Category: Advent/Christmas

Empty enough

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

If you are feeling empty today, then you are ready for the Christ Child to enter in:

“And yet a paradox is involved here: this greatness and depth of God can be perceived only by babes, the nêpioi or ‘infants’–those who have no words of their own–and not by those who are wise and possess understanding according to the logic of the world.  Not in vain does Saint Bernard say, Non consolatur Christi infantia garrulos— ‘Christ’s infancy does not console the garrulous.’  To these–mere babes, to those of innocent heart–God reveals his inmost secrets as to his intimate friends and dear children.  There is a clear affinity between God and children.  This truth is at the center of the mystery of Christmas, when God is revealed in the form of a baby.  More than mere ‘affinity,’ this is actual identification: The eternal God becomes what he most loves on earth–a child.  But this is no mere sweet sentimentality on God’s part: If he loves the childlike, it is because they are empty enough to receive what he wants to give, a mystery Guerric of Igny expounds:
‘If in the depths of your soul you were to keep a quiet silence, the all-powerful Word would flow from the Father’s throne secretly into you.  Happy then is the person who has so fled the world’s tumult, who has so withdrawn into the solitude and secrecy of interior peace, that he can hear not only the Voice of the Word, but the Word himself: not John but Jesus.'”  (Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis)

Bleak winters.

Sr. Dorcee, beloved3 Comments

“In the lives of those who believe and pray, there are bleak winters of the spirit.  We seem to go along well for a while in prayer and relationships and life generally, but from time to time we disintegrate.  It is very painful.  You may suspect that this will prove to be a creative disintegration, that God is re-creating you, putting you together in the likeness of his Son at a new and deeper level.  Certainly this does happen: growth is not easy; there is a probably distressing period for the caterpillar on the way to butterflyhood.  We are all participants in this experience from time to time, and a chrysalis needs sympathetic understanding, so we should be gentle and patient with ourselves, as with others.  Nevertheless, they are hard to live through, these winters of the spirit.  When you know yourself to be sterile, helpless, unable to deal creatively with your situation or change your own heart, you know your need for a Savior, and you know what Advent is.  God brings us to these winters, these dreary times of deadness and emptiness of spirit, as truly as he brings winter after autumn, as a necessary step towards next spring.  But while we are in them they feel like a real absence of God, or our absence from him. . . . .In the winters of your prayer, when there seems to be nothing but darkness and a situation of frozenness, hold on, wait for God.  He will come.”  (Maria Boulding)

I hope this provides encouragement for you.  Know that I’m praying for you . . . all of you who “know what Advent is.”

For those who are grieving or suffering loss during Advent (repost)

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

Today’s post is a reflection on today’s first reading from the book of Judges.  It is the story of Manoah and his wife who was barren.  By the message of an angel and the grace of God, they became the parents of Samson.  This story is obviously a foreshadowing of the Gospel story that follows of Zechariah and Elizabeth.  Listen to what Kathleen Norris has to say:

Today our readings ask us to reflect on a mystery: when our lives are most barren, when possibilities are cruelly limited, and despair takes hold, when we feel most keenly the emptiness of life–it is then that God comes close to us.  This is a day for those who are grieving or suffering loss during Advent, lamenting that just as we are suffering, and need to weep, the world force-feeds us merriment and cheer.  But we are not without hope, for it is because we are so empty, having used the last scrap of our own resources, that God can move in.  To work on us, and even to play.  Even our bitter emptiness gives God room to play, as at the Creation, placing whales in the sea and humans on dry land, then bringing all the animals to Adam to see what in the world he will call them.  This is not a scene of imposed merriment, but of genuine delight and joy.  (from God With Us, Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas, p. 105)

It’s easy to feel very lonely, to feel very alone, when you are grieving during such a joyous season.  It gives me hope to know that God is drawn to those who are empty and lonely and alone.  He was born in an “empty” stable.  So let’s come to God with our barrenness and our grieving.  It is there that He will come close to us.

“When we give each other our Christmas presents”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

“When we give each other our Christmas presents in his name, let us remember that he has given us the sun and the moon and the stars, the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans and all that lives and moves upon them.  He has given us all green things and everything that blossoms and bears fruit and all that we have misused–and to save us from our own foolishness and from all our sins, he came down to earth and gave us Himself.  Venite adoremus Dominum.”  (Sigrid Undset)

Advent Prayer (repost)

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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.

Advent journey (repost)

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

This morning I was meditating on Joseph and Mary’s Advent journey to Bethlehem.  So often, I think, we would like our own Advents to be peaceful and calm and balk interiorly–if not exteriorly as well–at inconveniences and grouchy children (and husbands), at interruptions and long lines, etc.  And then there are those even more serious situations that we may be facing: the death of a loved one, possible foreclosure on our house, unemployment . . .  When we think about what the journey to Bethlehem realistically consisted of, we might do well to join ourselves spiritually to Mary and Joseph in their journey, begging God to give us those same graces.

Here is an excerpt from Come, Lord Jesus–Meditations on the Art of Waiting, by Mother Mary Francis, published posthumously:

We think about our Lady on the way to Bethlehem.  Do we really think deeply enough about what she suffered?  And about Saint Joseph’s suffering?  How do we think he felt to take her off in her condition of expectancy, riding the mule to Bethlehem?  Her heart must have been tempted to question, “Why is this?”  And surely his heart was tempted to question.  Neither was supine; these were real people.

There are struggles asked of us, as were asked of them.  And the answer is faith.  We will see later on, of course, in the Scriptures, that it says very plainly that she didn’t understand what Jesus said to them after those three days’ loss.  And she asked him, “Why did you do that?”  Those words, in a sense, sum up her whole relationship with the Son of God, who was the Son of her womb.  And he gives her an answer that she doesn’t understand at all.  He says to all of us, in a different place in the Scriptures, “What I am doing you cannot understand now, but later you will understand.”  That is a precious thought to hold in our hearts.  How many times we say, “I just don’t understand this”, and he says, “One day you will understand.”

In the inevitable struggles of life–and the struggles of these special days–we don’t need to understand.  We just need to respond, and then to hear him say, “One day you will understand.  One day I will explain everything to you–except when that day comes, you won’t need to ask.”  (pp. 103-104)

“Season of Stillness”

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Season of Stillness

by Catherine Doherty.

My Russian shrine stands peaceful and quiet. Its roof is covered with snow. The Virgin of Kiev is reflected in the vigil light that always burns before her face. It looks especially beautiful in the dark of the winter nights.

Squirrels and raccoons scamper around, leaving tracks on the snow, as does my doe who comes to drink at the river where the current is too swift to freeze. Once in a while, bear tracks are also seen on the snow!

In such an environment, December comes to greet me and leads me slowly and gently into Advent, to the Expected One—the Child in the cave—the Child who is God.

It isn’t difficult for me to imagine that snow and ice, trees and animals, share in my expectation. In December my island sings of the coming of the Prince of Peace.

The island is bare. And there is a stillness, a holy stillness, that makes very real to me the words of the Christmas antiphons, “When the night was still, your Almighty Word leapt down from heaven.”

My mind turns to that holy night that is always so close, though it happened almost 2,000 years ago. I cannot help meditating on this beautiful antiphon. My mind spins a cradle of silence into which the Word that leapt from heaven comes to rest.

Silence and speech, contemplation and action, these form the very heart of the Christian life. To receive the Word we must gather ourselves up, recollect ourselves.

The fire of the Holy Spirit is often expressed in many revolutionary ways which seem confusing to us. But if we are silent, if we recollect ourselves and prepare to hear the voice of the Word, then we will cease to be confused; we will be made ready for the revolution of love.

Yes, we must become cradles of silence, meditation and contemplation so that the Word may find our hearts ready to receive him—our souls and minds ready to hear his message of love. And, hearing it, may we arise and go forth and live it!

—Adapted from Welcome, Pilgrim, (1991), p. 92, Madonna House Publications, out of print.

Advent Antiphons

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

Advent Antiphons

From Mary’s sweet silence
Come, Word mutely spoken!

Pledge of our real life,
Come, Bread yet unbroken!

Seed of the Golden Wheat,
In us be sown.

Fullness of true Light,
Through us be known.

Secret held tenderly,
Guarded with Love,

Cradled in purity,
Child of the Dove,

COME!

Sr. M. Charlita, I.H.M.

Robert, Cyrus. Mary Immaculate: God’s Mother and Mine. New York: Marist Press, 1946.

Your light will come

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

Every morning during Advent, we pray the same responsory to the reading during Morning Prayer: “You light will come, Jerusalem; the Lord will dawn on you in radiant beauty.  You will see his glory within you.”  I find those words so comforting, and these two images come to mind:

And this is the Lord’s work.  Ours is just to wait and open our hearts to Him.