4 Advent, Thursday

Daily visitation

My mother was pregnant with me at the time of my father's ordination, and she has often described how, when the bishop laid his hands on my father's head and pronounced his name, I gave a great kick inside her.

I thought of that story at my own ordination, where the Old Testament lesson was from Jeremiah. God tells him, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you" (Jer. 1:5).

Reflecting on Jesus' birth to Mary -- the Incarnation that we celebrate starting tomorrow -- we learn that same lesson. Like Jesus, we are all known to God from before the beginning and throughout our lives. Like Jesus, we will also enter more fully into God's knowledge after our death. As Paul writes, "Now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then, I will know fully, even as I have been fully known" (1 Cor. 13:12).

In the collect for this fourth week of Advent we pray "purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation" (BCP 212). Like Mary's visitation to her cousin Elizabeth, whose baby leaped for joy in her womb and who was filled with the Holy Spirit, our "visitation" with God in the Daily Offices offers a chance for the Spirit to speak to us and for new life to leap for joy inside us, too.

As we celebrate Christmas and dwell on the meaning of the Incarnation during the season of Epiphany, I invite you to practice "daily visitation" with God in the Daily Offices. What might the Holy Spirit have to say to you? What new life is in you, just waiting to leap for joy?