Christmas Eve, 2024

We ended our meditation yesterday with a question about how a greater “sense of the preciousness of life” can be a valuable lesson we learn from loss and grief.

Humanity is currently very much on the edge of losing a sense of the preciousness of life insofar as we careen toward a demise of Mother Earth, her health and her beauty, due to global warming set in motion by our production of CO2 into the atmosphere. 

Time is also running out on our species to the extent that we refuse to tame our most ferocious instincts to make war instead of peace.  On our leading with our reptilian brains therefore instead of with our maternal brains. 

“Jesus is our mother,” Julian of Norwich declared six centuries ago, because he is preaching compassion, and compassion is what most characterizes the maternal instinct as she sees it.  Can humanity move from reptilian brain dominance to mammal brain kinship?

In the midst of this mindset that characterizes our times, we remember the coming of the Christ about 2020 years ago and we call that remembrance Christmas.  The gospel images are richly cosmic and richly human including angels, shepherds, animals, mangers, a star that magi follow from afar and high-ranking politicians (Herod) threatening a newborn child. 

Celtic theologian Irenaeus in the second century saw the reason for this event to be the “recapitulation of all reality in Christ.” This is not language about a “personal savior” but about steering history into new directions and modalities.  It is about a “cosmic Christ” that extends right up to 2024 and what Teilhard de Chardin called a “noosphere” where humanity’s presence on Earth would encircle the earth with new and deeper ways of communicating around the earth.

Père Chenu, whose theology is based on “continuous creation” and “continuous incarnation,” saw the Christmas event in this cosmic context.  He writes:

This vision of a history by which man continually makes himself and in which also the Word continually manifests itself, has what it takes to renew the biblical revelation of Creation, and to nourish a ‘theology of event’, under the recapitulation of all reality into the Christ.   

Today’s understanding of cosmology as cosmogenesis and the discovery that our universe is 13.8 billion yeas old and has  expanded to over two trillion galaxies shocks us into amazement– “radical amazement” in Rabbi Heschel’s terminology.  

The Great Mystery behind this vast creation chose to visit Earth and become human.

The universe is not a noun but a verb, a process, to which humanity has been invited.  Creativity and co-creation are everywhere going on.  The Sacred was reborn on Christmas, 2024.  Humanity’s participation in the sacredness of the universe is the Christ returned and the Great Mystery that birthed this cosmos has taken up the human condition in our midst.

There lies the wonder of Christmas.  The Mystery beyond all names is part of a continuous creation and continuous incarnation all around us and in us.  We are all reborn on Christmas morning when Wisdom leapt down from her heavenly throne. 

When peaceful silence lay over all,
and night had run the half of her swift course,
down from the heavens, from the royal throne, leapt your all-powerful Word.
Into the heart of a doomed land the stern warrior leapt….He touched the sky, yet trod the earth.  (Wis 18.14-16)

See Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ.

And Fox, Passion For Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart, pp. 293-363.

And Fox, Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic—and Beyond, pp. 45-58.

See also Matthew Fox and Bishop Marc Andrus, Stations of the Cosmic Christ.

Banner Image: Nativity mosaic, anonymous artist, Chelmsford Cathedral. Photo by fourthandfifteen
on Flickr.

Queries for Contemplation

Do you agree with Chenu that the Word is “continually manifesting itself” in creation and in humanity’s creations?  Does Good News follow from that?

Recommended Reading

The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance

In what may be considered the most comprehensive outline of the Christian paradigm shift of our Age, Matthew Fox eloquently foreshadows the manner in which the spirit of Christ resurrects in terms of the return to an earth-based mysticism, the expression of creativity, mystical sexuality, the respect due the young, the rebirth of effective forms of worship—all of these mirroring the ongoing blessings of Mother Earth and the recovery of Eros, the feminine aspect of the Divine.
“The eighth wonder of the world…convincing proof that our Western religious tradition does indeed have the depth of imagination to reinvent its faith.” — Brian Swimme, author of The Universe Story and Journey of the Universe.
 “This book is a classic.” Thomas Berry, author of The Great Work and The Dream of the Earth.

Passion for Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart

Matthew Fox’s comprehensive translation of Meister Eckhart’s sermons is a meeting of true prophets across centuries, resulting in a spirituality for the new millennium. The holiness of creation, the divine life in each person and the divine power of our creativity, our call to do justice and practice compassion–these are among Eckhart’s themes, brilliantly interpreted and explained for today’s reader.
“The most important book on mysticism in 500 years.”  — Madonna Kolbenschlag, author of Kissing Sleeping Beauty Goodbye.  

Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic–and Beyond

Julian of Norwich lived through the dreadful bubonic plague that killed close to 50% of Europeans. Being an anchoress, she ‘sheltered in place’ and developed a deep wisdom that she shared in her book, Showings, which was the first book in English by a woman. A theologian way ahead of her time, Julian develops a feminist understanding of God as mother at the heart of nature’s goodness. Fox shares her teachings in this powerful and timely and inspiring book.
“What an utterly magnificent book. The work of Julian of Norwich, lovingly supported by the genius of Matthew Fox, is a roadmap into the heart of the eco-spiritual truth that all life breathes together.”  –Caroline Myss
Now also available as an audiobook HERE.

Stations of the Cosmic Christ
By Matthew Fox and Bishop Marc Andrus.

This is a book of meditations on the Cosmic Christ, accompanying the images of 16 wonderful clay tablets by Javier Ullrrich Lemus and M.C. Richards. Together, these images and meditations go far beyond the traditional Stations of the Cross to inspire a spirit awakening and understanding of the cosmic Christ Consciousness, Buddha consciousness, and consciousness of the image of God in all beings, so needed in our times.
“A divinely inspired book that must be read by every human being devoted to spiritual and global survival. It is cosmically brilliant.” — Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit