Thursday of the Third Week of Advent
December 21, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/122123.cfm

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, the Church sings out to God the warm, familiar Advent invitation:

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Our first reading from the Song of Songs vibrates with anticipation of God’s arrival:

Hark! my lover–here he comes
springing across the mountains,
leaping across the hills.
My lover is like a gazelle
or a young stag.
Here he stands behind our wall,
gazing through the windows,
peering through the lattices.

Song of Songs 2: 8-9

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When the Divine Lover arrives, the one who waits must be awakened from frost, flood, or barrenness that has drowsed them.

“Arise, my beloved, my dove, my beautiful one,
and come!
“For see, the winter is past,
the rains are over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth,
the time of pruning the vines has come,
and the song of the dove is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth its figs,
and the vines, in bloom, give forth fragrance.
Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one,
and come!

Song of Songs 2: 10-12

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As we pray with the Song of Songs, we are reminded that relationship with God exceeds our comprehension and expression. We have only our human descriptions to help us explore the infinite dimensions of Grace and Mercy. We image the Holy One as Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, Child, Light, Wisdom, Love, Lover, or Beloved – each aspect offering a necessarily limited metaphor for the Incomprehensible One.

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As we consider places in our world, and in our own hearts, which are frozen, flooded, or barren of life, let us invite the Passion of God to rescue and reinvigorate us.

As we reflect on today’s Gospel, we can imagine both Mary and Elizabeth filled with that Holy Vigor which changes and restores everything to God’s original hope for Creation. It was into such ready openness that God’s Word leapt in one moment 2000 years ago. May it leap again into our hearts.

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Poetry: Love Gaze – Renee Yann, RSM

Caught in the ferocious wind
of my own inadequacies,
I cling by finest web
to the energy You are,
fixing my soul on yours
in that precarious holding.

You are the magnet, gathering
all my emptiness beyond itself.
As if my fears were only stones
to tread upon, You come into the marshes
of my life as stillness, paused
and vibrating like a deer
among the reeds in dusklight.

I cannot word what it is
to swim in the deep pool of your Eyes.
All the universe, and all my understanding
turn reverently aside to offer privacy
for such profound combining.

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Music: Veni, Dilecte Mi – Orlande de Lassus (1532-1594), one of the leading composers of the later Renaissance