Advent – Week 2

Advent is a four step process leading us to the birth of Jesus at Christmas. In this second step we encounter the life-force that sustains the human body. We can call it an invisible force but in reality it is palpable. It is found in our blood and we can compare it to the sap flowing through a plant reaching its culmination in the flower. Here we approach great secrets only revealed to those who are determined to understand them.

In this respect, the birth of two Jesus children is significant; to ignore this fact is like building a wall in our brain so that we can never make sense of these beings that enacted the greatest event to ever occur on this earth. The two different genealogies, one in Matthew’s Gospel and one in Luke’s, provide a blatant clue that two entirely different beings were necessary for the Christ Spirit to enter into this earthly realm.

Just as there are different elements in chemistry* which combine to form substances, so there are different elements in the human life-force. There are four in fact, two of them have been part of every human being since Adam and Eve; the other two remained in the spiritual worlds until the birth of the Jesus described by Luke. This fact is recorded in Genesis as two trees; the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.

At Christmas, we celebrate not just the birth of Jesus but also the birth of an entirely different human race. One no longer divided but now having a fully united life-force which manifests in both the body and the blood, hence the significance of the body and blood at the Last Supper.

The sacrifice on the cross at Golgotha saw the whole life-force, with its four elements, flow out. This blood didn’t just flow onto the ground, it changed the whole universe. It is so significant that painters like Raphael show it being collected in cups by angels.

If we can enter into these facts with an open heart, Christ Jesus will be born in our souls at Christmas. The angels will gather, the kings with gifts will journey from afar, and the shepherds will draw close, each one representing an element of the mighty Cosmic event that changed our lives forever.

*Four new elements have recently been named.