Light kisses Tennessee rooftops as, in the far distance, Radiant Dawn peeks brightly over the Great Smokey Mountains
Today, God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray a prayer full of beautiful, hopeful images. It is up to each one of us to ponder the presence of Light in our lives and the corners of shadow. It is up to us as we pray, to invite our God- Emmanuel to be with us in both portions of our experience. It is up to us to look toward the horizon with faith, hope and love in order to understand that God takes flesh in every moment of our lives.
May these images open our hearts to the immeasurable power and beauty of this Feast. Let us savor them slowly as we make our way to the waiting manger:
O Morning Star, splendor of Light Eternal and Sun of Righteousness: Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.
O Radiant Dawn, it is Christmas Eve. We see the hint of your dawning along the dark horizon of our limitations.
How we long for You to fracture time, our fragile eggshell, Eternal Love flowing across our weary hearts.
O Dayspring, let us see beyond the darkness, beyond fear, and selfish calculations, beyond doubt, despair, hatred, even death… …to know that, in You, everything is Light for those who trust Your Rising.
We await your Christmas Morning in our world. Maranatha! Come, Lord, Jesus!
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Malachi preaches the news of God’s Coming with dramatic authority! He tells us that the Lord is sending a messenger, somewhat in the mode of John the Baptist, to prepare the Lord’s way.
Thus says the Lord GOD: Lo, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me; And suddenly there will come to the temple the LORD whom you seek, And the messenger of the covenant whom you desire. Yes, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. But who will endure the day of his coming? And who can stand when he appears?
Malachi 3:1-4
The passage is so dramatic that it inspired Handel to include it in his magnificent “Messiah”. Handel captures Malachi’s ominous tone, asking the key question: Who shall abide the day of his coming?
These are words of purification and judgement, with tiny tinges of fire and brimstone! Indeed the Lord’s coming is often stunningly fast and awesome. Just last week, our dear Sister Rosemary Herron passed away suddenly and unexpectedly while enjoying a holiday evening. Her death left all who knew her in a state of utter shock and heartbreak.
As we read Malachi today, we might wonder, “Was she ready?” Could she “withstand the Day of His Coming”? What was it like to have her world spun from earth to heaven in the matter of a few moments?
The second part of our reading gives us an answer.
Lo, I will send you Elijah, the prophet, Before the day of the LORD comes, the great and terrible day, To turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents, Lest I come and strike the land with doom.
Malachi 3:23-24
If our hearts have been turned toward one another in this world, and if our time on earth has been spent in so turning others, then the Lord’s coming is not a “terrible day”. As Malachi alludes, our lives refine us like gold or silver. At the Lord’s coming, these precious elements will be tested.
Did we love inclusively?
Did we turn others toward love?
Did we try to turn the selfish worldly tide toward love?
All who knew Sister Rosemary know that she was pure gold, already refined by her lifelong choice to be Mercy in the world. That’s what makes her sudden passing so very difficult to cope with. But for Rosemary, that Divine Coming must have been a glorious surprise when she no doubt heard the words of Matthew’s Gospel:
Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.
Matthew 25:34-36
Perhaps all of you kind readers would offer a prayer of consolation today for our Sister Rosemary’s family and friends, for her beloved school community at Mercy Career and Technical High School, for her religious community – the Sisters of Mercy, and for the many people she influenced throughout her very generous life.
R. Alleluia, alleluia. O King of all nations and keystone of the Church; come and save your beloved, whom you formed from the dust! R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Poetry:Good-bye Poem – Meg Bowman
Life is but weak if we waste it in weeping: So, she has left you, she would soon or late. Death from our lives takes all in her keeping, Nothing we do can our sorrow abate.
Love, be it ever so deep and entire, Asks that we strive for the end that she sought: Catch the tossed torch! Take up the fire! Light up our world, and teach as she taught.
Thursday of the Fourth Week of Advent December 22, 2022
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our O Antiphon beseeches God, Who is King of All Nations, Who unites Gentile and Jew, to deliver us.
But from what?
The answer lies in the closing phrase of the antiphon: “we whom you formed from the dust of the earth”.
Deliver us from the artificial barriers we have created to separate from and dominate over one another – by nationality, ethnicity, color, gender, social or economic class. We each began as dust and will end that way. May we be humble, mutual and compassionate in the time between.
Consider the holy humility of Hannah in our first reading today, and of Mary in our Gospel. They are power figures in Salvation History. But their power comes from their utter dependence on and honor to God, their only true King.
I prayed for this child, and the LORD granted my request. Now I, in turn, give him to the LORD; as long as he lives, he shall be dedicated to the LORD.”
1 Samuel 1: 27-28
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior. for he has looked upon his lowly servant. From this day all generations will call me blessed: the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name.
Luke 1: 46-49
There was no fragmentation in the commitment of their entire lives to God. They understood all Creation to belong to the Divine.
King of Kings, deliver us from any such fragmentation. Make us all whole in You.
O King of all nations and keystone of the Church: come and save us, whom you formed from the dust! R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Poetry: A King Dressed as a Servant – Rumi
You may interpret Rumi, of course, as you wish. He is deeply mystical and his thoughts don’t always correspond to a logical path. But that’s the real beauty of his poetry. We can put ourselves in his poem and shape it to fit our experience of God. In this poem, Rumi says that we must wait, and be ready, for God’s Love to come to us. And when it does, it will be far beyond anything we expected.
A sweet voice calls out,"The caravan from Egypt is here!"A hundred camels with what amazing treasure!Midnight, a candle and someone quietlywaking me, "Your friend has come."I spring out of my body, put a ladderto the roof, and climb up to see ifit's true.Suddenly, there is a world within this world!An ocean inside the water jar!A king sitting with me wearingthe uniform of a servant!A garden in the chest of the gardener!I see how love has "thoughts,"and that these thoughts are circulatingin conversation with majesty.Let me keep opening this momentlike a dead body reviving.My teacher saw the Placeless Oneand from That, made a place.
Music: O Rex Gentium – Gregorian Chant ( this is a Latin rendering of the italicized prayer above.)
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, as the anticipation of Christmas builds to a crescendo, we have the tender and sublime images of the Song of Songs.
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
This book of the Bible is unique in that “it shows no interest in Law or Covenant or the God of Israel, nor does it teach or explore wisdom like Proverbs or Ecclesiastes. Jewish tradition reads it as an allegory of the relationship between God and Israel; Christianity, as an allegory of Christ and his bride, the Church.” (Wikipedia)
Like all enduring poetry, the Song of Songs invites us to match its images with our own understanding of God. Of course, God is more than any image we can humanly create, but our relationship with God has the characteristics of a human relationship because WE are human.
As we read this passage, we might pray with thoughts like these:
God loves me – and all Creation – passionately.
God wants and waits for me to notice the loving Divine Presence in my life
God’s love is energetic and attentive. God is at the center and edge of all my existence.
Added to all that, God wants us to live in the world as people who already see the Spring of Eternal Life. Living with that kind of faith and hope allows us not only to find God, but to reflect God’s Presence to all around us.
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!
Songs of Songs 8: 11-13
On this day of Winter Solstice, when – depending on our hemisphere – we are ultimately close or far from our Sunstar, this particular passage is so comforting. In our everyday life we will still experience a rollercoaster of seasons – sadness and joy and everything in between. But beyond all the seasons, the Verdant Eastertide has already redeemed our lives. With deep faith and hope, we can always live with the Spring’s abundance.
The Visitation by Raphael
In our Gospel, we are given a beautiful picture of Mary and Elizabeth, with in-vitro Jesus and John – dancing in the graces of this holy Springtime. Join them as we sing of O Antiphon for today:
R. Alleluia, alleluia. O Emmanuel, our King and Giver of Law: come to save us, Lord our God! R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Poetry: May is Mary’s Month – Gerard Manley Hopkins
May is Mary’s month, and I
Muse at that and wonder why:
Her feasts follow reason,
Dated due to season—
Candlemas, Lady Day;
But the Lady Month, May,
Why fasten that upon her,
With a feasting in her honour?
Is it only its being brighter
Than the most are must delight her?
Is it opportunest
And flowers finds soonest?
Ask of her, the mighty mother:
Her reply puts this other
Question: What is Spring?—
Growth in every thing—
Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,
Grass and greenworld all together;
Star-eyed strawberry-breasted
Throstle above her nested
Cluster of bugle* blue eggs thin
Forms and warms the life within;
And bird and blossom swell
In sod or sheath or shell.
All things rising, all things sizing
Mary sees, sympathising
With that world of good,
Nature’s motherhood.
Their magnifying of each its kind
With delight calls to mind
How she did in her stored
Magnify the Lord.
Well but there was more than this:
Spring’s universal bliss
Much, had much to say
To offering Mary May.
When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple
Bloom lights the orchard-apple
And thicket and thorp† are merry
With silver-surfèd cherry
And azuring-over greybell makes
Wood banks and brakes‡ wash wet like lakes
And magic cuckoocall
Caps, clears, and clinches all—
This ecstasy all through mothering earth
Tells Mary her mirth till Christ’s birth
To remember and exultation
In God who was her salvation.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray the O Antiphon:
“O Key of David, come and bring forth from his prison house the captive.”
We might not think of ourselves as captives. But simply by virtue of our humanity, we are probably inhibited in some way – by fear, pride, ignorance, prejudice, self-doubt…
Paula D’Arcy puts it like this: “Who would I be, and what power would be expressed in my life, if I were not dominated by fear?” (Or maybe anger, some type of “ism’, greed, pride, and on and on.)
Let us pray this prayer together, dear friends, for all held captive in both visible and invisible ways. May we pray especially for those captured by drugs, alcohol, or any other addiction. Pray also for those held in any kind of oppression through poverty, political manipulation, war and disregard for human rights.
O Key of David, opening the gates of God’s eternal Kingdom: come and free the prisoners of darkness! R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Our Gospel is the cherished passage of the Annunciation, a scripture we pray so often when we say the Hail Mary. Different lines and thoughts may strike our hearts as we pray these familiar verses. One stood out for me today:
Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
It’s such a tender exchange! It reveals Mary’s honest humanity in that, of course, she was stunned and a little fearful when an angel jumped into her bedroom! And the message wasn’t too easy to comprehend either!
The words also reveal the great sensitivity of Gabriel, the fearless angel who noticed, understood, and comforted Mary’s uneasiness.
When we feel God speaking to us, particularly in challenging situations, it might ease us as well to think of these words. “Do not be afraid. You have found favor with God.” Indeed, every one of us has found favor with God through the Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus.
Poetry: Annunciation – Denise Levertov
We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,
almost always a lectern, a book; always the tall lily. Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings, the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering, whom she acknowledges, a guest.
But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions courage. The engendering Spirit did not enter her without consent. God waited.
She was free to accept or to refuse, choice integral to humanness.
____________________________
Aren’t there annunciations of one sort or another in most lives? Some unwillingly undertake great destinies, enact them in sullen pride, uncomprehending. More often those moments when roads of light and storm open from darkness in a man or woman, are turned away from in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair and with relief. Ordinary lives continue. God does not smite them. But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.
______________________________
She had been a child who played, ate, slept like any other child – but unlike others, wept only for pity, laughed in joy not triumph. Compassion and intelligence fused in her, indivisible.
Called to a destiny more momentous than any in all of Time, she did not quail, only asked a simple, ‘How can this be?’ and gravely, courteously, took to heart the angel’s reply, perceiving instantly the astounding ministry she was offered:
to bear in her womb Infinite weight and lightness; to carry in hidden, finite inwardness, nine months of Eternity; to contain in slender vase of being, the sum of power – in narrow flesh, the sum of light. Then bring to birth, push out into air, a Man-child needing, like any other, milk and love –
but who was God.
This was the moment no one speaks of, when she could still refuse.
A breath unbreathed, Spirit, suspended, waiting.
______________________________
She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’ Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’ She did not submit with gritted teeth, raging, coerced. Bravest of all humans, consent illumined her. The room filled with its light, the lily glowed in it, and the iridescent wings. Consent, courage unparalleled, opened her utterly.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray, “O Root of Jesse’s Stem”, addressing, in this short prayer, the whole historic ancestry of Jesus.
The phrase, taken from Isaiah 11, recognizes Jesus as the sign of deliverance for both Jews and Gentiles.
This Antiphon is unique in that it not only beseeches the Savior to come. It says, “Tarry not!”
Do you ever ask God to hurry up and answer your prayers? What is most urgent for you to place before God today?
Let us pray this prayer together today, dear friends, for our urgent needs and those of our needy world:
R. Alleluia, alleluia. O Root of Jesse’s stem, sign of God’s love for all his people: come to save us without delay! R. Alleluia, alleluia.
In our readings today, we meet two great prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, both born miraculously; both fully dedicated to revealing God’s Presence in the world.
Praying with them today, we prepare ourselves to encounter the greatest of all miraculous nativities, the birth of Jesus Christ – the ultimate revelation of God’s own Self.
Poetry: Song of Zechariah – Irene Zimmerman, OSF
(LUKE 1:59–79) At the circumcision of his son, relatives and neighbors came to speak for Zechariah of the tied tongue. The child, they concurred, would bear his worthy father’s name. But during her husband’s silence, old Elizabeth had found her voice. “His name will be John,” she said.
Why this strange, unprecedented choice, the relatives and neighbors wondered. Armed with writing instrument, back they went to poor, dumb Zechariah. But during the long confinement, as young Mary and Elizabeth spoke about the missions of their sons, he had listened and grown wise.
Straightaway, he wrote: “His name is John.” He caught Elizabeth’s smiling eyes, felt his old tongue loosen, found his voice, sang of God’s tender mercy, sang of the breaking dawn, sang of the prophet, their son, who would make straight the way for the long awaited One.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our scripture readings roll out before our prayer the long line of salvation history. It is a line that we can walk in wonder, winding from Isaiah’s prophecy, through the House of David, down to Joseph dreaming in the Nazarene night, and Mary fully waking to God in the Nazarene morning.
It is a story filled with words we love because, ever since our childhood, they have carried to us the fragrant scent of Christmas. These readings are the thrilling stuff of prophecies and dreams, all the more wonderful because we know them now fulfilled.
Therefore the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel.
Isaiah 7:14
Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.
Matthew 1:20
This long wick of Promise, burning slowly through the biblical years, bursts into light with the birth of Jesus Christ, the Fire of God.
Through our faith, that Divine Light kindles us – we who now, through our Baptism, carry the sacred DNA of Jesus into our times.
On this final Sunday of Advent, when the world’s “crazy Xmas” tries to hijack our souls, let us be very intentional about the true meaning of these days. Let us take the time to “go into our heart cave” and prepare for Jesus.
Poetry: And in Her Morning – Jessica Powers
The Virgin Mary cannot enter into
my soul for an indwelling. God alone
has sealed this land as secretly His own;
but being mother and implored, she comes
to stand along my eastern sky and be
a drift of sunrise over God and me.
God is a light and genitor of light.
Yet for our weakness and our punishment
He hides Himself in midnights that prevent
all save the least awarenesses of Him.
We strain with dimmed eyes inward and perceive
no stir of what we clamored to believe.
Yet I say: God (if one may jest with God),
Your hiding has not reckoned with Our Lady
who holds my east horizon and whose glow
lights up my inner landscape, high and low.
All my soul’s acres shine and shine with her!
You are discovered, God; awake, rise
out of the dark of Your Divine surprise!
Your own reflection has revealed Your place,
for she is utter light by Your own grace.
And in her light I find You hid within me,
and in her morning I can see Your Face.
Music: Emmanuel – Tim Manion (Lyrics below)
Baby born in a stall. Long ago now and hard to recall Cold wind, darkness and sin, your welcoming from us all.
How can it be true? A world grown so old now, how can it be new? Sorrow’s end, God send, born now for me and you
Emanuel, Emanuel What are we that You have loved us so well? A song on high, a Savior’s high, angel hosts rejoice Thy glory to tell
Lord, lead us to know. You lay like a beggar, so humble, so low; no place for Your head and straw for a bed, the glory of God to show.
Babe on mother’s knee, child so soon to be nailed to a tree; all praise, till the end of our days; O Lord, You have set us free
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we begin the recitation of the O Antiphons.
No doubt many of you, like me, love these beautiful verses for any number of reasons:
First off, they alert us that we are very close to the astounding miracle of Christmas!
They capture, in a very simple way, the riches of the Hebrew Scriptures which foretold and longed for the Messiah.
The dramatic “O” introducing each one conveys the depth of our own longing and “O”penness to God’s grace.
The O Antiphons are Magnificat antiphonies used at Vespers of the last seven days of Advent. They are also used as the Alleluia Verse during the daily Mass.
Each antiphon is a name of Christ, one of his attributes mentioned in Scripture. They are:
We begin today with a heartfelt plea to God to fill our world with a Wisdom that orders all things and teaches us prudence.
O, how our world needs this prayer to be answered. How we need to return to a Wisdom rooted in truth, justice and mutual love!
Let us pray this prayer together today, dear friends, by opening our hearts like the wide space of an “O”. Let our hearts be ready to receive, on behalf of the world, the transforming gift of Jesus – given on Christmas, and on every day of our lives.
O Wisdom of our God Most High, guiding creation with power and love: come to teach us the path of knowledge! R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Poetry: Journey into Wisdom – Renee Yann, RSM
Music: Michael G. Hegeman, 1997 Performed by: The Lauda! Chamber Singers
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we stand at the edge of the final deep dive into Christmas.
Tomorrow, we will begin the magnificent O Antiphons with their rich and repeated invitation for God, not only to enter, but to take up residence our lives. We hear the hint of those invitations in today’s Responsorial Psalm:
Alleluia, alleluia. Come, Lord, bring us your peace that we may rejoice before you with a perfect heart.
It’s a perfect prayer for these last few days before Christmas, because so many of us get caught up in a contradictory kind of frenzy of shopping, gifts, parties, decorating, cooking, wrapping, buying…. and on, and on, and on.
The hyperactivity doesn’t leave a lot of space for peace and the perfection of our hearts to welcome the Savior.
This lovely poem by Geoffrey Brown has always helped focus me on the peace-making of my heart so that I could welcome Grace as it comes to me.
The Heart Cave
I must remember
To go down to the heart cave & sweep it clean; make it warm with a fire on the hearth, & candles in their niches, the pictures on the walls glowing with a quiet light. I must remember
To go down to the heart cave & make the bed with the quilt from home, strew the rushes on the floor hang lavender and sage from the corners. I must go down
To the heart cave & be there when You come.
Isaiah, with a powerful “how-to”, reminds us that we are all called to this spiritual readying:
Thus says the LORD: Observe what is right, do what is just, for my salvation is about to come, my justice, about to be revealed. Happy is the one who does this, whoever holds fast to it: Keeping the sabbath without profaning it, keeping one’s hand from doing any evil
As a last reminder before our journey through the O Antiphons, Isaiah coaches us in inclusivity – assuring us that all people are welcome in the arms of the One Who is to come:
Let not the foreigners say, when they would join themselves to the LORD, “The LORD will surely exclude me from the people.” The foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, ministering to and Loving the name of the LORD, and becoming God’s servants– All who keep the sabbath free from profanation and hold to my covenant, Them I will bring to my holy mountain and make joyful in my house of prayer …
Music: Rorate Caeli – sung by Harpa Dei
“Rorate caeli” (Drop down, ye heavens) are the opening words of Isaiah 45:8. The text is frequently sung to plainsong at Mass and in the Divine Office during Advent where it gives expression to the longings of Patriarchs and Prophets, and symbolically of the Church, for the coming of the Messiah.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Isaiah uses powerful, passionate images to describe the relationship between God and Israel.
The Lord calls you back, like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, A wife married in youth and then cast off, says your God. For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great tenderness I will take you back. In an outburst of wrath, for a moment I hid my face from you; But with enduring love I take pity on you, says the Lord, your redeemer.
Isaiah 54:6-7
This relationship is best conceptualized as COVENANT. The great prophets use human covenants as images to help describe an otherwise indescribable God. For example, there are biblical passages which imagine God as Father, Mother, Friend, King, Shepherd, Lover, and Spouse.
Of course, God is infinitely more than any one of these relationships, but that “more” is beyond our human capacity to comprehend. So these human images give us some starting point to open ourselves in prayer as to how God wants to be with us at particular times in our lives.
In today’s passage, Isaiah speaks to a people devastated by captivity in Babylon. Jerusalem is occupied, their Temple is destroyed, and their reality is particularly bleak. They feel abandoned by the God who once companioned them to the Promised Land. And they feel like they brought the abandonment on themselves by their faithlessness to the Covenant.
What does the passage say to me?
Have I ever felt forgotten by God? Or at least invisible and unimportant?
Do I regret a bit of “faithlessness” in my own life?
Do I wonder if some of the difficulties in my life are merited because my faith is weak?
Well, if so, then Isaiah 54 was written for me, because the God who is in covenant with me is ever-faithful, loving and forgiving. God is always with me and for me. Despite my worries, ideations, or scruples, God is eternally committed to me:
Though the mountains leave their place and the hills be shaken, My love shall never leave you nor my covenant of peace be shaken, says the Lord, who has mercy on you.
Isaiah 54:10
Jesus Christ is the infinitely gracious fulfillment of this Covenant. Advent invites us to draw ever closer to such Wondrous Faithful Love.
Poetry: Where Is God? – Mark Nepo is a poet and spiritual adviser who has taught in the fields of poetry and spirituality for over 40 years. Nepo is best known for his New York Times #1 bestseller,The Book of Awakening. A cancer survivor, Nepo writes and teaches about the journey of inner transformation and the life of relationship.
It’s as if what is unbreakable— the very pulse of life—waits for everything else to be torn away, and then in the bareness that only silence and suffering and great love can expose, it dares to speak through us and to us.
It seems to say, if you want to last,
hold on to nothing. If you want
to know love, let in everything.
If you want to feel the presence
of everything, stop counting the
things that break along the way.
Lavish Mercy 