Conclusion - Signs of the New Covenant
'I want to keep my eyes fixed on you and to remain under your great light. O my Beloved Star, so fascinate me that I may never be able to leave your radiance’ (Elizabeth of the Trinity)
Time, and the passing of time, will naturally present challenges and obstacles. This short retreat has merely posed the question: do our particular understandings and ideas of time obscure something greater that is at work within our world and within ourselves. Elizabeth of the Trinity urges us to carry that 'radiance' of God in our everyday life. Our feet will then be 'guided into the ways of peace' and the Presence of God will never become a distant or an imaginary thing!
Perhaps in keeping to the details of the Christmas story, we once again imitate (... perhaps even 'return' to) 'the child' - outside of an adult world of pressure and of deadlines - learning, listening, seeing, aware of mercy, aware of wonder. We are in that way becoming genuine 'signs of the new covenant', living out faith as human time passes from one phase to another.
'Overleap thy mental powers and spring into the heart of God', wrote the Dominican theologian Meister Eckhart. As we find a little of the courage of John the Baptist, something of the humility of Mary and a trace of the insight of Zechariah, we see the potential of a transformed world where we are in heartfelt communion with the divine.
Time is surpassed by Love. The fog indeed clears. And we are returned to a spiritual joy and peace by the simple story of the Nativity, a definitive moment for humankind, in the once little town of Bethlehem.
Wishing you a Very Happy Christmas!! From all at the Ami Elisabeth Catez Institute