Tag: New Dawn

Rain Down the Just One

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Advent, Faith, Hope, Jesus, spiritualityLeave a comment

Memorial of Saint John of the Cross, Priest and Doctor of the Church
Thursday of the Second Week of Advent
December 14, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/121423.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Isaiah offers us polar opposites for our prayer: some charmless metaphors and some beautiful lyricism.

In a graphic attempt to alert us to our spiritual weakness, Isaiah suggests that we are worms and maggots whom God still loves. It’s a comparison I get, but I choose not to linger on in my prayer.

Still, I don’t want to miss the point. No matter how unimportant we may feel in human estimation, we are ardently cared for by God who does not want us to be afraid. God wants us to turn from our worrisome self-estimation toward the hope that God’s Love promises:

The afflicted and the needy seek water in vain,
their tongues are parched with thirst.
I, the LORD, will answer them;
I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.
I will open up rivers on the bare heights,
and fountains in the broad valleys;
I will turn the desert into a marshland,
and the dry ground into springs of water.
I will plant in the desert the cedar,
acacia, myrtle, and olive;
I will set in the wasteland the cypress,
together with the plane tree and the pine,
That all may see and know,
observe and understand,
That the hand of the LORD has done this,
the Holy One of Israel has created it.

Isaiah 41:17-20

In our Gospel, Jesus praises John the Baptist, a preacher who could get a little wormy too at times. But John’s core message bursts with hope as does Isaiah’s. Their messages sound like this in my spirit:

Your soul is a window into eternity!
Stop looking in your unlit mirror!
Repent! Turn your heart toward God!
Believe in the New Dawn
rising in Jesus Christ!

Imagery:

As our Alleluia Verse charges us:

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Let the clouds rain down the Just One,
and the earth bring forth a Savior.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

Music: Window of the Soul – Chuck Loeb

The Benedictus

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Eternal Life, Faith, Mercy, peaceLeave a comment

Thursday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time

October 8, 2020

2018 Reflection on Gospel
Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, for our Responsorial, we pray with a passage from Luke’s Gospel. This passage is known as the Benedictus or Canticle of Zechariah. It is one of three canticles in the first two chapters of Luke, the others being the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis. The Angelic Hymn is often considered a fourth.

At the Wednesday General Audiences given by the Pope, a theme is chosen for “catechesis” or teaching. From October 2001 until February 2006, Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI gave their teachings based on the Psalms. JPII closed the first section of these audiences with these words:

“Our commentary on the Psalms and canticles from Morning Prayer concludes today with the Canticle of Zechariah, commonly known as the Benedictus. It is a prophetic canticle, in which the father of John the Baptist, indicates three events in God’s liberation of Israel: the covenant with Abraham, the covenant with David, and the new covenant with Christ. Like the “dawn from on high,” Christ gives light and guides us into the way of peace.”

Wednesday General Audience, October 1, 2003

As we pray with the hope-filled verses of the Benedictus, we pray in a world still seeking the fullness of that Dawn of Tender Mercy …

… the tender mercy of our God
by which the daybreak from on high will visit us
to shine on those who sit in darkness and death’s shadow,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.

Pope Francis’s closing prayer in Fratelli Tutti reflects the same hope as his predecessors for that universal Dawn, that rising of Love in our hearts.

O God, Trinity of love,
from the profound communion 
of your divine life, 
pour out upon us a torrent 
of fraternal love.

Grant us the love reflected 
in the actions of Jesus, 
in his family of Nazareth,
and in the early Christian community.

Grant that we Christians 
may live the Gospel, 
discovering Christ in each human being, 
recognizing him crucified
in the sufferings of the abandoned
and forgotten of our world,
and risen in each brother or sister 
who makes a new start.

Come, Holy Spirit, 
show us your beauty, 
reflected in all the peoples of the earth,
so that we may discover anew
that all are important 
and all are necessary, 
different faces of the one humanity
that God so loves. Amen.

Music: A Mass for Peace: Benedictus- Karl Jenkins