Let Us See As God Sees | A Virtual Pilgrimage of Incarnation Reflections - Week 1

For Thursday of the 1st Week of Advent Lauren Hackman-Brooks begins leading us in a Contemplation on the Incarnation, an Ignatian meditation of God's love for all.

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Transcript

Saint Patrick’s Day Chicago. Green River. Green beer. I was 22, walking past bar after bar, raucous shouting and loud music spilling into the streets. I was on a silent retreat. Statistically speaking, there were many more like me in the bars than in the retreat house. Let me be clear, though: this was not some holier-than-thou exercise. Rather, it was a function of time and place.

This was the weekend I was available. The retreat house was in an urban neighborhood. I had been inside most of the day, and I wanted to take a walk. Later that evening, I sat on the floor of my room, and faces came to me in my mind — not people I knew, but faces of strangers. First, it was some of the people I had seen earlier that day, on the sidewalk and in the bars.

Then I saw faces from other parts of the city. Next, people in other places — different cities and towns and rural areas and countries and continents. People of so many colors, ages, cultures, shapes. In my mind I saw people — all kinds of people — doing all kinds of things. Different languages and professions, abilities and interests, income levels, living situations.

They were working, cooking, sleeping, painting, farming, caring for children and old people. Alone in my room, above the green beer and the green river, I had this sense that God saw all these people too — and loved them, and was with them. Years later, as I became more familiar with the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, I was taken by a section called the “Contemplation on the Incarnation.”

It reminded me of that neighborhood–walking, floor–sitting, silent retreat on Saint Patrick’s Day weekend and my experience of a God who is 

God-with-us — all of us. Rather than simply tell you about the Contemplation on the Incarnation, I will guide you through a variation of it, which we will spread out over three days. Today we join the Trinity

in the time before Jesus’s birth and look with the Trinity upon the whole face of the earth. Tomorrow we will look with the Trinity as the gaze focuses in on Mary of Nazareth, and on the third day we will look with the Trinity upon our world. Today, we pause for a moment of quiet as we begin our prayer.

Come, Holy Spirit.

I ask for the grace I desire before the mystery of God becoming human.

I place myself with the Trinity before the Incarnation. I become present with Creator, Christ, and Spirit as they look with love upon the earth. I try to see with God what God sees: people being born and people dying; some marrying and others divorcing; old people, children, babies, and people of every age in between. Rich and poor. Happy and sad.

I see killing and addiction, sickness and loneliness, forgiveness and celebration. I see some manipulating people and power and money for more, while so many barely get by with so much less. With God, I hear people laughing and crying, shouting and screaming, praying and cursing. I envision God’s vast love and compassion for all.

It is as if I can hear the Divine Person saying, Let us work for the redemption of the whole of humanity. Let us respond to the groanings of all creation.

I witness the leap of divine joy: The time is now. It is time to reveal the fullness of the mystery of salvation. I imagine God’s love moving deliberately and tenderly, covering the globe — the whole of the universe. And I stay with God and God’s vision as God looks toward Nazareth, which is where we will go tomorrow in our prayer.

Amen.