Hineni, Here I Am

God gives himself to us in Jesus, and we give ourselves to one another.  This is the meaning of the giving of gifts at Christmas:  giving ourselves, our presence.  Someone has said that the real meaning of Christmas is now at Thanksgiving, when we don't have to worry about gifts.  It is a time of just being together, which is the sharing of the greatest gift we have with one another.  This is the gift God shares with us, his loving presence:  I am with you in my son, Emmanuel.  Be Emmanuel to one another.

The Emmanual moment starts very early in our lives if we are blessed with parents who know how important their attitude of care is in delivering to their children the experience of God's personal love and care.  In the middle of the night, we are wet and cold, and we wail for help.  Almost immediately a loving presence is by our crib with a Hineni (here I am) of soothing tones and touches.  A playground collision or a collision of wills awakens in my small heart the fear that the world is a hostile, lonely place.  Put if someone is there to say, "Here I am," a spirit of fear and suspicion can be redeemed by hope.

We are sometimes convinced that all the news is bad, and that is we have hope, we are naive.  But the truth  is that God is in the world, and because of that, every place is good.  Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins reminds us that the world "is charged with the grandeur of God," and Cardinal John Henry Newman gives us this consoling thought:  "In a dark world, Truth still makes way in spite of darkness, passing from hand to hand" (Parochial and Plain Sermons, 1:22).  God says to us continually, "Hineni, here I am, I love you," but he passes his message along through his children.  We are the lifeline for one another.

From Life Lessons from the Monastery,

Wisdom on Love, Prayer, Calling & Commitment

by Jerome Kodell, OSB