Letter from the Rector
October is a threshold month. We move from one way of being to another. Autumn progresses and winter looms; days darken, leaves fall, and animals prepare for hibernation. It is a beautiful yet foreboding time. How might we see this as an opportunity for prayer and spiritual reflection? October doesn’t fall in any particular season of the church year, but the experience of transition from light and life to decay and darkness, even as this is temporary, might invite us to seek God and prepare ourselves for the day when we reach the ultimate threshold between this life and what comes after.
In the Gospels, Jesus invites us to take up our cross and follow him. For his first followers, this would have meant literally risking death for his sake, and many of them were martyred. While it is the case that many Christians around the world today still face this risk (for example in Nigeria, which is the most dangerous place on the planet to be a Christian), we need to reinterpret his words, regarding them metaphorically. Their import is nonetheless significant. They invite us to ‘die before we die’. This means being willing to let go of false ways of thinking and living and being willing to embrace the way of life which Jesus offers, however difficult that might be. Like approaching a foreboding threshold.
Much that our culture tells us about the way to live is empty. For example, marketing pretends to offer freedom but takes it away; it pretends to create choice but narrows vision; it pretends to enlarge potential, while slamming the door. Yet, many of us are in thrall to its every overture. We allow ourselves to become nothing more than units of consumption, to our own spiritual, as well as financial, cost. We amass stuff that we don’t need while neglecting what will feed our souls. When we do this we are living by lies. We’ll see this soon enough in the vacuity that has become the secular western Christmas.
To die to that way of living, to no longer live by lies, can be liberating. We simply refuse to play the game any longer. We move from one way of being to another as we trust the promise of Christ who said, “I have come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly” (John 10:12).
May God bless you and grant you peace.
Father Trevor
