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Scripture: Luke 1.26-38(NJB)
The Annunciation
26In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the House of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. 28He went in and said to her, 'Rejoice, you who enjoy God's favour! The Lord is with you.' 29She was deeply disturbed by these words and asked herself what this greeting could mean, 30but the angel said to her, 'Mary, do not be afraid; you have won God's favour. 31Look! You are to conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus. 32He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David; 33he will rule over the House of Jacob for ever and his reign will have no end.' 34Mary said to the angel, 'But how can this come about, since I have no knowledge of man?' 35The angel answered, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God. 36And I tell you this too: your cousin Elizabeth also, in her old age, has conceived a son, and she whom people called barren is now in her sixth month, 37for nothing is impossible to God.' 38Mary said, 'You see before you the Lord's servant, let it happen to me as you have said.' And the angel left her.
Comments
In this Advent Selection from Luke we can see the process of the potential becoming the actual. We see how the Creating One creates in and through us. For, like with Mary, the Light must be formed within before it is born without.
Mary's virgin womb becomes a watery chaos from which arises a New Creation. A new Beginning is born out of the exhaustion of the past. A Word of Peace is spoken into a world at war. Ease is offered for disease (cf. Genesis 1.1ff).
The one many refer to as God is the All-Potential. All finite actuality arises from this infinite Maximum Potential. This All-Potential is the ultimate cause of all things--for all derivatives must arise from a Non-Derived: chaotic matter takes shape in the womb of possibility~for possibility is the actual absence, even as the virgin womb is for the shaping of Infinite Potential into finite shape.
Indeed, even as the Christ, as God Who is in all thing, is in the womb of the Virgin Mary~thereby finiteness and infiniteness intersect in the formations of our lives at every level. This same process occurs at every point in Nature, the Cosmos.
The universe is in things only in a contracted way, and every actually existing thing contracts all things so that they are actually that which it is. But everything that actually exists is in God, for God is the actuality of all things. Actuality is the perfection and the end of potentiality. Since the universe is contracted in each actually existing thing, it is obvious that God, who is in the universe, is in each thing and each actually existing thing is immediately in God, as is the universe. Therefore, to say "each thing is in each thing" is not other than to say that "through all things God is in all things" and that "through all things all are in God."
*Nicolas of Cusa (b. 1401), On Learned Ignorance
Therefore, there is a transhistorical~to which pure contemplation pertains~process embodied in the Story of Christmas. This is like a mirror, or reflection, of all birthings within Nature. Thus, the historical incarnation, while true historically, takes on metahistorical implications outside restrictions of our dimensionality~again, this refers to the metaphysical, mystical, contemplative, ... An access point to this metahistorical is through the Story, which takes the event out of only-history as we read and contemplative the Christmas Story found in Scripture.
Then, the questions can become immediately applicable to the immediate person or community, beyond~though including~the salvific consequences of the Jesus Event.
Indeed, we are each offered to enter the Story and continue It in our lives this Advent-Christmas-Epiphany. We can each be a virgin spiritually. We can choose to say "Yes" to the Voice of the All-Potential mediated to us in many ways through Nature and personal circumstance.
One key to the Story is that creation only occurs by the cooperation between Ultimate Cause and immediate cause and through pliability of matter to the Ultimate Cause. Mary says, "You see before you the Lord's servant, let it happen to me as you have said."
Possibly, surrender is the greatest open-secret of the manifesting of All-Potentiality in our lives. The Divine's Nature is to express, and surrender provides the cooperating cause for that manifestation in divine birthings.
However, how I see myself either urges or blocks such faithful surrender. Mary says, "You see before you the Lord's servant." Mary is captive to a Word, and she surrenders to conceive and birth the Word. Why? She knows she is not her end, rather, she is the end of Another, and, thus, of new beginnings in and for the Creating One. This places her life in a different picture frame: her life purpose is guided by the Out-Flowing of the All-Potential into the world. Therefore, that Potential can flow into her waiting womb and do a marvelous work of formation, then, flowing out to bless other creatures.
The Spirit will work in our lives, as it did in Mary, when we truly accept that we are not our own ends. Rather, we are means to the fulfillment of the Dreams of the Divine for all Creation. In God, our lives are unbounded, for God is Boundless. In God there is freedom in being the servant, for God is noncontracted Being, in whom we can consciously live in blissful surrender. Then, how can our lives lack a sense of Purpose?
Reflections
1) In what sense is God the All-Potential?
2) Do you find the word surrender appealing or not in your spiritual Journey? Explain.
3) What does it mean that you are not an end, but you are a beginning?
4) How is your life being offered as a womb to the Divine?
5) What role does chaos play in shaping the form of Christ within you?
5) What might it mean to be a spiritual virgin?
6) What is the one thing more than any other you sense the Holy Spirit is seeking to form within you at this stage of your life?
7) How does Christ appear in your world?
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