Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 96, which set the tone for us to more deeply appreciate our beautiful Gospel today on this New Year’s Eve.
The LORD comes, comes to align the earth in Grace. The LORD shall tender the world with merciful justice and the peoples with divine constancy.
Psalm 96: 13
Who is this Lord Who comes, comes to each of us and all of us?
I think no one describes this mysterious, yet enfleshed, God more beautifully that the writer of John’s Gospel and Epistles.
For our prayer, let’s savor that beauty from today’s Gospel.
Click the little white triangle in the grey bar above to hear some lovely accompanying music as you slowly move through the slides below by pressing the right arrow on the slide.
Poetry: a prayer from Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179 – O Eternal Lord
Dear Friends, perhaps we might pray Hildegard’s prayer for one another as we leave this painful year and move toward New Hope.
O eternal Lord, it is pleasing to you to burn in that same fire of love, like that from which our bodies are born, and from which you begot your Son in the first dawn before all of Creation. So consider this need which falls upon us, and relieve us of it for the sake of your Son, and lead us in joyous prosperity.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 25, the prayer of someone who is in love with God – as was John of the Cross:
Your ways, O LORD, make known to me; teach me your paths, Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my savior.
Psalm 25: 4-5
St. John of the Cross
When we truly love someone, we see God’s face in them. Who doesn’t love that beautiful line from Les Miserables:
Take my hand I'll lead you to salvation Take my love For love is everlasting And remember The truth that once was spoken To love another person Is to see the face of God
( Just in case you’re longing to listen to it now🤗)
John of the Cross saw God’s Face in all Creation, and found God deep within his own contemplative soul:
What more do you want, O soul! And what else do you search for outside, when within yourself you possess your riches, delights, satisfactions, fullness, and kingdom – your Beloved whom you desire and seek?
Be joyful and gladdened in your interior recollection with Him, for you have Him so close to you. Desire Him there, adore Him there.
Do not go in pursuit of Him outside yourself. You will only become distracted and wearied thereby, and you shall not find Him, nor enjoy Him more securely, nor sooner, nor more intimately than by seeking him within you.
Spiritual Canticle 1.8
John was in love with God in a way described by the blessed Jesuit Pedro Arrupe:
Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in Love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.
As we pray today with St. John of the Cross, we ask our God to deepen us in love. We thank God for the promise and gift of Unconditional Love:
Remember that your compassion, O LORD, and your kindness are from of old. In your kindness remember me, because of your goodness, O LORD.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 72 which sings with Advent expectation and hope. How beautiful to hear its tones once again and to realize that God has carried us through another year.
With Psalm 72, God tells us it is time to begin again – and this time, because of all the past year has taught us, to more fully abandon our hearts to the fidelity God promises.
Our God and King comes eternally to us in new waves of revelation. God’s faithful promise continues for whatever the coming year unfolds.
O God, with your judgment endow the king, and with your justice, the king’s son; He shall govern your people with justice and your afflicted ones with judgment.
Psalm 72: 1-2
Our psalm invites us to see Creation as God sees it, an eternal relationship which endures in peace even beyond the moon’s final setting. That eternal promise brings profound peace. God, who is Infinite Mercy, loves us beyond boundaries, beyond circumstance, beyond time.
Justice shall flower in his days, and profound peace, till the moon be no more. May he rule from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.
Psalm 72: 7-8
Jesus is the Promise Fulfilled. In him, Infinite Mercy enfleshes justice for the humble and poor.
He shall rescue the poor one who cries out, and the afflicted when there is no one to help. He shall have pity for the lowly and the poor; the lives of the poor he shall save.
Psalm 72: 12-13
Advent patiently teaches us to recognize such salvation and peace. It is not revealed in miracles, but rather in the enduring power of hope, trust and gratitude. Jesus is our salvation and peace. The cyclic retelling of his life, death and resurrection invites us to deepen our own journey once again this Advent.
May his name be blessed forever; as long as the sun his name shall remain. In him shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed; all the nations shall proclaim his happiness.
Psalm 72: 17
Poetry: Advent Calendar by Rowan Williams, a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian and poet. He was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, a position he held from December 2002 to December 2012.
He will come like last leaf’s fall. One night when the November wind has flayed the trees to bone, and earth wakes choking on the mould, the soft shroud’s folding. He will come like frost. One morning when the shrinking earth opens on mist, to find itself arrested in the net of alien, sword-set beauty. He will come like dark. One evening when the bursting red December sun draws up the sheet and penny-masks its eye to yield the star-snowed fields of sky. He will come, will come, will come like crying in the night, like blood, like breaking, as the earth writhes to toss him free. He will come like child.
Music: O Come, Divine Messiah Words: Abbé Simon J. Pellegrin, 1663-1745 English Translation of French Carol “Venez Divin Messie” Translator: Sister Mary of St. Philip, SND Melody: 16th Century French Carol
The English translation of “Venez, divin Messie” beginning “O come, divine Messiah” is by Sister Mary of St. Philip, SND, the name in religion of Mary Frances Lescher (1825-1904). She was one of the first English members of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur when they established their training college at Mount Pleasant in Liverpool, England, in about 1850. She and at least one other SND sister wrote both translations and original hymns and songs over the course of their long professional lives.
from John Uhrig’s letter to Douglas D. Anderson, Founder of the website “The Hymns and Carols of Christmas”
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 96, a royal psalm praising God as the King of all Creation.
The psalm’s first verses, not included in today’s passage, call us to sing and dance before the King.
Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth.
Sing to the LORD, bless his name; proclaim his salvation day after day.
Tell his glory among the nations; among all peoples, his marvelous deeds.
Psalm 96: 1-3
We might pray this psalm with deep consciousness of our place in Creation, in the divine handiwork of this generous King. We have been given life alongside a panoply of beautiful creatures in order that we might, together, sing God’s song.
We sing in a choir of evening stars and morning sunrises, beside choristers of great redwoods and lofty mountains. We join in the prayerful music of the rainbow of animal and human voices rising to praise God.
A dear friend posted this yesterday. I thought it was delightful.
Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice; let the sea and what fills it resound; let the plains be joyful and all that is in them! Then shall all the trees of the forest exult.
Psalm 96: 11-12
As we continue to draw down the curtain on the final days of this liturgical year, the daily readings draw our attention to the end of time – when all God’s created munificence will be finally gathered to the Eternal Presence.
Once, on a retreat with the Wernersville Jesuits, I went to their recreation room and played a 331⁄3 rpm record (yes, it was that long ago!). It was Wagner’s triumphant Ride of the Valkyries. You can listen to the music by clicking below.
The music engaged my spirit and no words were needed for my prayer. I imagined a Glorious Light rising over time’s darkness, a rider on the Dawn’s steed.
I pictured us all coming to that Light in waves of praise, one order of creation after the other, over the hills of time and into a merciful, eternal Brilliance.
Each wave rose out of any darkness, pain, or death that might have hindered them. They broke on to God’s merciful shore and were embraced in Light.
…. the meanest souls of history first, bowing repentant before God’s forgiveness. Then one wave after another, finally coming to the most innocent, the poor and the humble. These heroes of the Beatitudes marched triumphant, their places beside God already prepared, their faces already redeemed by God’s justice
The Lord comes to rule the earth. to rule the world with justice and the peoples with constancy.
Psalm 96:13
The prayer of imagination can open the heart in a way far beyond words. It does take time to place ourselves in the quiet peace that welcomes such prayer. But I think it is so worth it. Our psalm might be inviting us to that kind of prayer today.
Reflective Reading: Prayer of Imagination for Anna the Prophetess from Twelve Women of the Chalice – Leddy Hammock and Sue K. Riley
Now, in this moment I close my outer eyes and look within with my inner eyes. I see a vision of wonder, for I am the daughter of the vision of God, of the tribe of the blessed ones, a soul under grace.
I judge not by appearances. I believe in God’s promises. I fast from shadows and I live on light. From my youth, I have served at the temple, a vessel to a holy purpose.
Prayer is the temple where I dwell Here I behold the image of the Lord.
I close my eyes and behold that image, the eyes of the Infinite beholding me all through the ages, so tenderly gazing with love and compassion, enfolding me.
Prayer is the temple where I dwell. Here, I behold the image of the Lord.
The thoughts held in mind are mirrored in kind all around me, reflecting through all that I see.
Now, I behold with inner vision the wonders that will be in the fullness of time. The dreams of all my days and nights are incensed in the inner sanctum.
My thoughts of truth are flowers on the altar of light. In the presence of the Holy of Holies, I keep the high watch. Gifted with the inner sight, I see beyond the present.
I am an old, old soul, yet ageless in eternity. Though outer eyes may seem to dim with time, the inner eyes are crystal clear.
Though outer vision may seem obscured by time and place, or clouded by the sorrows and the slavery of sense, another world’s revealed so clear. And what I see will be.
My thoughts are giving form, And held in mind, shall reproduce in kind. O Lord, I take a long loving look at the real. I prophesy.
Christ is here. I have seen the Lord, Thine image, and held that image to my own heart. I am the Spirit of Imagination. I am Anna, the prophetess, woman of power.
Today, in Mercy, we celebrate The Solemnity of Christ the King.
For some, the lofty, politically-tinged title might obscure the rich devotion offered by this feast. The title “king” carries with it suggestions of exaggerated power, wealth and dominance not compatible with our Gospel perception of Jesus.
We may be more comfortable with images of Christ as infant, brother, shepherd, lamb, vine, gate, way, truth, life…
But what all these images point out is that our ability to comprehend the fullness of Christ is severely limited by our humanity. We usually choose a specific image based on our circumstances and spiritual needs.
Pope Pius XI promoted the concept of Christ the King in his 1925 encyclical Quas Primas, in response to growing international secularism and nationalism. His intent was not to compare Christ to the challenged world leaders of the time. It was to raise the perceptions of all people to the lessons of Divine Leadership: mercy, justice, inclusivity, and peace.
Oh, how we could benefit from the same understanding today!
In this age with its culture of continual war, the human pain it causes, refugee crises, climate devastation, wealth distortion and indifference to the poor, how our hearts long for just, wise and loving leadership!
In his encyclical, Pius XI wrote:
Christ the King reigns “in the human hearts,” both by reason of the keenness of his intellect and the extent of his knowledge, and also because he is very truth, and it is from him that truth must be obediently received by all humanity. He reigns, too, in our wills, for in him the human will was perfectly and entirely obedient to the Holy Will of God, and further by his grace and inspiration he so subjects our free-will as to incite us to the most noble endeavors. He is King of hearts, too, by reason of his “charity which exceedeth all knowledge.”
— Quas primas, §7[4]
Let’s pray for these virtues for all who are charged with any form of power or leadership:
keen spiritual intellect
deep heart’s knowledge
uncompromising truth
obedience to grace
holy inspiration
noble character
and surpassing charity for all Creation
May Christ the King truly live and reign among us. May we behold the “sweet light in His eyes”!
Music: We Shall Behold Him – offered in American Sign Language by Kayla Seymour; sung by Sandi Patty
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray once again with our longest Psalm 119.
This morning, we take one little morsel from its long string of reflections :
The word “promise” can evoke a range of responses from us. Indeed, they are sweet as the psalmist says. But they can also be elusive, ephemeral, and easily broken. I know I’ve have made a few promises in my lifetime that have fizzled away unfulfilled. Haven’t you?
On the other hand, there are some promises, kept, that have rooted and defined my life. These, made in the bud, have blossomed in a long, tendered fidelity. They have dug the deep roots of trust for the essential relationships of my life with God, beloved neighbor, and all Creation.
Such vital promises can be made and kept when we act in the image of God, the loving and faithful Promiser described in Psalm 119:
Your word, LORD, stands forever; it is firm as the heavens. Through all generations your truth endures; fixed to stand firm like the earth.
Psalm 119: 89 – 90
Like the psalmist, we pray:
to be imitators of God who is always faithful.
to be promise-keepers in response to the trust God has placed in us by the gift of our creation.
to meditate on, and understand in our hearts, the divine order of God’s immutable Law of Love
Poetry: Psalm 119 – Christine Robinson
Dear God, The seed of your love is deep within every molecule of the universe, and it abides through time. The laws of the cosmos serve your purpose to the end. If I remember this, I can abide all manner of trouble. If I delight in this, it gives me life. I belong to you to my very core. Holding firm to that knowledge, I can live my life in love. All things will come to and end. And in the end all will be One My mind is filled with your Way Making me wise like a teacher or an elder. Mastering my life in your way gives me purpose. Many times I use it to guide my steps. My mouth waters and my heart softens to consider your Way.
Music: God Hath Not Promised – Annie Johnson Flint
This charming 19th century hymn captures the faithful spirit of it composer whose life, though beset by suffering, radiated faith and joy.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 150, the final chapter of the Book of Psalms.
When any of us writes or speaks an important message, we usually take pains to make sure the final comments are direct and powerful. We want our last words to make an significant impact on our audience.
I think the Book of Psalms wants to do the same thing.
So what’s the ultimate ringing word these sacred chapters leave with us?
And it’s not a gentle suggestion. The psalm charges us to SHOUT our praise! To make noise with our acclamations of God! To be absolutely cacophonous in our exaltation. We are to praise God:
with the blast of the trumpet,
with lyre and harp,
with timbrel and dance,
with strings and pipe.
with sounding cymbals,
with clanging cymbals
One might come away thinking we must be noisy in showing our love for God. But there are so many ways we “shout”, even in our silence.
I think this morning of my Sisters at McAuley Convent, in the quiet accumulation of their elder years. There is very little noise in that beloved community. Still, everything about them shouts praise, gratitude, and faith – all without their even having to say a word.
True praise is an energy, not a sound. It is the direction of our whole being toward the God Who gives us life. It is the gathering of everything about our existence and lifting it all toward God in confidence of its transformation.
It is the quiet sound of our every breath streaming “Alleluias” over all Creation. It is the final word of our being after everything else is said.
Let everything that has breath praise the LORD! Alleluia
Poetry: Praising Manners by Rumi
We should ask God To help us toward manners. Inner gifts Do not find their way To creatures without just respect. If a man or woman flails about, they not only Destroy their own house, They incinerate the whole world. Your depression is connected to your insolence And your refusal to praise. If a man or woman is On the path, and refuses to praise — that man or woman Steals from others every day — in fact is a shoplifter! The sun became full of light when it got hold of itself. Angels began shining when they achieved discipline. The sun goes out whenever the cloud of not-praising comes near. The moment that foolish angel felt insolent, he heard the door close.
Music:J.S. Bach: Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWV. 225
“Singet!” Bach’s motet springs to life with the insistent repetition of this word, bouncing between two choirs. It’s a joyful and dazzlingly virtuosic celebration of the human voice, culminating in a mighty four-voice fugue. This motet was performed for Mozart when he visited Leipzig’s St. Thomas Church in 1789. (Bach was music director at the church from 1723 until his death in 1750). Johann Friedrich Doles, a student of Bach who directed the performance wrote, As soon as the choir had sung a few bars, Mozart started; after a few more he exclaimed: ‘What is that?’ And now his whole soul seemed to be centered in his ears. When the song was ended, he cried out with delight: ‘Now, here is something one can learn from!’( taken from https://thelistenersclub.com/2019/10/11/joyful-sounds-of-praise-five-musical-settings-of-psalm-150/ )
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 22, and it’s perfect for our prayer today.
I know God has no partisan interest. God’s interest is for the wholeness and blessing of God’s Creation. God’s interest is for justice and mercy for the poor, sick and suffering. God’s interest is for peace in hearts, families and nations.
All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD; All the families of the nations shall bow down before God.
For dominion is the LORD’s, Who rules the nations. To God alone shall bow down all who sleep in the earth.
To God alone my soul shall live; my descendants shall serve God. Let the coming generation be told of the LORD that they may proclaim to a people yet to be born the justice God has shown.
Psalm 22
Still, let’s put it right out there. This is no ordinary Tuesday. Personally, I have been longing – no, agonizing – for this day since November 8, 2016. What about you?
I know there are many perspectives among my readers. Democrats and Republicans. Citizens of countries other than the USA. Still, I think all of us share some common hopes for today’s election because we care about all of God’s beloved Creation.
Here are some of my hopes.
I pray for, and believe that we must demand, a President and Congress who:
respect, reverence and legislate for life in all its stages, colors, genders, ethnicities, and religious and political affiliations.
do the hard work of building bridges, not walls, throughout the world
respect and care about those who are poor and marginalized
model American compassionate leadership rather than American isolationist primacy
generate unity and tolerance, not fear, division and hatred
choose others over self, truth over manipulation, leadership over greed
are thoughtful, brave statesmen and stateswomen not bullies and whiners
As we pray this psalm today, may we realize that to find these virtues in our leaders, we must first practice them ourselves. In the long run, we get what we deserve. Let’s humbly pray to live in a manner that propagates and deserves selfless moral leadership.
Poetry: LET US PRAY – Sister Joan Chittister
Give us, O God, leaders whose hearts are large enough to match the breadth of our own souls and give us souls strong enough to follow leaders of vision and wisdom. In seeking a leader, let us seek more than development of ourselves— though development we hope for, more than security for our own land— though security we need, more than satisfaction for our wants— though many things we desire.
Give us the hearts to choose the leader who will work with other leaders to bring safety to the whole world.
Give us leaders who lead this nation to virtue without seeking to impose our kind of virtue on the virtue of others.
Give us a government that provides for the advancement of this country without taking resources from others to achieve it.
Give us insight enough ourselves to choose as leaders those who can tell strength from power, growth from greed, leadership from dominancy, and real greatness from the trappings of grandiosity.
We trust you, Great God, to open our hearts to learn from those to whom you speak in different tongues and to respect the life and words of those to whom you entrusted the good of other parts of this globe.
We beg you, Great God, give us the vision as a people to know where global leadership truly lies to pursue it diligently, to require it to protect human rights for everyone everywhere.
We ask these things, Great God, with minds open to your eternal care.
Music: America- rendered in true American Jazz by the inimitable Ray Charles
Oh beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife
Who more than self, their country loved
And mercy more than life
America, America may God thy gold refine
'Til all success be nobleness
And every gain divined
And you know when I was in school
We used to sing it something like this, listen here
Oh beautiful, for spacious skies
For amber waves of grain
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain
But now wait a minute, I'm talking about
America, sweet America
You know, God done shed his grace on thee
He crowned thy good, yes he did, in brotherhood
From sea to shining sea
You know, I wish I had somebody to help me sing this
(America, America, God shed his grace on thee)
America, I love you America, you see
My God he done shed his grace on thee
And you oughta love him for it
'Cause he, he, he, he crowned thy good
He told me he would, with brotherhood
(From sea to shining Sea)
Oh Lord, oh Lord, I thank you Lord
(Shining sea)
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 42, oh and what a lovely gift it is!
As the deer longs for the running waters, so my soul longs for you, O God.
Psalm 42:2
Dear friends, hasn’t every one of us known this longing – just to understand, to see, to be at one with the ways of God in our lives, our world….
Paul, in today’s passage to the Philippians, is feeling tremendous pressures of persecution and fatigue. He seems to share that deep longing for certainty and peace:
I long to depart this life and be with Christ, …. Yet this I know with confidence, that I shall remain and continue in the service of all of you for your progress and joy in the faith…
Philippians 3:23-24
As we pray with Psalm 42 today, we might ask God to come into our deepest longing, to open our hearts to the Divine Presence in those desires, to help us to find the Face of God in our daily experience, to love that Face, and to rest in the peace in its Presence:
Athirst is my soul for God, the living God. When shall I go and behold the face of God?
Poems: Poems I wrote on two past retreats:
Location
This wood on this morning;
these birds singing;
these plaintive calls
from boats along the Mississippi,
through this crystal Sunday air;
This moment among all others,
which You have known eternally,
when I would pause,
and You,
like a deer in stillness,
shedding camouflage,
would step out
to gaze at me.
Love Gaze
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 half-light.
I cannot word what it is
to swim in the deep pool of your Eyes.
All the universe, and all my understanding
turn aside in reverent silence.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 128, written around the time of return after the Babylonian Captivity.
Israel was in a time of re-establishment, a time of rediscovering the blueprint for a settled and fruitful life. Psalm 128 lays that formula out:
Blessed are you who fear the LORD, who walk in God’s ways! For you shall eat the fruit of your handiwork; blessed shall you be, and favored.
Psalm 128:1-2
As with many scripture passages, (certainly today’s from Ephesians !!!), some of the original language doesn’t ring perfectly with our modern sensibilities. Personally, my spirituality doesn’t include “fear” when I relate to God.
Rather than interpret such passages rigidly, we need to receive the words for the core of their meaning, which remains the same over the ages. What changes is how each culture and social evolution receives and honors the Word. This is the reason we pray with scripture and study it, rather than simply read it as we would read a cereal box.
Happy is everyone who fears the Lord… “In this phrase, ‘fear’ is not about being intimidated or ‘shaking in your boots’ before the divine presence. It is rather about reverence or awe before YHWH, and the observation that whom one reveres, one obeys. To fear YHWH is to entrust all of life and hope to this one and follow the divine guidance. The perspective of the psalm is that such a decision about lifestyle makes a difference; living in line with YHWH’s teaching brings a profound joy and completeness to life.”
Walter Brueggemann – New Cambridge biblical Commentary
Psalm 128 invites us today to explore our sense of awe, reverence, and obedience toward God’s Presence in our lives. As we breathe in God’s boundless love for us, may we breathe out our complete trust and gratitude.
Poetry: Entering Saint Patrick’s Cathedral by Malachi Black
I have carried in my coat, black wet
with rain. I stand. I clear my throat.
My coat drips. The carved door closes
on its slow brass hinge. City noises—
car horns, bicycle bells, the respiration
truck engines, the whimpering
steel in midtown taxi brakes—bend
in through the doorjamb with the wind
then drop away. The door shuts plumb: it seals
the world out like a coffin lid. A chill,
dampened and dense with the spent breath
of old Hail Marys, lifts from the smoothed
stone of the nave. I am here to pay
my own respects, but I will wait:
my eyes must grow accustomed
to church light, watery and dim.
I step in. Dark forms hunch forward
in the pews. Whispering, their heads
are bowed, their mouths pressed
to the hollows of clasped hands.
High overhead, a gathering of shades
glows in stained glass: the resurrected
mingle with the dead and martyred
in panes of blue, green, yellow, red.
Beneath them lies the golden holy
altar, holding its silence like a bell,
and there, brightly skeletal beside it,
the organ pipes: cold, chrome, quiet
but alive with a vibration tolling
out from the incarnate
source of holy sound. I turn, shivering
back into my coat. The vaulted ceiling
bends above me like an ear. It waits:
I hold my tongue. My body is my prayer.
Music: How Great Thou Art – Mormon Tabernacle Choir
Lavish Mercy 