I've always liked Emily Dickinson's definition of hope as "the thing with feathers that perches in the soul." Have you ever walked a wooded path and in the surrounding silence suddenly sensed the thump of wings as if they were right upon you, or even emanating from you?
And it occurs a mere second before you see some large fowl sweeping off above you, some hawk or huge owl making its way further up the path. It's an almost enchanted moment, a signal from another world. Those wings and their might make something known before the other senses take over. Perhaps this near mystical type of experience can be closely identified with hope. It is more than anticipation; it is, rather, the first part of a continuing action. But before full flight the creature with wings doesn't just sit. It readies itself – that is, it perches.
Is this too poetic a version of Advent? After all, the season calls us to penance just like Lent, except with different images and expectations. If I think about it, though, I'm not so sure there can be too poetic a version of Advent. I've never viewed penance as self-flagellation, but instead as some kind of discipline leading to right or corrected direction, to getting back on the path.
In this penitential Advent season, all we are doing is riding with Joseph and Mary along the rough path to Bethlehem.
Fathers: Remember the last days of your wife's pregnancy? Recall the worry in the deepest places of your heart about how you were going to feed, clothe, educate and care for the child to come?
Don't forget to call to mind that the Blessed Mother was, on that rough road, a tabernacle of the Blessed Sacrament – and His Presence lit up the night. That's our Advent. The journey of the Holy Family is our journey – the growing sense that something takes flight in human history, in the history of each of our souls.
To those of you new to the liturgical seasons of the Church, explore the devotions, deepen your prayer life, and cultivate some of the lovely traditions of the holidays as we anticipate the event that changed the world. If you are new to the Catholic faith, you will see that Bethlehem is getting ready to be ubiquitous for us, hopefully as pervasive as the secular season's rampant consumerism and denial even of the Name of Christ. You will see it in the liturgical readings, where we hear of St. John the Baptist, a "voice crying in the wilderness," telling us that our "...winding ways will be made straight and the rough roads made smooth," and St. Paul telling us that the Lord is near and to make our requests known to Him.
You will see Bethlehem in the Advent wreaths that symbolize victory and the candles within them that, when lit, remind us all of the glory of the Christ Child's birth. And you'll see it in the Advent calendars and the accompanying prayers and the opening of the windows of our souls. While frenetic Black Fridays abound in stores and cyberspace, our Christ Child awaits patiently in another room, for a little while apart from the intricately carved and painted Mary and Joseph and the glued manger and the animated shepherds and the cloth snow and the painted wooden star.
And we wait in this season of Advent, for the children to hold Him delicately and bring Him to His manger of straw on Nochebuena or on the morning of His birth. And we wait in this season of Advent for the sorrow for our sins to turn to joy. And we wait, in this most beautiful of seasons, for the Christ Child to come once again in perpetual innocence and love and wonder. And we feel Him, peaceful and sure winged, perching in our souls.
Fred Gallagher is an author, book editor and former addictions counselor. He and his wife Kim are members of St. Patrick Cathedral in Charlotte.
Hope
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune – without the words,
And never stops at all,And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.— Emily Dickenson
On Dec. 8, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, we begin a Holy Year focused on a hallmark theme of this papacy – the boundless mercy of God, "Be merciful just as your Father is merciful" (Lk 6:36). In announcing an Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy throughout the world, Pope Francis promulgated in the papal bull, "Misericordiae Vultus": "It is my burning desire that, during this Jubilee, the Christian people may reflect on the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. It will be a way to reawaken our conscience, too often grown dull in the face of poverty. And let us enter more deeply into the heart of the Gospel where the poor have a special experience of God's mercy. Jesus introduces us to these works of mercy in his preaching so that we can know whether or not we are living as his disciples. Let us rediscover these corporal works of mercy: to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, heal the sick, visit the imprisoned, and bury the dead."
During this Year of Mercy, Catholic Charities will engage in a number of activities to share how, working together, our diocesan faith community carries out the work of mercy and charity for the most vulnerable in our midst.
Catholic Charities partnered with St. Matthew Church to distribute bins of Thanksgiving food Nov. 23 to 100 Charlotte families in need. St. Thomas Aquinas Church also brought 20 bins. Each reusable bin contained food used to make a traditional Thanksgiving dinner and other staples. Families also received a $20 gift card to a local grocery store to buy turkey, ham and other perishable foods. Many other Charlotte area parishes made donations to the food pantry during the week for the Thanksgiving holiday, including St. Gabriel, St. Joseph Vietnamese and St. Ann. Catholic Charities also supports parish holiday outreach efforts at St. John Neumann, Our Lady of Consolation, Our Lady of Guadalupe and Our Lady of the Americas parishes with turkeys, food bins and gift cards. (Photo provided by Kathleen Durkin, Catholic Charities Diocese of Charlotte)Our work during the Year of Mercy continues many decades of services across our diocese. Last year, for example, your contributions to the Diocesan Support Appeal, individual donations and the support of parishes enabled Catholic Charities' staff and volunteers to serve more than 19,000 of our poorest neighbors in need. In very real terms, the local Church helped feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, heal the sick and bury the dead.
Our website, www.ccdoc.org, contains information about the number of clients served in various programs, the geographic locations of our offices, and the use of funds as demonstrated by our annual audit. Those disclosures are a critical element of transparency by permitting you, our partners in mercy and charity, to better understand how their beneficence was put to work last year in this ministry.
But even more important to me during this jubilee year is the expression of deep humility and exceptional pride in the professional staff and dedicated volunteers who, through the financial sacrifices of our benefactors and supporters, are able to perform works of mercy and charity under the auspices of the Church in the Diocese of Charlotte. Although we are all called to do more and to be more closely conformed to the call of the Gospel, it is abundantly clear from countless interactions I have that our faith community is filled with so many people of faith and good will who do "reflect on the corporal and spiritual works of mercy" and who have not "grown dull in the face of poverty" but respond to the poor and marginalized among us with generosity, kindness and compassion. Those whom we are privileged to serve are the concrete recipients of reawakened consciences I witness every day in this ministry.
I close with a request for your prayers that Catholic Charities always reflect the love of God through our combined works of mercy and charity.
Dr. Gerard A. Carter is the executive director and chief executive officer of Catholic Charities Diocese of Charlotte.