From the Desert Fathers to the Eucharist

What a week it has been. All week I have been writing a paper on the Desert Fathers all week. Studying monasticism, and the devoted lives of our fathers is inspiring and powerful, to think of the devotion that these men felt for God, and how it seems that ministry has left so much behind in our goal as protestants to be less Catholic. After researching these men all semester, I have felt called to a faith so much deeper. A faith where Jesus is really at the heart of who we are and every action that we commit. Where is this faith today? Where is the emphasis on prayer that these men held? Prayer is what needs to be at the heart of all ministry and yet most pastors barely find time for it in their daily lives. There always seems to be another meeting, or another phone call, to the point where prayer is something that is fit in someplace that is not already burdened with another task. The Desert Fathers saw no higher calling than to be in constant prayer and in constant contact to the God we worship. What in life can be seen as a higher calling than this? I feel the challenge that these fathers have set forth, and I desire to live a life like this myself, where prayer is my heart, with the love of God and his strength as mine, and I pray the same for you. The Lord be with you.

After finishing my paper at 2:30 am the night before, I proudly approached Dr. Tysons podium in class the next morning, and with Halleluiah choruses echoing in my ears, that I would later hear in the evening sung by our very talented Houghton College Choir, I turned the paper in and breathed a sigh of relief.

Later in that day I felt the honor and pleasure of going forth to the altar and reciving the Eucharist. What a beautiful, and comforting feeling it was, and always is, to walk down the asile, to approach the altar, and to eat and drink Christs blessing upon me. I walk away from that altar comforted, healed, rested. Jesus reminds me that he was with me all along, through the trials of writing my paper, through the moments of exhaustion and stress, and that he comforts me now. I open my mouth with praises to sing and tears in my eyes, reflecting on the miricle that is his incarnation, that he was so willing to become one of us, to leave all that he had in heaven, and to become poor because he saw us all trapped in our sin and said "I Love them too much to let this continue." My prayer this advent for myself and all others, is that we would take time to reflect on the day in which God became a man and what a miracle this truly was.