“Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.”
~Simone Weil
Go here: Advent Waiting
Category: Advent/Christmas
Just around the corner
I know it’s Ordinary Time, but our house still has one foot in the Christmas season. As most of you know, we started following the Vatican custom of leaving our lights and crèche up until February 2, the Feast of the Presentation (which is 40 days after Christmas). (Check out the webcam at St. Peter’s if you doubt me–or even if you don’t doubt me. It’s so cool.) I say all of this as an excuse to share this meditation by Fr. Richard G. Smith on a seventeenth-century crèche. It’s good anytime of the year:
“The Christmas Trees of New York City”
Most tourists visiting New York City in December find their way to the famous Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. Unfortunately, far fewer will discover a less famous, though even more beautiful, tree a few blocks north of Rockefeller Center at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Actually, the tree itself is not particularly noteworthy–it is the seventeenth-century crèche from Naples, Italy, which surrounds the tree that makes it worth a visit. There we see all the usual character: dozens of angels, the shepherds and sheep, the wise men, the donkey and ox, Mary and Joseph.
What makes the crèche so unusual, though, are all the other scenes around it–vignettes of everyday life in seventeenth-century Naples. Among the many scenes we see a man walking a dog, a little boy dragging his mother somewhere, a woman baking bread in the kitchen, a man sleeping by the water fountain, even a young man flirting with a young woman. There is something beautifully human and real about these representations. And while they are all very beautiful, ultimately they are just scenes of simple people in their ordinary, everyday lives. That is what is so wonderful about the crèche: if any one of those ordinary people living their ordinary lives were to just turn the corner (around the tree), they would find the wondrous scene of the newly born Jesus surrounded by Mary, Joseph, and the dozens of angels. The newborn Jesus is so clase to any one of them, that they could walk up and touch him. And that’s the point of the crèche. God is that close.
In St. Luke’s telling, the birth of Jesus is revealed first of all to ordinary people, people like you and me, in the midst of their work who only need turn the corner to discover the God who wants no distance between us and himself.
(from Praying with Saint Luke’s Gospel, Magnificat Press)
Here’s a photo of the crèche. You can see more detail here.
Be still
The long night
This night is the long night,
It will snow and it will drift,
White snow there will be till day,
White moon there will be till morn,
This night is the eve of the Great Nativity,
This night is born of Mary Virgin’s Son,
This night is born Jesus, Son of the King of glory,
This night is born to us the root of our joy,
This night gleamed the sun of the mountains high,
This night gleamed sea and shore together,
This night was born Christ the King of greatness
Ere it was heard that the Glory was come,
Heard was the wave upon the strand,
Ere ’twas heard that his foot had reached the earth,
Heard was the song of the angels glorious,
This night is the long night.
~Celtic tradition
Advent Prayer (repost)
Advent Prayer
Like foolish folk of old I would not be,
Who had no room that night for Him and thee.
See, Mother Mary, here within my heart
I’ve made a little shrine for Him apart;
Swept it of sin, and cleansed it with all care;
Warmed it with love and scented it with prayer.
So, Mother, when the Christmas anthems start,
Please let me hold your baby–in my heart.
Sr. Maryanna, O.P.
Robert, Cyril. Mary Immaculate: God’s Mother and Mine. New York: Marist Press, 1946.
Where are you, God?
Fr. Mike Newman gave us this 3 and a half minute homily in our chapel this morning. It’s a homily for any of you who are having a hard day, are rushed and frazzled, and/or are a mom. Give yourself 3 1/2 minutes to listen to this. It will make you laugh and it will encourage you: Where are you, God?
You are light
The O antiphons
This is a sampling of an absolutely beautiful rendition of the O Antiphons (which began yesterday) by Linda Witte Henke, a textile artist. You can go to this site to see the whole set: The great O antiphons.
He is not absent
“We are in the liturgical season of Advent, which prepares us for Christmas. As we all know, the word ‘Advent’ means ‘coming’, ‘presence’, and originally meant specifically the arrival of the king or emperor to a particular province. For us Christians it means a wonderful and overwhelming reality: God himself has crossed his Heavens and stooped down to man; he has forged an alliance with him entering into the history of a people; He is the king who descended into this poor province that is Earth, and has made a gift to us of his visitation by taking on our flesh, becoming man like us. Advent invites us to follow the path of this presence and reminds us again and again that God has not withdrawn from the world, he is not absent, he has not abandoned us to ourselves, but comes to us in different ways, which we need to learn to discern. And we, too, with our faith, our hope and our charity, are called every day to see and bear witness to this presence, in a world often superficial and distracted, to make shine in our lives the light that illuminated the cave of Bethlehem.” (Pope Benedict XVI, 12/12/12)
Christ comes
A Sunday-poem from Sr. Genevieve Glen, OSB:
Christ comes, the promised peace of God,
His hands with healing filled,
In him is brokenness made whole
And love from hate distilled.
And when he comes, for whom we long,
Then will all rage be stilled.
Christ comes, the promised hand of God,
To cast the veil aside
That shrouds the world in bitter grief,
Where none from death can hide.
And when he comes, for whom we long,
Then will all tears be dried.
Christ comes, the promise kept by God,
The faithful One, and true.
In him is ev’ry hope confirmed
And ev’ry fear subdued.
And when he comes, for whom we long,
Then all will be made new.
Witnesses to Hope 