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.
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?
“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be as you have said.”
Luke 1: 38
We want it to be the way we want it: our plans, our timing, our hopes and dreams first and foremost.
And then life happens and suddenly nothing looks the way it was supposed to be. How are we to respond?
In my work in a University Health Center, I see in young adults a tremendous lack of resiliency, an inability to ride the waves that crash and overwhelm. One of the most common responses to the unexpected is to panic, facing uncontrollable anxiety that interferes with eating, sleeping, working, studying. A common response to anxiety is to self medicate in any way easily accessible: alcohol, marijuana, nicotine, sex, a friend’s prescription drugs. A little isn’t working so a lot might be better. The anxiety is compounded and becomes deepening depression.
The sadness…
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“The God who has a human face and who has loved us to the end . . . “:
“[W]e need the greater and lesser hopes that keep us going day by day. But these are not enough without the great hope, which must surpass everything else. This great hope can only be God, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can bestow upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain. The fact that it comes to us as a gift is actually part of hope. God is the foundation of hope: not any god, but the God who has a human face and who has loved us to the end, each one of us and humanity in its entirety. His Kingdom is not an imaginary hereafter, situated in a future that will never arrive; his Kingdom is present wherever he is loved and wherever his love reaches us. His love alone gives us the possibility of soberly persevering day by day, without ceasing to be spurred on by hope, in a world which by its very nature is imperfect. His love is at the same time our guarantee of the existence of what we only vaguely sense and which nevertheless, in our deepest self, we await: a life that is ‘truly’ life.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Spes Salvi 31)
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.
“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)
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.
An Advent homily by Fr. Pat McNulty from Madonna House:
It was about 3 a.m. when I pulled my car into the checkpoint at Canadian Customs and Immigration. Though there were trucks in their own lane, mine was the only car around.
The middle-aged man in the booth requested my ID and then asked, “Where are you going?”
“To Madonna House, a Roman Catholic community in Combermere, Ontario.”
“What’s the purpose of your visit?”
“I’m a priest and I’m going there for a retreat.”
“Odd day-um qui lay-tiff-i-cot,” he said.
“I beg your pardon.”
“Ad deum qui laetificat…”
“Oh, ahhhh… Juventutem meum,” I answered.
The man smiled, gave me back my ID and said, “Better brush up on your Latin, Father. Welcome to Canada. Have a nice day.”
That was, of course, a long time ago, back when every Catholic boy who had ever served at Mass knew that Latin phrase. Those were the first words out of his mouth after Mass began at the foot of the altar.
You can read the rest here.
I know I just shared a post from Ann Voskamp, but I can’t pass this one up either: What Your Christmas Needs because I know that it’s what you all need to read right now: the importance of pauses. Make sure and look at the first video she shares: The Christmas Scale. It makes the point so powerfully. May you find the grace to pause . . . .
Witnesses to Hope 