Just a word before we go...Second Sunday of Advent...December 5, 2021
“Prepare the way of the Lord!” So says the prophet John the Baptist in Luke’s Gospel on this Second Sunday of Advent. For many years on this weekend we were graced with the presence of Gregory Norbet, formerly a monk of the Weston Priory in Vermont, and a re-nowned liturgical composer and musician. Gregory continued to compose after leaving the Priory, returning to graduate school and eventually marrying Kathryn Carrington, a celebrated iconographer. Tomorrow (this) evening, we are again graced by both Gregory and Kathryn, who, though not able to be with us in person, are nonetheless present to us through music and icons.
When Gregory was here on this weekend, he would join our Adult Discussion Group on Sunday morning to talk about the gospel. The topic was, naturally, prophets, and we would discuss what that term meant to us and where we might find current day prophets. One did-n’t have to look any further than the couch where Gregory was seated to recognize that such a prophet was among us. For Gregory, and our other esteemed liturgical composer Dan Schutte, are truly contemporary prophets, those who drink in the message of the Gospel, give voice to it in song, and bring it alive so that it can sink into our hearts and souls. What Grego-ry and Dan do with music, Kathryn does with icons, writing them so as to provide windows to the divine. Another prophet!
The spirit that these modern day prophets bring to us in this parish and beyond, re-mains with us as we immerse ourselves in another Advent, looking for signs, preparing our-selves for the promised Messiah, strengthened by the words and the music of our contempo-rary prophets. How blessed we are to have them in our midst!
Tomorrow/ tonight we have an opportunity to revisit the music and the art that brings us hope, that carries us forward to and beyond Christmas. For it is not only John the Baptist, Gregory, Dan, Kathryn, Pope Francis or any other prophet who prepares the way of the Lord, but also we, if we allow their message and spirit to permeate our spirits, through their words, their music and their art. We have been created for this, to make the world kinder, more compassionate, more just, and thereby more in tune with God’s desire for us and for all crea-tion.
Join us tomorrow/tonight at 6:30pm here in the church, for an infusion of hope, of peace, and of the comfort that can arise in your soul when you are in the presence of beau-ty...in music, in art and in people.
