President's Christmas Address

Every Advent we are called to prepare ourselves for the coming of our Lord that we might be ready for the approach of our Beloved. I find, however, that at times I forget that while we strive to effect a dwelling place for Him within our hearts, such a thing could not be realized without His gifts of grace and love, gifts that inflame our desire for His presence, that impel us to prepare a place for Him, that bring us to our feet to stand at the mouth of our caves, at the recesses of our subjectivity, awaiting His advent, and when visited to withstand the awesome terror that is found in meeting one’s Maker in the gentle breeze, a terror mitigated by the love that He is without which we would surely wither in His presence.

We have been created in the image and likeness of God, and as such, have been established as beings that are capable not only of knowing God but of loving Him with our whole persons. By this love, we are impelled to do all things well, to donate the entirety of our lives to Him in an act of true love, a love that the world had never seen before the coming of Christ as a Child. But we also know, in the depths of our hearts, that all is grace, and that were it not for God’s love, nothing would have been effected, nothing would be possible for us, and that there would be no desire and no response on our part for Him.

All being, integrity, truth, goodness, and beauty originate in God and continually flow from Him, keeping all things in being, and this, in our case, for all eternity (think of it: we shall never cease to be!). Thus, we have before us something so beautiful and yet paradoxical, namely, the fact that although we are created to act in knowledge and freedom, and this with no reserve, nonetheless we are made for Someone whom we could never reach on our own no matter how wonderfully we have been made, or how wise and virtuous we might become. Our love and our lives, then, as they are directed to God, are a response to and a cooperation with the very love and the life that God gives to us, gifts that not only make up for what our nature, our desire, and our love lack, but even establish these things in the first place.

All of this culminates in the Incarnation, the life, the death, the resurrection, and ascension of our Lord, and the ever-present gift of the Holy Spirit Whose presence here and now consoles and strengthens us while our Beloved awaits us in the life to come. The power of this love challenges all that we might put before Him. The power of this love helps us to prepare those humble dwellings that we, in love, ready for Him. The power of this love fashions us to be His instrument through which He acts and may even use to gift His grace to others. May we never disgrace Him who has so loved us into what we are today.

In Advent, then, we embrace that most sweet experience of preparing for the coming of Him whom we love, of Him who is already present among us, Who knew and loved us even before our own advent into this life, and Who even placed the desire for Him in our hearts before we ever set out on the road to know and love Him. In this dance, if you will, we are held aloft by His hands, encouraged to develop ourselves so that in our maturation we might become attuned to His movement, to the subtle, gentle, yet powerful hand upon our backs, while the other hand guides us in ways that are level and smooth, never stumbling, never faltering, and in the perfection of this dance, that we might eventually be taken up, in virtue and in grace, into union with Him wherein our very joy will be complete.

In this, we have the Holy Spirit for our guide who, as our teacher, will instruct us in the ways by which we might become a suitable partner for the Lord of the Dance. In all of this, the Holy Spirit teaches us to pray, how to call upon our Beloved, and how to soften our persons to the point where, in entering into the movement of His Spirit, we effectively recognize He with whom we have danced from the beginning.

And so, on behalf of the faculty and staff of St. Bernard’s, I wish each and every one of you all the blessings of this season. A Merry Christmas to you all, and all the best in the New Year.