We are not distant from it. We are distracted from it.
Sin resists God’s will, yes. But Caussade would argue that most of the time we never even slow down enough to notice how our resistance is operating right now.
And so, we’re exhausted, even though Jesus says, “Come to me, and I will give you rest.” We’re frantic, even though a peace that surpasses understanding is constantly available. We’re anxious because we refuse to relinquish control of an uncontrollable world.
And during the Christmas season, many of us amplify this exhaustion, this frenzy, this anxiety in the name of “honoring” the God who became one of us to deliver us from ourselves.
Caussade offers this simple but also terribly difficult corrective.
“We can find all that is necessary in the present moment. We need not worry about whether to pray or be silent, whether to withdraw into retreat or mix with people, to read or write, to meditate or make our minds a receptive blank, to shun or seek out books on spirituality. Nor do poverty or riches, sickness or health, life or death matter in the least. What does matter is what each moment produces by the will of God. We must strip ourselves naked, renounce all desire for created things, and retain nothing of ourselves or for ourselves, so that we can be wholly submissive to God’s will and so delight him. Our only satisfaction must be to live in the present moment as if there were nothing to expect beyond it.”
He calls the present moment both a duty and a sacrament.
God is present. His will is unfolding in whatever circumstances we find ourselves in. Our task is not to manufacture holiness but to become increasingly aware, increasingly receptive, increasingly surrendered.
Every second is sacramental, a point of contact between heaven and earth. We simply resist living as though this were true.
Of all the seasons of the Christian calendar, Advent demands that we slow down. That we watch, that we wait, and that we refuse to miss the moment.
Don’t miss looking your loved ones in the eye and delighting in their existence. Don’t miss the flavors, the frustrations, the laughter, the tears, the sadness, the joys—don’t miss this Christmas and what Christ is doing in every moment…because He has come, He is present, and He will return.
Take time. Breathe.
I mean that literally.
Breathe.
Follow your breath this coming week. Each inhale reminds us that we are utterly dependent on God for our existence. Each exhale becomes a prayer of gratitude and trust that our lungs will fill again.
Over and over and over and over and over.
Because He is faithful.
Because He loves us.
Don’t miss the wonder of the Incarnation or its implications.
Meditate.
Contemplate.
Be holy and discover deep happiness.
This is my humble exhortation to myself and to you, dear friends.
Finish reading this. Take care of the remaining errands. Get the last minute shopping done. Then turn off your phone. Set down your devices. Start following your breath as an act of prayer.
Resist being lost in the past or consumed by a future that hasn’t arrived. Be radically present and refuse to miss a single sacramental second with your God and your people.
This is my last post until the new year. When we return Jan 12th, we’ll begin a multi-month series called Dragon Slaying, exploring the seven deadly sins and how modern people must re-engage ancient practices of repentance and spiritual warfare.
But that is for the future.
For now, for this present moment, I offer this prayer for you.
Father, settle us into the wonder of your love.
Fill our hearts with awareness and peace.
Remind us with every breath that we are yours and that you sustain us.
Thank you for sending your Son.
Jesus, thank you for your life.
Holy Spirit, we entrust our souls to you.
Don’t miss anything, friends.
He is everywhere, all the time, working a million quiet miracles every single second.
Don’t miss that this Christmas.