“The Mother of God, the most pure Virgin, carried the true light in her arms and brought him to those who lay in darkness. We too should carry a light for all to see and reflect the radiance of the true light as we hasten to meet him.” (Office of Readings, Feast of the Presentation)
Friday: from the archives
Sometimes an old hymn is just what we need to lift up our hearts and souls. So many of the old hymns are laced with Scripture, and singing them speaks much deeper to our hearts than we know. (God’s word always goes much deeper than we know.) Here is a beautiful rendition of O God, Our Help in Ages Past(with subtitles so you can sing along!).
The reason why singing is such a splendid shield against the fiery darts of the devil is that it greatly helps us to forget him, and he cannot endure being forgotten. He likes us to be occupied with him, what he is doing (our temptations), with his victories (our falls), with anything but our glorious Lord. So sing. Never be afraid of singing too much. We are much more likely to sing too little. (Amy Carmichael)
Benedict XVI is giving a series of teachings on the Creed. Here is a teaser from his first one:
Faith leads Abraham to tread a paradoxical path. He will be blessed, but without the visible signs of blessing: he receives the promise to become a great nation, but with a life marked by the barrenness of his wife Sarah; he is brought to a new homeland but he will have to live there as a foreigner, and the only possession of the land that will be granted him will be that of a plot to bury Sarah (cf. Gen23:1-20). Abraham was blessed because, in faith, he knows how to discern the divine blessing by going beyond appearances, trusting in God’s presence even when his ways seem mysterious to him.
A lot to think about there. If you’d like to read his whole address, you can go here.
“An uprising is possible when a voice comes alive, unashamed, un-selfconscious, rising up from within us, uttering words that beseech and thank and praise. To rise up with hands clasped together calls upon a power needing no weapons, only words, to overcome and overwhelm the shambles left of our world.
Nothing can be more victorious than the Amen, our Amen, at the end. So be it and so shall it be.
Amen, and Amen again.”
Amen!
To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.
~Karl Barth
Prayer is easier for the youngest among us. It can be amazingly spontaneous for kids — an outright exclamation of joy, a crying plea for help, a word of unprompted gratitude. As a child I can remember making up my own songs and monologues to God as I wandered alone in our farm’s woods, enjoying His company in my semi-solitude. I’m not sure when I began to silence myself out of self-conscious embarrassment, but I stayed silent for many years, unwilling to put voice to the prayers that rattled in my head. In my childhood, prayer in public schools had been hushed into a mere moment of silence, and intuitively I knew silence never changed anything. The world became more and more disorderly in the 60’s and 70’s and in…
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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.
Simple, wonderful advice on prayer from Jean-Pierre de Caussade:
I have only two things to say on the subject of prayer:
Make it with absolute compliance with the will of God, no matter whether it be successful, or you are troubled with dryness, distractions, or other obstacles.
If it is easy and full of consolations, return thanks to God without dwelling on the pleasure it has caused you.
If it has not succeeded, submit to God, humbling yourself, and go away contented and in peace even if it should have failed through your own fault; redoubling your confidence and resignation to his holy will.
Persevere in this way and sooner or later God will give you grace to pray properly.
But whatever trials you may have to endure, never allow yourselves to be discouraged.
St. Francis de Sales, whose feast we celebrate today, has so many wonderful stories. Here is one of my favorites:
“One of the world’s finest musicians, who played the lute to perfection, in a brief time became so extremely deaf that he completely lost the use of hearing. However, in spite of that he did not give up singing and playing the lute, doing so with marvelous delicacy by reason of his great skill which his deafness had not taken away. He had no pleasure either in singing or in the sound of the lute, since after his loss of hearing he could not perceive their sweetness and beauty. Hence, he no longer sang or played except to entertain a prince whose native subject he was and whom he had a great inclination as well as an infinite obligation to please since he had been brought up from his youth in the prince’s court. For this reason he had the very greatest pleasure in pleasing the prince and he was overjoyed when the prince showed that he enjoyed his music. Sometimes it happened that to test this loving musician’s love, the prince would command him to sing and immediately leave him there in the room and go out hunting. The singer’s desire to fulfill his master’s wishes made him continue his song just as attentively as if the prince were present, although in fact he himself took no pleasure out of singing. He had neither pleasure in the melody, for his deafness deprived him of that, nor that of pleasing the prince, since the prince was absent and hence could not enjoy the sweetness of the beautiful airs he sang.” (Treatise on the Love of God, Book 9, Chapter 9)
I have a flip-top collection of quotes of St. Thérèse in the room where I pray, and I have had it flipped to this quote for a few weeks now: “What pleases Him is that He sees me loving my littleness and my poverty.” This morning as I read it, I was struck by the word “loving.” She doesn’t say “accepting” or “living with” or “bearing”, but “loving”. Loving?
And then it struck me: that is exactly where I meet Christ in my life–in my littleness and poverty. He favors the poor. He came to us as the poor Man. So, of course, I should love that place and love dwelling there with Him.
Thank you, St. Thérèse. Pray for me that my love for my littleness and poverty will increase.
A Sunday-poem by Mother Mary Francis:
Cold
This is the season of snows,
when the sky, all in pieces, is falling,
and bells from invisible towers
are soundlessly tolling.
Over the carpeted earth,
footsteps are coming and going,
leaving no tracks on a land
where winter is snowing.
Where are they hanging, the bells?
Whose are the feet that come walking?
And voices gone speechless with cold–
to whom are they talking?
Sound is an alien here,
and vision the child of a stranger.
Nothing is feeding the heart,
nothing but hunger.
Feed then my eyes and my ears.
God, feed my hunger with hunger,
my longing with snow-falling snow,
my heart with your winter.
Witnesses to Hope 