Fr Peter Helman

"But to all who received him..."

Dear friends,

The gospel reading from Morning Prayer reminds us that in the season after the Feast of the Epiphany that stretches out before us for weeks until Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, we ask who it is that comes to us in the form of a newborn child. It is Jesus Christ who comes to us, who joins heaven to earth and earth to heaven, who is both made manifest for all the world to behold and worship and yet is also the hidden God, the unknown God, who discloses his very love and grace to those who seek him with true hearts. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” says the Lord,” if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me” (Rev. 3:20).
 
It is a truth made at once both gloriously joyful and terrible to consider that Jesus lifts up his voice in the streets and cries out for us and we who hear and begin to follow must understand what exactly the way is to which he calls us. The true of heart are those who love nothing above God, who set out on the pilgrim’s way and lay aside every hindrance to run the race with endurance. We are to love Jesus more generously, to seek after him more constantly, to set nothing alongside him as worthy of devotion.
 
The glorious truth is that God will not lose those whom he seeks, for he knocks at the doors of the heart incessantly. Neither our resistance nor contempt will abate the indefatigable work of Christ’s love, by which love and grace draw us unto the ineffable presence of God. The pursuit of Christ’s love and grace is itself a work of God, and those whose hearts can only be made true by divine grace seek grace out by prayer: Dear Christ, fix my eyes always on you, for my heart is prone to wander; pray always within me and fix my thoughts always on you, lest I give myself to another. Amen.”

May God bless and keep you this day and always,
Fr. Peter