Readings of the Day
RB: Ch 60 The Admission of Priests into the Monastery
Mass: Sir 48:1-4, 9-11; Resp Ps 80; Mt 17:9a, 10-13
In those days, like a fire there appeared the prophet Elijah whose words were as a flaming furnace ... Blessed is he who shall have seen you and who falls asleep in your friendship.
(Sir 48:1, 11)
We are about to make a shift in our focus on this day before the Third Sunday of Advent. During the past days and weeks our liturgical readings, hymns, antiphons, and responsories have helped us look forward to Christ's return at the end of time, when he will return as the "world's true Master". John the Baptist will be with us soon to help us look "backward toward Jesus' first coming in Bethlehem". May our eyes and ears be attentive and fixed on Jesus Christ, the Word made Flesh.
In giving us his Son, his only Word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word-and he has no more to say … because what he spoke before to the prophets in part, he has now spoken all at once by giving us the All Who is His Son. Any person questioning God or desiring some vision or revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behavior but also of offending him, by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty.
(John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mt Carmel 2, 22, 3-5, quoted in CCC 65)
SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS,
PRAY FOR US.
© Gertrude Feick 2019
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