Wednesday of the Second Week of Advent; Saint Lucy (d.c.303)

Readings of the day: RB 59

Mass: Isaiah 40:25-31; Resp. Psalm 103; Matthew 11:28-30

Maestro de Perea - Saint Lucy. 1500

Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart;

and you will find rest for yourselves.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Just before heading out to give a presentation at a parish, I received wise advice. A friend suggested: ‘Just tell the people Jesus loves them. That is the most important thing they need to hear.’ Since then, I have been doing just that. I begin nearly every talk with: If you don’t remember anything else I say today, please remember, Jesus loves you.

It is amazing how many people have thanked me for reminding them about Jesus’ love. Why don’t we remember it? More importantly, why don’t we believe it? The WORD speaks to us in powerful ways today; in ways that also remind us of the power of God’s love. LOVE heals us, strengthens us, sooths us, lightens our loads. I was struck by something I read in my trusty Magnificat: ‘Jesus will go to impossible lengths to rescue you’ (A. Voskamp, The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas). It’s true, friends, we will find rest in Jesus. Just when we think we are not loved, wanted, just can’t take another trial, challenge, or carry yet another burden, Jesus, all tender MERCY and COMPASSION rescues us. 

LOVE will do whatever it takes to rescue YOU!

Dear JESUS,

so meek and humble of heart,

thank you for loving me.

He gives strength to the fainting; for the weak he makes vigor abound.

They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength, they will soar as with eagles’ wings; they will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas

Tuesday of the Second Week of Advent

Readings of day: RB 58:17-29

Mass: Zechariah 2:14-17 or Rev. 11:19a; 12:1-6a, 10ab; Resp. Psalm (Jdt 13); Luke 1:26-38 or Luke 1:39-47

A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun,

with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.

From the traditional story of Guadalupe, translated from the original Nahuatl language of the Aztecs, by Fr Martinus, Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey. See trappistabbey.org.

The Lady addresses Juan Diego (Ch. 6, ‘The Lady’s Request’)

For truly I Myself,

I am your Compassionate Mother,

yours, for you yourself,

for everybody here in the Land,

for each and all together,

for all others too, for all Folk of every kind,

who do but cherish Me,

who do but raise their voices to Me,

who do but seek Me,

who do but raise their trust to Me.

For here I shall listen to their groanings, to their saddenings;

here shall I make well and heal up

their each and every kind of disappointment,

of exhausting pangs, of bitter aching pain.

You are the highest honor of our race.

Resp. Psalm (Judith 15:9)

MARANATHA.

Monday of the Second Week of Advent

Saint Damasus I (c.304-84)

Readings of the day: RB 58:1-16

Mass: Isaiah 35:1-10; Resp. Psalm 85; Luke 5:17-26

Hear the word of the Lord, O nations;

Declare it to the distant lands:

Behold, our Savior will come;

you need no longer fear.

(Entrance Antiphon, Mass)

I continue to marvel at the WORD spoken through the mouth of the Prophet Isaiah:

Strengthen the hands that are feeble, make firm the knees that are weak,

Say to those whose hearts are frightened: Be strong, fear not!

Here is your God, he comes with vindication;

With divine recompense he comes to save you.

It seems to me astonishment should seize us all;

struck with awe we glorify God, saying:

WE HAVE SEEN INCREDIBLE THINGS TODAY!

MARANATHA.

Second Sunday of Advent

Readings of the day: RB 57

Mass: Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; Resp. Psalm 85; 2 Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8

John the Baptist - Chartres Cathedral

Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths:

all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

ALLELUIA.

Welcome to the Second Week of Advent!

NB. Musings abound this glorious day…proceed at your own risk.

 A

The season of Advent is meant to rouse us from slumber—still a bit groggy? If so, heed the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths!’ This is the Baptist proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. We might also heed the words of St Benedict, who, early in the Rule, pronounces: ‘Let us get up, at long last, for the Scriptures rouse us when they say: It is high time for us to arise from sleep (Rom 13:11). Let us open our eyes to the light that comes from God, and our ears to the voice from heaven that every day calls out this charge: If you hear his voice today, do not harden your hearts’ (Ps 94[95]:8). (RB Prol. 8-10).

Sleep still in your eyes? Why not break out song:

Wake, O wake, and sleep no longer,

For he who calls you is no stranger;

Awake God’s own Jerusalem!

Here the midnight bells are chiming

The signal for his royal coming:

Let voice to voice announce his name!

If we’re not quite there yet, herewith with wisdom from Alfred Delp (1907-1945, German, Jesuit priest, philosopher, hanged for high treason): ‘Humans must let go of all their mistaken dreams, their conceited poses and arrogant gestures, all the pretenses with which they hope to deceive themselves and others. If they fail to do this stark reality may take hold of them and rouse them forcibly in a way that will entail both anxiety and suffering…Life only begins when the whole framework is shaken’ (Prison Writings).

Dear friends, the Lord is patient. Through him, with him, and in him mercy abounds. He does not want us to perish; rather, our Lord wishes us to come to repentance. The living and true God gives comfort, comfort to his people. Like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, carrying them in his bosom, and leading the ewes with care.

Zion hears the sound of singing;

Our hearts are thrilled with sudden longing:

She stirs, and wakes and stands prepared.

Christ, her friend, and lord, and lover,

Her star and sun and strong redeemer—At last his mighty voice is heard.

BE EAGER TO BE FOUND WITHOUT SPOT OR BLEMISH BEFORE HIM,

AT PEACE. 

MARANATHA.

Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (1474-1548)

 Saturday of the First Week of Advent

Readings of the day: RB 56

Mass: Isaiah 30:19-21, 23-26; Resp. Psalm 147; Matthew 9:35-10:1, 5a, 6-8

 

St Juan Diego

At the sight of the crowds,

his heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned,

like sheep without a shepherd.

The scene in today’s Gospel directs me to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and his first Encyclical Letter, Deus Caritas Est (2005). There, one reads: ‘Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of love which they crave’ (18). The Pope goes on to say: ‘If I have no contact whatsoever with God in my life, then I cannot see in the other anything more than the other, and I am incapable of seeing in him the image of God’ (18).

If you find these words compelling, you may be interested to read the whole of paragraph 18 in the Encyclical.

Behold, I am coming soon and my recompense is with me, says the Lord,

to bestow a reward according to the deeds of each.

(Communion Antiphon, Mass)

MARANATHA.

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary; Patronal Feast of the United States of America

 Readings of the day: RB 55:15-22

Mass: Genesis 3:9-15, 20; Resp. Psalm 98; Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12; Luke 1:26-38

 

 Peter Paul Rubens, Immaculate Conception, 1627

HAIL, MARY, FULL OF GRACE!

THE LORD IS WITH YOU;

BLESSED ARE YOU AMONG WOMEN.

ALLELUIA, ALLELUIA.

Herewith today’s reading from Vigils. Thank you, Karl Rahner (1904-1984).

This beginning is the disposition of God alone, the moment when God’s love bestowing itself on human beings is still collected, concentrated in itself, or rather, is originally immanent in itself as a love which has already forestalled guilt and which, because of this power, permits the weakness of guilt. Where this love posits such a created historical beginning, there is the beginning of the Blessed Virgin.

Nevertheless, or rather, precisely in this way, this glory of a pure beginning originating in God was a beginning which had to be experienced with sorrow. The origin meant a future for everyday life, customary things, silence, the seven sorrows and the death of her Son and her own death. Only then was the beginning attained by the future retrieving the beginning. Only then was it disclosed as pure grace.

And the more that love and forgiveness which encompasses and belongs to our beginning is accepted in the pain of life and in the death which gives life, and the more this original element emerges and is allowed to manifest itself and pervade our history, the more the difference, the contradiction in the beginning is resolved and redeemed. And all the more will it be revealed that we ourselves were also implied in that pure beginning whose feast day we are celebrating.

When the beginning has found itself in the fulfillment and has been fulfilled in the freedom of accepting love, God will be all in all. Because then all will belong to all, the differences will of course still be there but they will have been transformed and will belong to the blessedness of unifying love, and no longer of separation. And for that reason this feast is our feast. 

K. Rahner, ‘The Feast Day of a Holy Beginning’ in The Great Church Year, pp. 374-375.

MARY,

QUEEN CONCEIVED WITHOUT ORIGINAL SIN,

PRAY FOR US.

Saint Ambrose (d. 397); Thursday of the First Week of Advent

Anniversary of the Bombing of Pearl Harbor (1941)

Readings of the day: RB 55:1-14

Mass: Isaiah 26:1-6; Resp. Psalm 118; Matthew 7:21, 24-27

Trust in the Lord forever!

For the Lord is an eternal Rock.

At table, we are reading J. Pérennès’s, A Life Poured Out, a biography of Pierre-Lucien Claverie, OP (1938-1996, Bishop of Oran, Algeria). There, Claverie, although speaking about the gift of growing up in a family of trust and love, provides fitting commentary on the words of the Prophet Isaiah, as well as today’s Gospel: ‘Trust is exercised and reinforced amid everyday trials. The act of faith or trust is precisely that: an act…One “extends trust” more than one “has trust.” It is therefore in concrete actions that we embody our intention to extend trust. And thus it is that trust is strengthened’ (p. 213).

With Claverie’s words in mind, we hear Jesus say: ‘Not everyone will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.’ Our Lord continues: ‘Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.” May we, then, have courage to listen to the Word and act in trust amid our everyday trials, struggles, disappointments, and contradictions. 

Living and true God, the eternal ROCK,

strengthen our faith and trust in you that we may act in accordance with your will.

MARANATHA.