Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we hear Moses tell the People:
You are a people sacred to the LORD, your God; he has chosen you from all the nations on the face of the earth to be a people peculiarly his own.
Deuteronomy 7:6
We modern readers may be a little put off by the use of the word “peculiar” which, since the 16th century, has taken on the connotation of “odd” or “uncommon”. But the original meaning of the word is “to belong exclusively to one person“, as in “Honey, I love you and you belong to me!” Moses is telling Israel that this is the way God loves them.
Below is a song many us will remember. Maybe as teenagers we even did the “Stroll” to its dulcet tones. The love described in this song is but a pale shadow of the love God has for us, and the longing sung about is but a weak imitation of God’s longing for us. Listen to it and let God sing to you – singing around the words and into the meaning behind them.
Thinking of God as we listen to a song like this can make God very human. And, of course, that is exactly who Jesus Christ is. Jesus loves us with a human heart and a divine love. He loves us with a Sacred Heart.
All love is refined and proven in sacrifice. Jesus testified to his infinite love for us in his Passion, Death and Resurrection. In that miracle of redemptive love, God embraces, strengthens and commissions us. We are to love as God loves – to have hearts themselves made sacred by imitation of Christ.
“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 light.”
Matthew 11:28-30
Prose: In the late 17th, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque shared her vision of Christ’s Sacred Heart. In a book of her writings published after her death we read:
Christ showed me that it was His great desire to be loved by human beings and of withdrawing them from the path of ruin that made Him form the design of manifesting His Heart to us, with all the treasures of love, of mercy, of grace, of sanctification and salvation which it contains, in order that those who desire to render Him and procure Him all the honor and love possible, might themselves be abundantly enriched with those divine treasures of which His heart is the source.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart was fostered by the Jesuits and Franciscans, but it was not until the 1928 encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor by Pope Pius XI that the Church validated the credibility of St. Margaret Mary’s visions of Jesus Christ in having “promised her that all those who rendered this honor to His Heart would be endowed with an abundance of heavenly graces.”
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Judas Barsabbas and Silas are chosen to deliver a letter from the Apostles to the Gentiles in Antioch. It’s a critical letter – containing the apostolic decision regarding how the Antiochan church must observe religious practice.
Have you ever waited for a “decision letter”, one for which you were not sure of the outcome? Maybe a college or job acceptance letter? A bid on a new house? Or maybe a contest you entered desperate to win?
I remember waiting for the letter announcing whether or not the Sisters of Mercy would accept me into their community. It was a nerve-wracking wait for many reasons. I really wanted to be a Sister of Mercy but, after the initial interview, I wasn’t sure I could fill the bill.
The ride to the interview had seemed so distant from where I lived – in many ways. I had never seen such beautiful houses as those in the neighborhood surrounding the Motherhouse. And the entrance to the convent itself was, and still is, breath-taking. My six-foot self felt extremely small.
Sister Mary Assisium, who interviewed my parents and me, was an icon of the pre-Vatican II religious. She was perfection in her beautiful habit, cultured speech, quiet gait, and ultra-serious tone of voice. Her eyes seemed like big lakes in a sacred monument.
She scared me to death! I was a lanky, loping, gum-chewing teenager who still dropped the “g”s on my “ing”s. As we drove home from the meeting, I was pretty sure there was no way these women were going to invite me to join them! I think my parents were pretty sure too.
That interview happened on April 7, 1963. On June 2nd, I came home from work at the neighborhood deli, carrying a pastrami sandwich, to find an unopened letter lying on our dining room credenza. About ten feet away, Mom sat in the kitchen staring back and forth from the letter to me. For a few minutes, I stared back and forth from the letter to Mom, then finally got the guts to open it. It was dated May 31, 1963, Feast of the Queenship of Mary. ( After 1969, that date became Feast of the Visitation)
It said this, but in a lot of different, more beautiful words:
But the letter also implied, although not stated, an understanding that reassured my doubts.
Judas Barsabbas and Silas carried the same kind of letter to the Chrisitan Gentiles in Antioch. “You’re in. Just as you are.” And our Gospel today, tells us why that is so – Love.
Love is the test which measures us for Christianity – not religious practice, rituals, or personaility traits. The apostolic decision-makers understood this and came to a conclusion based on Gospel love.
Jesus makes this clear in our reading today, and how blessed are we to receive his invitation:
This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another.
Poetry: Acceptance – Robert Frost
When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.'
Music: The Letter – by the Boxtops: Well, the Sisters of Mercy didn’t exactly say they “couldn’t live without me no more”. But that’s the way I read it! 🙂
On this last day of the month, let me start with a caveat: I love April. It is the month of my birth and the birth of several people I love. April often gives us our first glimpse of spring and our first sounds of Alleluia.
But April is also full of contradictions: teasing sun and drenching rain; “shorts” weather one day, mufflers the next; a large measure of Easters, but a heavy dose of Good Fridays.
In other words, April – like its cousin October – is most perfectly reflective of our rollercoaster lives. And that reflection mirrors, not exactly a sadness, but a certain purple wistfulness inherent in all of life. Catherine McAuley described it this way:
This mingling is something we balance within ourselves every day of our lives, but maybe especially in April, as the great poet T.S. Eliot notes:
April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers.
So what do we do with April’s “cruelty” which might be defined as that tinge of melancholy lurking even in the greatest joy?
Rather than push it down or turn away from it (which I think most of us try to), there is a gift in prayerfully breaking open that languor, like an egg shell holding life’s fragile and surprising transformation.
For example, we might place before God in prayer these “cruelties” which carry both joys and sorrows:
Change which, in any form, requires a shifting from the comforts that have secured us
Loss that comes in the shape of missed opportunities, lapsed friendships, harbored unforgiveness, wrong choices and a hundred other “wish I could do over”s
Aging which, though a blessing when considering the alternative, brings a slow reckoning with our vulnerabilities
Bereavement, that terrible forest of loving memories and winding sadness where we feel lost as we long for healing
The poet Phillis Levin captures the power of such reflection in her beautiful poem. It’s a sad poem, but articulating it gave the poet an emotional release that carried healing :
Under a cherry tree I found a robin’s egg, broken, but not shattered. I had been thinking of you, and was kneeling in the grass among fallen blossoms when I saw it: a blue scrap, a delicate toy, as light as confetti It didn’t seem real, but nature will do such things from time to time. I looked inside: it was glistening, hollow, a perfect shell except for the missing crown, which made it possible to look inside. What had been there is gone now and lives in my heart where, periodically, it opens up its wings, tearing me apart.
As we move into the bright light of May then summer, it’s important not to neglect that shadowed strain running through and binding all human experience. When we, like Catherine McAuley, find it rising to the surface of our lives, we too must reflectively pray it into God’s heart so that we can find its healing power and peace.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we continue what we began on Monday, a long immersion in John’s Gospel which will not conclude until Pentecost.
As a guide in praying with the glorious Gospel, I am using a book from the series “A Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture”. This particular volume is “The Gospel of John” by Francis Martin and William M. Wright. These authors open their work with this beautiful introduction:
Pope St. Gregory the Great compared Scripture to a “smooth, deep river in which a lamb may walk and an elephant may swim.”
These words certainly apply to the Gospel of John. Within its pages are found divine teachings articulated with simple images such as water and light, memorable stories composed with literary and dramatic skill, and glimpses into the very mystery of God, proceeding from the most profound mystical illumination. Like the loaves and fishes multiplied by Jesus, the Gospel of John provides a superabundance of spiritual teaching, edification, and challenges to all its readers, whether beginners or experienced.
Our Gospel today gives us the central point inspiring John’s entire Gospel:
God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.
John 3:16
As we go deeper into our post-Easter journey, on the way to the confirmation of Pentecost, we need to keep repeating this amazing truth to ourselves …
And it helps to remind ourselves as well that “God so loved ME … that God gave God’s ALL for me.”
As we pray with John’s Gospel over the next several weeks, we will be doing the same work that the Apostles are doing in our first reading from Acts. We will be telling the story of Love – the story of Jesus who lived, died and rose from the dead to save us.
Each little part of that story can teach us and change us. By our choice to believe, and to act on that faith, we are transformed from darkness to Light in the power of the Resurrection.
And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.
John 3:19-21
For today, we may want to consider any darkness in our world or in ourselves that we wish to carry into God’s amazing Light and Love. There, let us lay the darkness down and pray to live the truth which John encourages us to live.
Poetry: “Truth”, said a traveller by Stephen Crane
“Truth," said a traveller,
“Is a rock, a mighty fortress;
“Often have I been to it,
“Even to its highest tower,
“From whence the world looks black.”
“Truth," said a traveller,
“Is a breath, a wind,
“A shadow, a phantom;
“Long have I pursued it,
“But never have I touched
“The hem of its garment.”
And I believed the second traveller;
For truth was to me
A breath, a wind,
A shadow, a phantom,
And never had I touched
The hem of its garment.
Music: God So Loved the World – Sir John Stainer
God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoso believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved. Amen.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, the greatest act of love unfolds around a simple table, in the last rich hues of a Jerusalem sunset. No doubt the Twelve whom we are used to seeing in the paintings, and the many other who had sustained Christ’s journey by their service, sensed that this was an extraordinary Seder.
As you place yourself in the scene, you may wish to be one of the Apostles, or you may be the one who baked bread that would become His Body. You may be the one who decanted the precious wine to be His Blood.
Wherever you are in that ancient, yet living story – and wherever you are tonight, let the ancient awe fill your heart as you hear these astounding words:
Brothers and sisters: I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.
1 Corinthians 11: 23-26
After the supper, to help us comprehend his incomprehensible Gift, Jesus shows us what Eucharist looks like in everyday practice. It looks like the selfless service of a tender foot washing, the humble bending of our hearts to tend another’s need.
So, during supper, fully aware that the Father had put everything into his power and that he had come from God and was returning to God, he rose from supper and took off his outer garments. He took a towel and tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and dry them with the towel around his waist.
….
So when he had washed their feet and put his garments back on and reclined at table again, he said to them, “Do you realize what I have done for you? You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘master,’ and rightly so, for indeed I am. If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”
Dearest Jesus, teach us the deep, deep lessons of these readings. Let them live in us in sacramental vigor poured over the world in Mercy.
As you walk now from the Upper Room toward the Agony of Gethsemane, let us walk beside you in trusting love.
Poetry: Loves – Scott Cairns is the author of eight books of poetry, including The Theology of Doubt (1985), The Translation of Babel (1990), Philokalia (2002), Idiot Psalms (2014), and Slow Pilgrim: The Collected Poems (2015). Spirituality plays an integral role in Cairns’ writing; in an interview, he said, “I’ve come to think of beauty as how God woos us to himself. One doesn’t so much create it or illuminate it as partake of it. Thereafter, one participates, collaborates, in its endless development.”
One of the more dramatic poems is “Loves.” In the voice of Mary Magdalen it offers a strong critique of the separation of flesh and spirit: “All loves are bodily, require / that the lips part, and press their trace / of secrecy upon the one / beloved . . .
Loves
Of Love’s discrete occasions, we
observe sufficient catalogue,
a likely-sounding lexicon
pronounced so as to implicate
a wealth of difference, where reclines
instead a common element,
itself quite like those elements
partaken at the table served
by Jesus on the night he was
betrayed—like those in that the bread
was breakable, the wine was red
and wet, and met the tongue with bright,
intoxicating sweetness, quite
like ... wine. None of what I write arrives
to compromise that sacrament,
the mystery of spirit graved
in what is commonplace and plain—
the broken, brittle crust, the cup.
Quite otherwise, I choose instead
to bear again the news that each,
each was still itself, substantial
in the simplest sense. By now, you
will have learned of Magdalen, a name
recalled for having won a touch
of favor from the one we call
the son of man, and what you’ve heard
is true enough. I met him first
as, mute, he scribbled in the dust
to shame some village hypocrites
toward leaving me unbloodied,
if ill-disposed to taking up
again a prior circumstance.
I met him in the house of one
who was a Pharisee and not
prepared to suffer quietly
my handling of the master’s feet.
Much later, in the garden when,
having died and risen, he spoke
as to a maid and asked me why
I wept. When, at any meeting
with the Christ, was I not weeping?
For what? I only speculate
—brief inability to speak,
a weak and giddy troubling near
the throat, a wash of gratitude.
And early on, I think, some slight
abiding sense of shame, a sop
I have inferred more recently
to do without. Lush poverty!
I think that this is what I’m called
to say, this mild exhortation
that one should still abide all love’s
embarrassments, and so resist
the new temptation—dangerous,
inexpedient mask—of shame.
And, well, perhaps one other thing:
I have received some little bit
about the glib divisions which
so lately have occurred to you
as right, as necessary, fit
That the body is something less
than honorable, say, in its
... appetites? That the spirit is
something pure, and—if all goes well—
potentially unencumbered
by the body’s bawdy tastes.
This disposition, then, has led
to a banal and pious lack
of charity, and, worse, has led
more than a few to attempt some
soul-preserving severance—harsh
mortifications, manglings, all
manner of ritual excision
lately undertaken to prevent
the body’s claim upon the heart,
or mind, or (blasphemy!) spirit—
whatever name you fix upon
the supposéd bodiless.
I fear that you presume—dissecting
the person unto something less
complex. I think that you forget
you are not Greek. I think that you
forget the very issue which
induced the Christ to take on flesh.
All loves are bodily, require
that the lips part, and press their trace
of secrecy upon the one
beloved—the one, or many, endless
array whose aspects turn to face
the one who calls, the one whose choice
it was one day to lift my own
bruised body from the dust, where, it seems
to me, I must have met my death,
thereafter, this subsequent life
and late disinclination toward
simple reductions in the name
of Jesus, whose image I work
daily to retain. I have kissed
his feet. I have looked long
into the trouble of his face,
and met, in that intersection,
the sacred place—where body
and spirit both abide, both yield,
in mutual obsession. Yes,
if you’ll recall your Hebrew word.
just long enough to glimpse in its
dense figure power to produce
you’ll see as well the damage Greek
has wrought upon your tongue, stolen
from your sense of what is holy,
wholly good, fully animal—
the body which he now prepares.
Music: Tenebrae Music for Holy Thursday – Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-94)
This musical meditation is based on the Lamentations in the Book of Jeremiah. The word “tenebrae” means “shadows”.
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.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with our longest Psalm 119.
This morning, we take one little morsel from its extended 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 Promise Keeper 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 read how Job’s elder years were blessed with peace and prosperity — beautiful gifts!
We want this serenity and peace for all of our dear elders. They have traveled the road ahead of us, often showing us the way.
All of our beloved elders need and deserve appreciative love and respect from us. Tell your parents, grandparents and older friends what a blessing they are to you. Let them know they have shone a light on your path.
The writer imagines Job sitting with his children in the midst of his latter riches, having found a deep friendship with God through all the challenges of his life. His household has been blessed with the same friendship by learning from Job’s ardent faith.
Many times our elders need us to listen to their journey story. I remember a much older friend sadly telling me that no one was alive who shared her memories. Her words struck me as I realized the deep loneliness which accompanied them.
Our elders may need us to help them remember the worth and beauty of their long years. Even in advanced age, some may still be carrying regrets that we might help them forgive in themselves. Certainly all still bear losses that they may need to remember with us, and blessings that they need to re-celebrate in stories.
May we never take for granted what we have been given by the ones who go before us, on whose shoulders we stand. The simple act of listening may be the most perfect way to say “Thank You”.
Poetry: When You Are Old – William Butler Yeats in this tender poem, Yeats writes to a young beloved about what her old age should be like – remembering both her own youth and his preceding death.
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Our Mother of Sorrows.
Poetry: Pieta – R.S. Thomas
Always the same hills Crown the horizon, Remote witnesses Of the still scene And in the foreground The tall Cross, Sombre, untenanted, Aches for the Body That is back in the cradle of a maid's arms.
Mary’s greatest sorrows came, not from circumstances she bore personally, but from her anguish at the sufferings of Jesus. Like so many mothers, fathers, spouses, children and friends, Mary suffered because she loved.
It is so hard to watch someone we love endure pain. We feel helpless, lost and perhaps angry. We may be tempted to turn away from our beloved’s pain because it empties us as well as them.
This is the beauty and power of Mary’s love: it did not turn. Mary’s devotion accompanied Jesus – even through crucifixion and death – for the sake of our salvation.
Today’s liturgy offers us the powerful sequence “Stabat Mater”.
Stabat Mater Dolorosa is considered one of the seven greatest Latin hymns of all time. It is based upon the prophecy of Simeon that a sword was to pierce the heart of His mother, Mary (Lk 2:35). The hymn originated in the 13th century during the peak of Franciscan devotion to the crucified Jesus and has been attributed to Pope Innocent III (d. 1216), St. Bonaventure, or more commonly, Jacopone da Todi (1230-1306), who is considered by most to be the real author.
The hymn is often associated with the Stations of the Cross. In 1727 it was prescribed as a Sequence for the Mass of the Seven Sorrows of Mary (September 15) where it is still used today. (preces-latinae.org)
Music: Stabat Mater Dolorosa – Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736) This is a glorious rendition. If you have time, you might listen to it on a rainy afternoon or evening as you pray.
STABAT Mater dolorosa iuxta Crucem lacrimosa, dum pendebat Filius.
At the Cross her station keeping, stood the mournful Mother weeping, close to Jesus to the last.
Cuius animam gementem, contristatam et dolentem pertransivit gladius.
Through her heart, His sorrow sharing, all His bitter anguish bearing, now at length the sword has passed.
O quam tristis et afflicta fuit illa benedicta, mater Unigeniti!
O how sad and sore distressed was that Mother, highly blest, of the sole-begotten One.
Quae maerebat et dolebat, pia Mater, dum videbat nati poenas inclyti.
Christ above in torment hangs, she beneath beholds the pangs of her dying glorious Son.
Quis est homo qui non fleret, matrem Christi si videret in tanto supplicio?
Is there one who would not weep, whelmed in miseries so deep, Christ’s dear Mother to behold?
Quis non posset contristari Christi Matrem contemplari dolentem cum Filio?
Can the human heart refrain from partaking in her pain, in that Mother’s pain untold?
Pro peccatis suae gentis vidit Iesum in tormentis, et flagellis subditum.
Bruised, derided, cursed, defiled, she beheld her tender Child All with bloody scourges rent:
Vidit suum dulcem Natum moriendo desolatum, dum emisit spiritum.
For the sins of His own nation, saw Him hang in desolation, Till His spirit forth He sent.
Eia, Mater, fons amoris me sentire vim doloris fac, ut tecum lugeam.
O thou Mother! fount of love! Touch my spirit from above, make my heart with thine accord:
Fac, ut ardeat cor meum in amando Christum Deum ut sibi complaceam.
Make me feel as thou hast felt; make my soul to glow and melt with the love of Christ my Lord.
Sancta Mater, istud agas, crucifixi fige plagas cordi meo valide.
Holy Mother! pierce me through, in my heart each wound renew of my Savior crucified:
Tui Nati vulnerati, tam dignati pro me pati, poenas mecum divide.
Let me share with thee His pain, who for all my sins was slain, who for me in torments died.
Fac me tecum pie flere, crucifixo condolere, donec ego vixero.
Let me mingle tears with thee, mourning Him who mourned for me, all the days that I may live:
Iuxta Crucem tecum stare, et me tibi sociare in planctu desidero.
By the Cross with thee to stay, there with thee to weep and pray, is all I ask of thee to give.
Virgo virginum praeclara, mihi iam non sis amara, fac me tecum plangere.
Virgin of all virgins blest!, Listen to my fond request: let me share thy grief divine;
Fac, ut portem Christi mortem, passionis fac consortem, et plagas recolere.
Let me, to my latest breath, in my body bear the death of that dying Son of thine.
Fac me plagis vulnerari, fac me Cruce inebriari, et cruore Filii.
Wounded with His every wound, steep my soul till it hath swooned, in His very Blood away;
Flammis ne urar succensus, per te, Virgo, sim defensus in die iudicii.
Be to me, O Virgin, nigh, lest in flames I burn and die, in His awful Judgment Day.
Christe, cum sit hinc exire, da per Matrem me venire ad palmam victoriae.
Christ, when Thou shalt call me hence, by Thy Mother my defense, by Thy Cross my victory;
Quando corpus morietur, fac, ut animae donetur paradisi gloria. Amen.
While my body here decays, may my soul Thy goodness praise, safe in paradise with Thee. Amen.
From the Liturgia Horarum. Translation by Fr. Edward Caswall (1814-1878)
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings offer me an invitation to write a more personal reflection than usual.
Recently, our community has experienced the deaths of two dearly loved sisters. Readers might remember that I mentioned Margery’s funeral a few days ago. And just yesterday, Clare Miriam died. Each of them was an amazing minister of the Gospel and lover of God’s poor.
See, upon the mountains there advances the bearer of good news, announcing peace! Celebrate your feasts, O beloved, fulfill your vows!
Nahum 2:1
Because most of us live in communities – familial, social, and religious – we all move through ever-turning circles of hellos and good-byes. In those turnings, we touch one another’s lives in a thousand obvious and subtle ways, hopefully causing our own lives to spin ever closer to God.
Funerals – even though we don’t look forward to them – are times when the circling pauses. We see a beloved person’s complex and amazing existence like a still life masterpiece. We see the graceful details we may have overlooked or taken for granted. We appreciate the lights and shadows of their struggles and triumphs. We see God standing behind the easel of their story inviting us to deepen our own graces as we pray.
In a large and long-loved community like the Sisters of Mercy, we accompany one another through many funerals and many home-goings. It can feel a little heavy sometimes because of the love we bear another. But, oddly, it can also give an unexpected buoyancy to our hope and faith to honor these precious lives – one after another – so lovingly given, so faithfully lived, so beautifully completed.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory, and then he will repay each according to his conduct.
Matthew 16:25-27
After Margery’s funeral Mass, my friend turned to me and said, “What a tribute to a truly beautiful soul …. and we live in a community full of them!” Indeed, and now another, dear Clare has lifted her life up to God as the rest of us sing, “Brava! Alleluia! Amen!”
Whenever I attend one of our sister’s funerals, of course, I consider my own. Sometimes, while the soulful music plays, I design the Mass booklet in my mind and the cover says this:
My dear Sisters of Mercy, thank you for the privilege and gift of living among you!
Poetry: The Neophyte- Alice Meynell
Who knows what days I answer for to-day? Giving the bud I give the flower. I bow This yet unfaded and a faded brow; Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray.
Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way, Give one repose to pain I know not now, One check to joy that comes, I guess not how. I dedicate my fields when Spring is grey.
O rash! (I smile) to pledge my hidden wheat. I fold to-day at altars far apart Hands trembling with what toils? In their retreat I seal my love to-be, my folded art. I light the tapers at my head and feet, And lay the crucifix on this silent heart.
Lavish Mercy 