4th Sunday of Lent

Reflection written by Bishop David Walker

Last week’s Sunday Readings focused on God’s outstretched hand of mercy and our invitation to overcome our sin and suffering to accept God’s grace. This fourth week’s Sunday Readings, further that promise. The

Lenten Season lends itself to experiencing God’s tender mercy, in order that our lives may be transformed. The more we enter into the Season of Lent, the more we will come to the awareness that God can only be a God of new life for us.

Despite the impossibilities of our situations, there is always faith in God that will see us through. In the first Reading from Joshua we read of the transitioning of the life of the Hebrews who once were in slavery in Egypt and now experience their freedom and satisfaction in the Promised Land. For God provides and

does so abundantly, when we are willing to partake in the Promise to be all God calls us to be. Our Lenten journey is towards the goal of self-fulfilment in God, just as Jesus walked the path of suffering and death, to fullness of life.

Our second Reading from the Letter to the Corinthians speaks of life becoming a new creation in Christ. Last Sunday we focused on the invitation to get up out of our misery and grasp the open hand of God. This week, as our Reading declares, we will find new life in our Lenten journey, when we can live our lives once again in accordance to God’s will.

Our Gospel Reading this Sunday is that of the parable of the loving father and his two sons, and is one of the most enduring passages, for very good reasons. It encapsulates all we have been focusing on throughout Lent, the ongoing invitation to turn away from our wasted living and run into the open arms of our God who is love. The hope and promise, the transformation and salvation, the joy and love of our lives, is God’s agenda and our fulfilment. God has waited behind the scenes forever, waiting for us to turn around and come home.

This Season of Lent is a journey from sin and despair, from careless living and guilt, into the dawn of a new life, graced with hope and joy, peace and love.

We All Carry Our Story

By Jean Cheng

Today is my third week back in Melbourne and at STAY.

As I attend another bible study during the weekday,

It was the second time I was going through the same Gospel for bible sharing.

But that's what I love about God.

He is a God of surprises.

Whenever you think that you know something and there's nothing more to know,

He surprises you.

He did that for me again, 

Ministering to me in a different way with the exact same passage.

What's even better is that I was exploring the same passage with different people.

I am constantly in awe of God really reaches out to EVERY person in His own way.

We all carry our our story, 

Our own Gospel to share by our very lives.

Today, I was enriched by the Gospel of three others' lives.

And am so grateful to experience God through their stories/lives.

Thank You God for being alive through showing me that the Word is ever relevant, 

Ever new,

Ever ready to meet me wherever I am. 

Thank You God for being alive through others,

And coming alive - word made flesh - through them.

3rd Sunday of Lent

Reflection written by Bishop David Walker

The third Sunday of Lent lays heavy emphasis on suffering, the destructive force of sin, and the unexpected healing presence of God. It is a timely theme for Lent, when we are called to repent. The time of Lent, also a

time of fasting and penance, invites us to re-examine our lives and in particular, where we have strayed into ways of misery and failure, which is the focus of the Readings today. Lent is our time to stop and consider conversion, which is only possible through our recognition and acceptance of God’s grace.

In Exodus 3 we encounter the well-known story of Moses and the burning bush. If we delve further we come to the awareness that it is the story of present suffering and the hope of salvation, which is very much similar to our Lent and Easter times of repentance and new life. Moses himself is a man of sorrow but at the burning bush he comes to an awareness that all the Hebrew people are suffering too. As God declares, ‘I have observed the misery of my people in Egypt’. There is suffering all around us, wherever one may be and whoever they are. It is unfortunately a universal phenomenon that drags people down. However, today’s reading offers the hope of a new life, where people can overcome their injustices and live in freedom. God promises to Moses, ‘Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them.’ What we have here is a God moved with compassion, a God who seeks human joy and desires to save us. It is the one and same God who will be with us in his Son Jesus, the same God who loved us into being and who chose to experience human suffering and death. God takes the initiative always to draw closer to us. The question is, will we accept the promise and hope God extends to us, when we are suffering in our sin?

The following two Readings from 1 Cor 10 and Luke 13 are firm in their message and raise the question, will we continue to wallow in sin and misery when God is among us? Yes God extends compassion and money. God takes the initiative but do we respond? Can we, during this Lenten Season, recognise and appreciate the blessings of life and commit to living under God’s grace and will, or will we remain the barren fig tree. The fi g tree gave no fruit, yet Jesus was willing to give it another go. God is always waiting patiently to give us another chance.

God was with the people in Egypt when they were enslaved, God was in the desert with the people despite the rebellion, God took them to the Promised Land leading them to the waters of life, and God is with us today in giving hope in our struggles. In this Lenten week, we are reminded that God hears our cries and knows our suffering. Now it is up to us to come forward as Moses did, to listen to God and be transformed in the hope of new life.

2nd Sunday of Lent

Reflection written by Bishop David Walker

We are on a journey, a journey from the womb to the tomb and beyond. As Paul reminds us in our second reading we are citizens of heaven put on this planet for a short while that we may come to know God, to believe that God is the one true God and to worship God and no other.

In the reading from the Book of Genesis we note that over 4000 years ago Abraham, then known as Abram, for himself and for you and me, entered into a covenantal relationship with God. Abraham promised that God would be his only God and that he and his descendants would only worship God and no other. God promised Abraham that his descendants would be as many as the stars in heaven. True to God’s promise you and I are part of the countless descendants of Abraham, our father in faith. Have we, the descendants of Abraham, been true to our promise? Do we worship only God or do other lesser gods such as money,

fame, power, body image, popularity, distract us from our part of the bargain.

Our Gospel reminds us that on their journey to Jerusalem and the Cross, the disciples needed to be reminded of the majesty of God. Jesus was transfigured before Peter, James and John so that they may see (that is, to know in their hearts and their souls) that Jesus is the Son of God and that they may listen (hear with the ears of the hearts and souls) to Jesus. Jesus can transfigure us if we only have the eyes to see and the ears to listen.

On our journey through life do we need to be reminded that Jesus is our Lord and God? Do we need to see with the eyes of our soul, to listen with the ears of our souls and to believe? Do we need to take time during this Lenten period to put the busy-ness of our lives to one side, to quieten the noise in which we live and to listen for the words of Jesus as our Father commands us?

Abraham listened to God with the ears of his soul and saw God with the eyes of his soul and believed. We, and the billions of citizens of heaven who come to know and believe in God, Father, Son and Spirit, are the fruits of that belief. Like Abraham, our father in faith, like Peter, James and John and like the billions

of fellow citizens of heaven may we stand humbly before our God see, listen and worship God with all our hearts and all our souls and all our might.

First Sunday of Lent

Reflection written by Bishop David Walker

As we have heard many times the Season of Lent is a time of preparation. We prepare by prayer, good works and fasting. What are we preparing for? Only the celebration of the second greatest miracle that you and I will ever encounter, the resurrection of Jesus. The first greatest miracle was God taking on our humanity so we may call God, Abba, Father. As people of faith through the grace of God we celebrate what we profess. We profess that Jesus the living Word died, was buried, went into our graves took us by the hand and led us to eternal life. Now that is something to celebrate.

In the first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses is making his farewell speech to his people in which he tells them to offer the first fruits of the harvest to the Lord our God and then to celebrate. Jesus is the first fruit of the harvest of the Lord. Through the Paschal Mystery we witness the offering of those first fruits to the Father and then we celebrate.

Any good celebration takes time and hard to work to prepare. To properly celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord we must prepare. How? By prayer, by fasting and by good works, that is how. In our Gospel we are reminded that Jesus prepared for his ministry by fasting in the desert. While he was in the desert when he was "famished" Jesus was tempted by the devil. When he was at his lowest, Jesus was tempted with power over nature, "turn these stones into bread", over people, "worship me and I will give you dominion over all nations" and over God, "jump and God will send angels to protect you." How did Jesus meet these temptations? He prayed, "One does not live on bread alone", "Worship the Lord your God and serve only God" and "Do not put the Lord your God to the test."

Life can be a struggle. When we are "famished" we are tempted. We are tempted by power over nature. Do we use more than we need? We are tempted by power over people. Do we impose our will on others? We are tempted by power over God. Do we tell God what we expect out of life, what God can do, indeed must do, for us? How do we meet those temptations? In the extract taken from Paul's Letter to the Romans, we "confess with our lips that Jesus is Lord and believe" and God will save us.

As we prepare for the miracle that is Easter may we place ourselves, our lives, our successes, our failures before the Lord our God. We are the first fruits of the harvest of the Word who is on our lips and in our hearts. Let us place those first fruits before the Lord our God and let's celebrate.

Ash Wednesday Reflection

By Jack Chui

This Lent, I found a fantastic reflection series written by Bishop David Walker from my parent's diocese of Broken Bay (in Sydney's north). I plan to take STAY cell group through the Sunday Reading reflections.

This is the one for Ash Wednesday and I'll post the other guides for each Sunday when the time comes. A copy of the whole reflection (Lectio Divina) Lenten series can be found here: http://www.dbb.org.au/_uploads/_ckpg/files/lectio/Lectio_Lent13_WEB.pdf

Readings for Ash Wednesday (Joel 2:12-18, 2Cor 5:20-6:2, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18)
http://www.universalis.com/20130213/mass.htm

Ash Wednesday

Some of the most fertile and rich soil comes from ashes. Out of these ashes, signs of our mortal nature, comes something else. Once we recognise our own responsibility for wrongdoing, once we acknowledge our mortal and dusty nature, the ashes also become a sign of fertility.

If we are truly repentant, and truly cleansed, and open to the reality of God around us, then we are also fertile, ready to give growth to greatness.

Out of seven years’ worth of ashes on the island of Madeira came one of the finest wines of the time. There is no way the wine could have been produced without the burning, without the ashes. In fact, it was the burning that cleared the ground in the first place.

Ash Wednesday and Lent are, likewise, the burning and cleaning of our Christian lives. We enter a time for confession, for penitence, for realisation of our earthly nature. But this is also a fertile day, a time for self-examination and self-preparation. Today is getting us ready for something.

In The Artful Ashes, Jan Richardson shared what she discovered when she undertook a project where she learned to draw in charcoal:

Taking up a new medium, entering a different way of working, diving or tiptoeing into a new approach: all of this can be complex, unsettling, disorienting. Launching into the unknown and untried confronts us with what is undeveloped within us. It compels us to see where we are not adept, where we lack skill, where we possess little gracefulness. Yet what may seem like inadequacy – as I felt in my early attempts with charcoal – becomes fantastic fodder for the creative process, and for life. Allowing ourselves to be present to the messiness provides an amazing way to sort through what is essential and to clear a path through the chaos. To borrow the words of the writer of Psalm 51, the psalm for Ash Wednesday, it creates a clean heart within us.

Ash Wednesday beckons us to cross over the threshold into a season that’s all about working through the chaos to discover what is essential. The ashes that lead us into this season remind us where we have come from. They beckon us to consider what is most basic to us, what is elemental, what survives after all that is extraneous is burned away. With its images of ashes and wilderness, Lent challenges us to reflect on what we have filled our lives with, and to see if there are habits, practices, possessions, and ways of being that have accumulated, encroached, invaded, accreted, layer upon layer, becoming a pattern of chaos that threatens to insulate us and dull us to the presence of God.

Have you settled on a Lenten discipline? Are you thinking of making room for silence in your life? What are you thinking about for this Lent? What needs to be added to your life? What could you do without?

I Pondered Your Love

By Jean Cheng

Yesterday morning as I said my prayers, 

I came across the Psalm for the day and the line, 

"We ponder your love" (Psalm 48:9) struck me.

I almost brushed past these four words because I couldn't connect with them.

How was I supposed to ponder God's love?

Where would I start? 

What does pondering His love mean?

A new concept, I finally decided to pray,

So I wrote in my prayer journal,

"Father, I don't ponder your love.

Help me to ponder it and be deeply joyful in your love"

Yesterday marked exactly three years since my bf and I met each other.

Three years ago we met in his church.

Three years later,

We were attending daily mass at St Joseph's Church,

Just wanting to give thanks to God, 

Remembering that it isn't just three years of him and I,

But it's been three years of God, him and I: our three-way relationship. ;)

So as I knelt before the altar,

I was ready to enter into all of my usual prayer requests,

When I stopped.

I looked at Jesus, and said,

'Today, I will not ask for anything. 

Today, I am here to thank you.'

Just like that, 

I spent the whole mass in gratitude,

Contemplating all that the Lord has done for me,

Contemplating His great love for me in bringing Marcus into my life.

Contemplating His wisdom in knowing what is best for me,

Even if at times, He has to drag a screaming Jean through it.

It wasn't until after I left mass that I realised something.

Psalm 48: 9 was no longer empty words,

I had just experienced it.

God is funny.

He does answer my daily prayers.

(Just wish He would answer all of them. :P)

Importantly, I've also learnt yesterday that breaking out of my prayer habits 

(i.e., barrage of prayer-requests)

occasionally is not a bad thing.

"If you always do the same thing,

You will always get the same results"

Doing something different yesterday,

Coming to God without a "oh-my-God-please-help-me" spirit,

I experienced something never before.

I pondered His great love for me. :) 

Keeping up the Good Fight

By Jack Chui

Another of the backlog of blog posts I was intending to write...

Over the last couple of months, the Catholic Church in Australia has been put on notice with the Federal Government declaring a Royal Commission into child sexual abuse by those in power in the Church. It applies to other Christian churches as well, but headlining the news has been the scandals in Catholic Church.

It pains me to see the reports as they were constantly in the news because I love the Church more than I thought I would. The Church has been a great stronghold and support for me, nurturing my faith, being visible in faith and standing up to a world which doesn't need God.

It is sad to see that some priests/brothers/leaders in the Church have done (allegedly) such horrid things to children when they preach and are supposed to uphold the high moral standards which God intended on this earth. It only takes a few bad apples to really tarnish the Church and make us look like hypocrites.

In times like this, it can be hard to be known as 'Catholic' when our Church has failed to live up to our high moral standards and also to police and prevent wrongdoing from continuing. But to me, it is also a test and a time to stand for our Church, like our father/mother/partner would stand by us when we are facing trials. It reminds me of St. Peter and when he said he wouldn't deny Jesus...

The priests and the Church needs our forgiveness. Just like us, the priests are human and the Church is made up of humans, and so we can fail, and sometimes fail often. While it would be ideal for our priests and Church to be 'perfect', if it were, there would be no need for God's grace to work in the Church and it would become a place for only the 'perfect'. I, like the Church and its priests would not like to be condemned, because God does not condemn me - because of what Jesus had done for me and everyone in the world.

Like the Church, I welcome the Royal Commission because it should help bring justice and improvement to our Church. The Church seems to struggle to resolve some big problems by itself and it is humbling to have outside help being forced on us, as humiliating as it might be. We are the biggest Church and visibly stands up for the highest morals so we would also be the easiest targets.

The bad actions of a few in the Church does not mean that the whole Church is bad - the Church is still and always will be the beautiful Bride of Christ. The Church has withstood larger scandals and threats in the past and is still alive and strong today - 2000 years - few if any organisations have stood for this long. And it will continue as such with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Christmas and New Year Message

By Jack Chui

I have received many gifts and well wishes from various people for Christmas/NY and I have struggled to return gifts in kind. As such, I feel obliged to write something as I had started last Christmas as a sharing of myself as gift to my friends and family. This will be a fairly lengthy post as I'm part of several ministries which I'll be writing to so if you don't have time, just skip to the relevant section.

1. STAY
2. Friends of Refugees
3. Emmaus Cell Group
4. Other / Personal

It might be more appropriate to write such personal sharings via email as I did last year but this ministry blog is a good vehicle to promote the young adults STAY ministry. Very few people would actually read this post even if I link it to them and even if it is available to anyone in the world to see for only the ones that care will read... just the way blogs work...

STAY

I once asked a friend a while back how her spiritual life was going and she surprised me by saying that she wanted to be more broken, because if she was more broken, then God can do His work to make her whole again. Its so masochistic but I understand more of her words through working in STAY.

I had started the year with admittedly little care for STAY but I was focused on building the Friends of Refugees outreach ministry which was the purpose of my role as Outreach Leader in STAY. My support for other STAY activities was at a face only and slowly the ministry fell in numbers. It was difficult to see any fruits for the labour. Halfway during the year I felt it was time to abandon the ministry as a lost cause but then I asked if this was what God wanted me to do. More than once, this new quote was presented to me:

“God has not called me to be successful; He has called me to be faithful." - Mother Teresa

We are a broken ministry/people but we were not abandoned by God and taking inspiration from that, I set down more of my pride to be successful (or at least not a failure) to fight for STAY until God waves the big red stop sign - if and when.

I wanted to see more of God's work in my life and that can be best done by doing the difficult if not impossible. Young adults / Youth ministry in the Catholic church is a tough business given how few of these groups exist around us and how little we seemed to progress over the 3+ years since STAY began. It will have to be by God's doing to really build STAY. This year I saw how God is faithful and does not disappoint.

Over a few months this year, God brought back another leader in Jean. We have started this blog to allow the group's gifts in writing to be used. We run cell group every week on Sunday at midday instead of twice a month. A few more people are coming to STAY and more regularly and while still small in number, they seem to be the right people which God wants us to build relationship with. God really is still here!!!

So this sharing is to give glory to God for His great blessings and work in STAY through our brokenness, through the leaders and through each member that makes STAY what it is and will become. Thank you for your support over the year, whether through attending and helping out at church or just praying for us. Please continue to pray for us and the leaders that God will continue to make STAY 'whole' - that God will use STAY to reach young people where He needs us to.

I don't know where STAY is meant to go in terms of direction but I'm sure God has great and ambitious plans for us. I hope to continue to write in this blog more regularly so to reach out more young people than just the ones who can attend in person at our cell group on Sunday - especially to minister to those who have been to STAY before - and who knows who else it can reach.

Friends of Refugees

What started as the outreach ministry of STAY is now known as as Friends of Refugees because it has volunteers which extend far beyond STAY and my beloved St. Augustine's church. Looking back, it is truly amazing how this ministry has transformed and grown to what it is today - mostly because this outreach did not really exist at the same time last year.

God seemed to provide the people for the ministry as and when it needed it. I sometimes run around a bit like a headless chicken worrying about getting everyone ready there and on time but God seems to make things just seem to work out.

What's more, many of the people that volunteered through the year were people that I had not known before at the start of the year so people just came from everywhere. Through the year, God showed me that while the relationships I tend to have with people are quite shallow, that He can make it wide instead to reach out and draw the people required for this ministry. God showed me that through others and the wide network, He can accomplish more than just through me working on my own. To be honest, I am far from the best helper and carer for the refugees in detention, but somehow, God has drawn so many others that can minister to the refugees far better than I can.

We now visit the detention centre twice a month instead of once. We had to do this as the number of 'friends' kept increasing and the detention centre staff found it difficult to safely visit the detainees. We have now started to visit the refugees that have come out of detention and we're seeing opportunities to be of aid to them as they start with nothing in our community.

I wish to thank all of you that have in any way volunteered throughout the year, to grow the outreach and make us capable of so much. thank you also for your encouragement, of myself, the other leaders and Father Peter who continues to drive this outreach. It is a real great honour to be Father Peter's "hands and feet" to help him minister to these much 'forgotten' people. Father Peter seems to have great plans for the group in 2013 and I'm looking forward to the challenge so I can witness more of God's work through us. Please continue to pray for the refugees and their families - that they be treated justly and fairly as we are treated as free individuals. Thank you for your prayers for this ministry - the blessings and provisions we have received in Friends of Refugees are a wonderful fruit of those prayers.

I was hoping to share some of my recent experiences of the outreach to the refugees but this section will get too long and a brief version would not do it justice. I will look to share these in other posts.

Emmaus Cell Group

This group is like a backbone for my spiritual life because they have always seemed to be there for me like as if God uses this group to speak to me when I can't listen to God. This year has been no exception.

Like the other ministries, this group has been greatly blessed most directly in numbers as we're now 2 cell groups because we're too big to be in one. As much as we'd like the whole church to be part of a cell group, I think God has only provided a few to join us and stay with us because they are the right people for the group.

This ministry, unlike the others I am part of is at a very mature stage in my opinion and the stability (which is welcome) provides a different challenge for me. With the ups of the blessings there are also the downs. Pride has emerged as my 'root cause' weakness and it has shown where I have mistaken the success of the group as the result of the quality of my leadership. My sincere thanks for correcting me, for voicing your opinions to help me grow as a leader. I do not take it badly in that I'm no good, but it is encouraging because you speak in love and care for me of which I'm honoured and grateful to receive.

I pray that this group will continue to grow from strength to strength, that new leaders can rise and minister to other groups as we already minister to the church as a group already. I love how as a group, we can build deep relationships with each other although I may not be part of them, because the group is so so much greater than me.

Thank you for being there for me, for coming every Tuesday evening, for making time every Tuesday evening to share yourselves with each other and for letting God minister to me and the others in the group through you.

Something I have to discern is whether I should continue leading this group. When I first started leading this group 3 years ago, I had a belief that I was doing this temporarily and that I was holding this place until the 'true' leader would come and lead the group. I have learned much and carried that over to the other ministries which are bearing much fruit. Please continue to pray for me and the future of Emmaus Cell Group.

Other / Personal

Just writing the above took a while and as such it wasn't the easiest to write. I guess it shows how much ministry I'm involved in and how little quality time I might be able to devote to each. Yet God has been very gracious to me to give me the energy to be able to take on such things and use the little I give to each ministry to do His work. I seem to be in the right place, time and situation to be able to do so much - I live close to church, work (just about everything), live alone and so have more time to give to others outside my family and am greatly blessed at work, health and in my faith. Its like God has put me where He wants me. There will come a time when I won't be able to do so much or such activities so I think I should do them while I can.

I ended last year saying I would focus on 3 things - love, wisdom and courage. I am happy to say that I've improved on all 3 fronts - and they are big leaps by my standards (perhaps because I came from a low base...). I have learned to love myself more, to value myself as a very unique design of God and so try to help others value their own uniqueness and beauty in God. I have come to realise in wisdom that I have very little control of the people and things that happen around me and that God has ultimate control and so can do anything. I'm courageously more bolder in doing more things, especially crazy things for me like sharing so personally in a blog, visiting refugees homes and singing at church! It was a year of slow growth for me and thankfully in the right direction.

Those 3 things are by no means accomplished but a new year brings an opportunity to develop other deficiencies. The first is Prayer. I would say that I am praying less now that I was at the start of the year. A lot of it is situational which tends to relegate God to the fix it person or the emergency department. One might think that for all the ministry I do and the time I spend at church that I would be praying more - I'm afraid not... Yet still, God is gracious in still providing even when I don't pray. His grace is enough, but I know I could do so much more if I had a stronger prayer life. I must have a whole army praying for me and the ministries I'm part of for such blessing to be bestowed on me.

The second would be Relationship. I've described how I have wide but shallow relationships - its not such a bad thing, but in a way it is also a reflection of my relationship with God. I tend to leave the deeper stuff to other people in my wide network but this does not really help when I need to develop a relationship with my girlfriend. 

The last because there is always 3 =) is Care. Through the year, I've friends who travelled through much brokenness, grief, heartache, loss, illness and yet I've struggled to lend them my support let alone pray for them. I seem to care with my brain but less so with my heart but that could be the way God has designed me. Its just tougher that way.

I wish to thank each of you for your friendship, love, support and prayers. There is some strength that comes from them which allows me to keep fighting in the ministries I'm leading and so I'll continue to need your prayers. I don't mean this to be a selfish pleading for prayers, but something that will help keep me going. I pray that each of you can see the fruits of your prayers for me and even be the fruits themselves. Thank you God for all your blessings!

Wishing you and your families a most blessed Christmas and joyful New Year. Wherever you are and whoever you're with do take care and I wish you all God's blessings in the year to come.

The Meaning of Advent

By Jean Cheng

A beautiful article I'd like to share with you about the meaning of Advent. =)


Advent - A Time to Learn How to Wait
2007-12-09
By Ron Roheiser

Carlo Carretto, the renowned spiritual writer, spent many years living alone as a hermit in the Sahara desert. He wrote a number of books from that place of solitude, including one entitled, Letters from the Desert. In that book, he has a message for those of us who live busy lives in the world. "What is God trying to say to us in our busy lives?" He suggests this: "Be patient! Learn to wait - for each other, for love, for happiness, for God!"

Learn to wait! That's not something we do easily and many of our problems flow from that. We often don't wait properly for things.

Annie Dillard shares this story about proper waiting: She had been watching a butterfly emerge from its cocoon and was fascinated by the process until she grew impatient with how long it was taking and, to speed things up, took a candle and heated the cocoon, albeit very gently.

The experiment worked, but it was a mistake in the long run. The butterfly emerged more quickly; however, because adding heat violated something within the natural process, the butterfly was born with wings too weak to fly. Haste and prematurity had stunted and deformed a natural process. Some things can't be rushed.

Dillard understood immediately what had gone wrong. A certain chastity had been violated. Impatience had triggered an irreverence that had interfered with and damaged the natural order of things. In essence, the Christmas gift had been opened too early; the bride had been slept with before the wedding; a process that needed an allotted period of time had been short-circuited. There hadn't been enough advent.

Advent means waiting. Among other things, it celebrates the idea that the messiah must be born from a virgin. Why? Is sex something unworthy of God? If Jesus had been born in a natural way, would that somehow have given him less dignity? This is a dark underside in some spiritualities, but Jesus' birth from a virgin has nothing to do with that.

Scripture and Christian tradition emphasize that Jesus was born of a virgin to underscore the fact that he had no human father and also to teach an important truth, namely, that in order for something sublime to be born there must, first, be a proper chastity, a proper time of waiting, a season of advent. Why?

The answer lies in properly understanding chastity. Chastity is not, first of all, something to do with sex. Chastity has to do with how we experience reality in general, all experience. To be chaste is to have proper reverence - towards God, towards each other, towards nature, towards ourselves, towards reality in general, and towards sex.

Lack of chastity is irreverence, in any area of life, sex included. And reverence is a lot about proper waiting. We can see this by looking at its opposite: To lack chastity, to be irreverent, is to be impatient, selfish, callous, immature, undisciplined, or boorish in any way so that our actions deprive someone else of his or her full uniqueness, dignity, and preciousness. And we do this every time we short-circuit waiting.

Thus, it is understandable why the prime analogate for chastity is proper reverence in the area of sex. Sex, because it so deeply affects the soul, speaks most loudly about chastity or lack of it. Sex is only chaste when it is not short-circuited by impatience, selfishness, or lack of respect. Sadly, because sex is so powerful, these things are often short-circuited. We violate chastity in sex whenever there is prematurity, unfair pressure, subtle manipulation, crass force, taking without giving, posturing an intimacy we don't mean, lack of respect for previous commitments, disregard for the wider relationships of family and community, or failure to respect long-range happiness and health. Annie Dillard's metaphor basically captures it: There is a fault in our chastity when we put a candle to the cocoon so as to unnaturally rush the process.

Chastity is about proper waiting and waiting is about patience in carrying the tensions and frustrations we suffer as we live the unfinished symphony that constitutes our lives.

There are some wonderful refrains in apocalyptic literature around the importance of waiting. Before the messiah can be conceived, gestated, and given birth to, there must always be a proper time of waiting, a necessary advent, a certain quota of suffering, which alone can create the proper virginal space within which the messiah can be born: "God is never in a hurry!" "Every tear brings the messiah closer!" "It is with much groaning of the flesh that the life of the spirit is brought forth!"

All of these phrases say the same thing: What's sublime depends upon there first having been some sublimation; a feast can only happen after there has first been some fasting; love can only be a gift if the gift is fully respected; and (as Carretto so poignantly puts it) we must learn to wait - for God, for love, for the bride, and for Christmas.