"Truly he taught us to love one another
His law is love and his gospel is peace"
“Oh Holy Night” is one of my all time favorite hymns, especially for the lyrics. Last week the lyric, “his law is love” stirred something up within and I remembered an experience from November 2024 while on retreat with my transforming community.
Today’s advent piece is an excerpt from a letter I sent out last December reflecting a retreat focused on prayer as a way to increase intimacy with God.
If we want to love God with all of our hearts, minds, souls and strength, we will need to embrace loving our neighbors as ourselves.
All of our neighbors.
Originally written in December of 2024:
On Monday night, after finishing our group spiritual direction session, we lingered outside the chapel. When the doors opened, I was one of the first to enter. Where the altar usually stood, instead there was a painting of an immigrant family. A father with arms protectively shielding the young mother and the toddler she held in her arms. A small candle burned in front of the image, halos of white circling the three members of this Latinx family.
As I sat down in the front row, I felt myself being pulled toward this family. Is that the holy family I wondered? I looked around the room. This painting wasn’t the only change to the chapel area. To my right, a painting of a shirtless black man held by his mother stood illuminated. To the right and left of the immigrant family stood paintings that looked much older - all white men, one certainly Jesus - holding a Bible. To the left of the room, an older painting with three figures mirrored the painting of three beautiful women of color that sat by its side. And finally, an Asian mother holding her Asian child on her lap. Each of the people in the paintings was encompassed by a halo.
I had read at some point about praying with Icons, and if I’m being honest, there was an underlying discomfort stirring as I sat amidst the images. As Ruth and Tina explained about Icons, I guessed that at some point somewhere in my life I had learned that some type of religion prayed “TO” pictures, statues, “idols” and that that was wrong. That evening in the chapel, I learned about a new to me, but very old to the Christian tradition, way to pray.
Ruth explicitly stated that an icon is not something that a person prays TO… we only pray TO God. An icon is instead a tool to help us pray. We pray with an Icon. Our teachers explained the symbolism of the icons - which are not considered paintings as in the art world. Ruth focused on the traditional pictures - all of which show Jesus or God as a white being. The holy trinity icon must have caused as stir when it was originally created because the Holy Trinity could not be distinctly described by either gender. After Ruth’s explanations, Tina taught us about the contemporary icons. These recently produced images that show the diversity of God’s image bearers: all of humanity.
We were encouraged to sit with the images we were drawn toward AND we were encouraged to sit with the images that we felt resistance toward. And like always, to ask and listen to God on a variety of potential prompts.
I first sat with the Holy Family leaving behind a story of injustice and heading into the unknown of the desert. Joseph and Mary and preschooler Jesus.
They look like so many of my students and so many of their parents. The stories of border crossings that have been entrusted to my care flooded my heart. I held them close.
I believe that every human bears the image of God, but had I actually ever thought about Jesus looking like my Latinx students? Immigrants? Refugees?
My heart broke open.
And God met me there with those images all around me. The beauty of our world. The delight God experiences in every one of his creations - delight in both genders and all ethnicities. And the heartbreak God experiences when we ignore or participate in the oppression of God’s people. I sat broken open, receptive to the truth that all of humanity’s representations are crucial to showcasing the mystery and magnificence of our God.
This was not the only experience of being “broken open” on retreat. I’m reflecting on what exactly that means in my prayer time right now. Have you ever felt “broken open” by encounters with God? Is it possible that our capacity to love can only increase with the breaking open of our hearts?