Looking Forward to ChristmasLooking Forward to ChristmasThat
virginal quality
which, for
want of a better word, I call emptiness is… not a formless emptiness, a
void
without meaning. On the contrary, it has a shape, a form given to it by
the
purpose for which it is intended. It is emptiness like the hollow in a
reed,
the narrow, riftless emptiness which can have only one destiny: to
receive the
piper’s breath and to utter the song that is in his heart.
It is the emptiness like the hollow of the chalice, shaped to receive water or wine.
It is emptiness like that of the bird’s nest, built in a round, warm ring to receive the little bird.
The pre-Advent emptiness of Our lady’s purposeful virginity was indeed like those three things.
She was
a reed
through which the Eternal Love was to be piped as a shepherd’s song.
She was
the flower-like chalice into which
the purest water of humanity was to be poured, mingled with wine,
changed to
the crimson blood of love, and lifted up in sacrifice. She was the warm
nest rounded to the shape of
humanity to receive the Divine Little Bird.
On a Advent Retreat at Aylsford
Friary, Sr Elizabeth added three more possible emptinesses we
might have:
