Today, God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray a prayer full of beautiful, hopeful images. 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!
Dear Friends, A diversion from our Psalms for today… Praying with this verse from today’s first reading, a reflection rose in my spirit that I would like to share with you all. None of us ever again wants a Christmas like this. But pause to want this one enough to receive its blessings.
And suddenly there will come to the temple the LORD whom you seek.
I hear the soft rumble, like thunder, of Christmas approaching – struck by the awareness that we have never shared a Christmas such as this.
Oh Beloveds, in our fear, frustration, loneliness and loss, let us not lose this moment when Christ comes to us as Christ has never come before.
Out of the darkness, out of loss, out of separation, out of helplessness, out of pandemic still Christ comes…
with a message maybe lost in former, more comfortable years… carried to us, now, on a “star” not seen in 800 years.
The message?
Always, I am Love. I am Life. I am Wholeness. I am Forever. And I am Emmanuel God-With-You.
Fear Not. I shine. And I will lead you to my heart.
But you must seek me in the secret of this unparalleled time.
There is a most vulnerable place in your depth. These times have laid it bare.
Invite me there. Seek me there.
It is the temple where I want to come to you this Christmas.
Poetry: The Coming of Light – Mark Strand
The Coming of Light Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light. You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, sending up warm bouquets of air. Even this late the bones of the body shine and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.
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 clay 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 gracious 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.
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!
Poetry: The Kingdom of God – by Jessica Powers, an American poet and Carmelite nun
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Mercy, we pray the O Antiphon:
“O Emmanuel, God with us, come to save us.”
The prayer itself appears a contradiction. If God is with us, why need He come?
If we are already saved, why need we pray for salvation?
It is because we very human beings FORGET!
Our pleading is not for God’s sake; it is for our own – to wake us and focus us on the amazing reality that God wants to be with every one of us every moment of our lives if we will just open those moments to God.
Think about what you have missed of God’s Presence in your life? Even just yesterday … last week … last year …your lifetime! Wow!
I know that, so often, I thought I was doing this all alone.
O, God With Me, how blind I have been! O Emmanuel, open my heart to your Presence in myself and in all Creation.
O Emmanuel, our King and Giver of Law: come to save us, Lord our God!
For the following prayer with our O Antiphon, let’s begin by placing before us anything that is locked, closed off, chained, frozen within us and in our world. Let us place all these things before God’s mercy, grace and omnipotence as we pray:
O Key of David, O Blessed Freedom, Who unlocks the secret of eternal life within our hearts!
Come absolve the sad incarcerations shackling us!
We hold ourselves and one another captive by our fears, our greed, our terrible need to control Your power within us.
We are afraid of Love, because once released in us, Love asks for everything… … for everything to be unbound, unbarred and given to Your Unrestricted Grace, in flesh named “Jesus”.
Love asks us to become like You, but we are locked in smaller dreams.
O Key of David, come free our dreams with Yours.
Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!
Poetry: Dropping Keys – Hafiz
The small woman Builds cages for everyone She knows, While the Sage, Who has to duck her head When the moon is low, Keeps dropping keys all night long For the Beautiful Rowdy Prisoners.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray, “O Root of Jesse’s Stem”, addressing, in this short prayer, the entire 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 – especially all who suffer from the effects and fears associated with the pandemic
O Leader of the House of Israel, giver of the Law to Moses on Sinai: come quickly to rescue us with your mighty power!
Poetry: The Coming – RS Thomas
And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look, he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we continue to pray the O Antiphons – beseeching the Savior to come to us.
“O Adonai” calls on God to come lead us out of darkness. Let us pray today for all who live in any form of darkness – war, fear, poverty, exile, addiction, depression, illness, ignorance or indifference.
Let us pray for God’s light for any of these situations in ourselves or our families … in our world.
As the year grows toward its greatest darkness, we seek You, Adonai, Greatest Light!
O Adonai, lead us out of darkness! O Leader of the House of Israel, giver of the Law to Moses on Sinai: come to rescue us with your mighty power!
Poetry: O Adonai – Malcolm Guite
Unsayable, you chose to speak one tongue, Unseeable, you gave yourself away, The Adonai, the Tetragramaton Grew by a wayside in the light of day. O you who dared to be a tribal God, To own a language, people and a place, Who chose to be exploited and betrayed, If so you might be met with face to face, Come to us here, who would not find you there, Who chose to know the skin and not the pith, Who heard no more than thunder in the air, Who marked the mere events and not the myth. Touch the bare branches of our unbelief And blaze again like fire in every leaf.
Today, in Mercy, we begin the recitation of the O Antiphons.
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:
17 December: O Sapientia (O Wisdom
18 December: O Adonai (O Beautiful Lord)
19 December: O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse)
20 December: O Clavis David (O Key of David)
21 December: O Oriens (O Dayspring)
22 December: O Rex Gentium (O King of the Nations)
23 December: O Emmanuel (O God With Us)
We begin today with a heartfelt plea to God to fill our world with a Wisdom that orders all things and teaches us prudence.
Oh, how our world needs this prayer to be answered! How we need to discover a Wisdom rooted in truth, justice and mutual love!
Let us pray this prayer together today, dear friends, and wrap the whisper of longing around our whole aching world:
O Wisdom of our God Most High, guiding creation with power and love: come to teach us the path of knowledge!
As we begin this final week before Christmas, may each one of you feel a dawning of new grace and courage in your hearts. This will certainly be a very different, and perhaps difficult time for many. But let Wisdom teach us that there may be a new and unexpected grace even in this strange season.
Poetry:
Deep into Advent white morning rises out of night’s dark mystery. It will be cold today in some corners even of the heart.
Still, in a distant belfry sweet bells awaken Slowly, the western horizon warms enough to melt stars.
It is a time of promises dancing in and out of hope. Once, we see Glory. Once, we see Void. Our stark challenge is just to hope, no matter what we see.
Deceptively simple, it is a call with caverns unimagined, each one offering its own circuitous journey into Wisdom.
For when peaceful stillness encompassed everything and night had run half its course, your Almighty Word leapt down from heavens throne into a doomed land. Wisdom 18:14-15
Music: O Wisdom – Michael G. Hegeman, Performed by: The Lauda! Chamber Singers
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 85 – a song filled with urgency and expectation!
When we pray this psalm:
We are desperately thirsty nomads who hear promise in the hint of thunder.
We are the parched leaves stretching up to catch the first rain.
We are the foundered boat lifted on the gathering flume.
Tomorrow, we begin the exclamations of our answered hopes — the great O Antiphons.
But for today, let us relax into the certainty that, indeed, the Savior is coming – just as sure as the clouds turn silver with the weight of rain.
What is it in your heart today that reaches for the cloudburst of grace?
Poetry: Last Night, the Rain Spoke to Me – Mary Oliver
Last night the rain spoke to me slowly, saying, what joy to come falling out of the brisk cloud, to be happy again in a new way on the earth! That’s what it said as it dropped, smelling of iron, and vanished like a dream of the ocean into the branches and the grass below. Then it was over. The sky cleared. I was standing under a tree. The tree was a tree with happy leaves, and I was myself, and there were stars in the sky that were also themselves at the moment, at which moment my right hand was holding my left hand which was holding the tree which was filled with stars and the soft rain— imagine! imagine! the wild and wondrous journeys still to be ours.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 34.
When I read its refrain, my mind was triggered into a kind of “Jeopardy-like” exchange with God:
Answer: This is the reason God sent his Son, and continues to redeem the world in us. Question : What is “The Lord hears the cry of the poor”.
Psalm 34 reiterates a fundamental fact so often overshadowed by our highly secularized “Christmas unconsciousness”. The psalm refocuses us by consistently using words like this:
Let my soul glory in the LORD; the lowly will hear me and be glad.
When the poor one called out, the LORD heard, and from all his distress he saved him.
When the just cry out, the LORD hears them, and from all their distress he rescues them.
The LORD is close to the brokenhearted; and those who are crushed in spirit he saves.
Christmas is God’s response to the unrelenting cry of the poor. If we want to truly honor and celebrate Christmas, we must allow that merciful and healing response to flow through us.
How and where do I hear the cry of the poor? How do I respond?
Poetry: Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit – Alice Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American novelist, story writer, poet and social activist. In 1982, she wrote the novel The Color Purple for which she won the National Book Award hardcover fiction, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Did you ever understand this? If my spirit was poor, how could I enter heaven? Was I depressed? Understanding editing, I see how a comma, removed or inserted with careful plan, can change everything. I was reminded of this when a poor young man in Tunisia desperate to live and humiliated for trying set himself ablaze; I felt uncomfortably warm as if scalded by his shame. I do not have to sell vegetables from a cart as he did or live in narrow rooms too small for spacious thought; and, at this late date, I do not worry that someone will remove every single opportunity for me to thrive. Still, I am connected to, inseparable from, this young man. Blessed are the poor, in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Jesus. (Commas restored) . Jesus was as usual talking about solidarity: about how we join with others and, in spirit, feel the world, and suffering, the same as them. This is the kingdom of owning the other as self, the self as other; that transforms grief into peace and delight. I, and you, might enter the heaven of right here through this door. In this spirit, knowing we are blessed, we might remain poor
Music: The Lord Hears the Cry of the Poor – John Foley, SJ
Lavish Mercy 