Memorial of Saint Cecilia, Virgin and Martyr
November 22, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/112224.cfm

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How sweet to my taste is your promise!
In the way of your decrees I rejoice,
as much as in all riches.
Yes, your decrees are my delight;
 they are my counselors.
The law of your mouth is to me more precious
than thousands of gold and silver pieces.
How sweet to my palate are your promises,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
Your decrees are my inheritance forever;
the joy of my heart they are.
I gasp with open mouth
in my yearning for your commands.
from Psalm 119

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Today, I choose to pray with our Responsorial Psalm 119, a beautiful love song to God. The psalm lists everything for which we might love God.

Picture a beloved asking you, “What do you love about me? Can you make a list?” Picture God doing the same thing. Psalm 119 is one person’s list of how they love the sweetness of God. What would your list look like?

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We take time in prayer to share “love talk” with God. How does the Divine Sweetness touch us, change us? How do we return that sweetness to God by our touch upon God’s Creation?

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Poetry: Song Silence By Madeleva Wolff, CSC

Yes, I shall take this quiet house and keep it
With kindled hearth and candle-lighted board,
In singing silence garnish it and sweep it
                For Christ, my Lord.
 
My heart is filled with little songs to sing Him—
I dream them into words with careful art—
But this I think a better gift to bring Him,
                Nearer his heart.
 
The foxes have their holes, the wise, the clever;
The birds have each a safe and secret nest;
But He, my lover, walks the world with never
A place to rest.
 
I found Him once upon a straw bed lying;
(Once on His mother’s heart He laid His head)
He had a bramble pillow for His dying,
                A stone when dead.
 
I think to leave off singing for this reason,
Taking instead my Lord God’s house to keep,
Where He may find a home in every season
                To wake, to sleep.
 
Do you not think that in this holy sweetness
Of silence shared with God a whole life long
Both he and I shall find divine completeness
                Of perfect song?

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Music: Cor Dulce – Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959), sung by Benedictines of Mary