Advent and seeds

Sr. Dorcee, beloved4 Comments

A reflection from Caryll Houselander:

A seed contains all the life and loveliness of the flower, but it contains it in a little hard black pip of  a thing which even the glorious sun will  not enliven unless it is buried under the earth.  There must be a period of gestation before anything can flower.

If only those who suffer would be patient with their earthly humiliations and realize that Advent is not only the time of growth but also of darkness and hiding and waiting, they would trust, and trust rightly, that Christ is growing in their sorrow, and in due season all the fret and strain and tension of it will give place to a splendor of peace.   (Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God, p. 36)

The meaning of Mary’s “fiat”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

I have been a faithful reader of Restoration, the monthly newsletter of Madonna House in Combermere, ON, for years.  I always read it from cover to cover.  One of my favorite columnists is Fr. Pat McNulty.  He’s one of the “salt of the earth.”  I thought I would share with you one of his Advent columns from past years.  His topic was the meaning of the word fiat, spoken by Mary in response to the angel at her Annunciation.  You can read it here.  I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.

“Shining, whole, and Godward-turned”

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I have many reasons to be thankful for this feast, that of the Immaculate Conception.  The first is that Christ was able to find someone who would give Him “an eager welcome”, who in no way would reject Him because of a sinful nature, who was pure love because He first loved us [her], because she received His love without hindrance.  And secondly, we can have great hope because in her we can see the promise God has for each of us.  Someday, through all the purifications and trials of this life, through our faltering yeses to Him, we shall become like her: “shining, whole, and Godward-turned.”  Someday, He will see His image clearly in us as well.   And someday we will never refuse His love for us.  O, sweet Mother, intercede for us.  We do thank Him for you.

December Eighth

 Beloved, Mother of us all,
Today we remember
That, of all earth’s millions,
You, Mary, in the womb,
Were shining, whole,
And Godward-turned.
You only, O Morning Star,
Lighted the clouds of sin and waiting.
You only, Immaculate Ark,
Glided above the depths of the primal curse;
For you were to bear safely over those waters
Emmanuel, your little Son, from whose baby hand
Streams the rainbow up which we climb to God.
You only, little white moon, are the crystal
Reflection of our Sun.
But for your whiteness, O Gate of Heaven,
We had never entered, nor seen our God.
But for your loveliness, O Mystic Rose,
We had never breathed the Rose of Sharon.
White Tower of David, Ivory Tower,
Princess whose beauty lured Love’s kiss when life began,
Mother, who died a thousand deaths for us,
We thank Him for you.
To-day, when He smiles to see His image in you, clear,
Remember us.

~Sr. St. Francis S.S.J. 
 (Robert, Cyril. Mary Immaculate: God’s Mother and Mine. New York: Marist Press, 1946.)

The Lord comes to our wilderness

The Lord will manifest His glory in the wilderness.

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Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

I always find great hope in this first paragraph of the second reading from this past Sunday’s Office of Readings.  The reason I find it so hopeful is because in it Eusebius proclaims that the glory of the Lord will appear in the wilderness, not in Jerusalem.  Because most of my prayer these days consists in loving Christ in the darkness and the wilderness of my own life, it is a great consolation to know that that is exactly where Christ will manifest His glory.  Be heartened if you, too, experience a wilderness, a trackless waste, somewhere in your life.  “It is there that the glory of the Lord is to appear.”

The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God.  The prophecy makes clear that it is to be fulfilled, not in Jerusalem but in the wilderness: it is there that the glory of the Lord is to appear, and God’s salvation made known to all mankind.  (Eusebius of Caesarea)

When Israel went out of Egypt

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The poem for today may not strike you immediately as a poem for Advent, but as you read it, I think you’ll see why I chose it.  It’s a poem I just came across by one of my favorite writers, Anthony Esolen, who just this past week posted it to Touchstone’s blog. Here’s the link, and I do hope that you savor and relish it as much as I did upon reading it.  Let’s never go back to Egypt . . .

Found by God

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

Continuing on from yesterday’s post . . .  Our journey to God is so much like that of the prodigal son’s.  We start to turn home-ward, only to find that God is already there, coming to us.  The sheep gets lost, and the Shepherd goes out to find it–sometimes even before the sheep realizes that it is lost.

As we are searching for God, the good news is that God is searching for us.  Better yet, he has found us.  The great question is not whether we have found God but whether we have found ourselves being found by God.  God is not lost.  We were, or, as the case may be, we are. . . . Here is what St. Paul says: “It is full time now for you to wake from sleep.”  He is telling us to wake up the gift already given.  This season of the Church’s calendar is called Advent, which means “coming”.  Christ came, Christ comes, Christ will come again.  There is no time–past, present, or future–in which Jesus the Christ is not God with us.  He was with you yesterday, is with you today, and will be with you tomorrow.  So we are invited to give up our searching and let ourselves be found by the One who wants to be with us, and to have us with him, forever.    (Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, God With Us, pp. 18-19)

The search for God

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One of the books I’m reading, actually re-reading, this Advent, is a book of a nondescript name with an unattractive cover: The Roots of Christian Mysticism,  by Olivier Clement, one of the foremost Orthodox theologians of our day.  What I love about the book is the way Clement brings together quote after quote from ancient authors with his brilliant commentary interspersed.  This past week I have been re-reading the first three chapters.  The second is entitled “God, Hidden and Universal”.  Clement is trying to communicate how utterly inaccessible God in His essence is to us.  Of course, this concept–which, of course, we cannot fully grasp–is essential to understanding the inexpressible love of God for us in becoming man.  However, instead of quoting from his book :-), I am going to quote the late Fr. Richard John  Neuhaus (from First Things)  from another book, God With Us, an Advent-Christmas book put out by Paraclete Press.

We are all searching, and ultimately–whether we know it or not–we are searching for God.  Ultimately, we are searching for the Ultimate, and the Ultimate is God.  It is not easy, searching for God . . .  The fact is that we do not really know what we’re looking for or who we’re looking for.  Almost a thousand years ago, St. Anselm of Canterbury said, “God is that greater than which cannot be thought.”
      Think about it.  We can stretch our minds as high and deep and far as our minds can stretch, and at the point of the highest, deepest, farthest stretch of our minds, we have not “thought” God.  There is always a thought beyond which we cannot think.  “God is that greater than which cannot be thought.
      God is, literally, inconceivable.  And that is why God was conceived as a human being in the womb of the Virgin Mary.  Because we cannot, even in thought, rise up to God, God stooped down to us in Jesus, who is “Emmanuel,” which means “God with us.”

I will continue with this tomorrow.

Waiting

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

This Advent morning I have been pondering the idea, the posture of “waiting.”  What does it mean to wait for the Lord’s coming?  To wait in hope?  I haven’t formulated all my thoughts yet, but one thing that rings true to me about waiting is something that Pope Benedict talked about in his general audience yesterday.  In the context of speaking about St. William of Saint-Thierry (a good friend of St. Bernard of Clairvaux), he wrote: “Human nature, in its most profound essence, consists in loving.  In a word, only one task is entrusted to every human being: to learn to will the good, to love, sincerely, authentically, freely.  However, only at the school of God can this task be accomplished and man can attain the end for which he was created.” 

What struck me was that there is a link between loving and waiting.  If I put all my energy into loving–loving God, receiving His love, loving others as I am loved–then I will indeed be “actively” waiting, actively preparing for His coming.  What better thing could I do than that to prepare for Him who is Love itself?

“An interior diary”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

Perhaps many of you have already read Pope Benedict’s homily from First Vespers this past Sunday, but I wanted to draw your attention particularly to this part and encourage you to try to do what he suggests for Advent:

Advent, this intense liturgical time that we are beginning, invites us to pause in silence to grasp a presence. It is an invitation to understand that every event of the day is a gesture that God directs to us, sign of the care he has for each one of us. How many times God makes us perceive something of his love! To have, so to speak, an “interior diary” of this love would be a beautiful and salutary task for our life! Advent invites and stimulates us to contemplate the Lord who is present. Should not the certainty of his presence help us to see the world with different eyes? Should it not help us to see our whole existence as a “visit,” as a way in which he can come to us and be close to us, in each situation?

You can read the entire address here.  (It is worth reading.)  Do try to take some time daily to take note in your “interior diary” of how God has loved you.  (This will remind some of you of Fr. Gallagher’s talks on the examen.) And know that we all wouldn’t mind your sharing an entry or two here as a comment.

In time of need

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

Yesterday was the funeral for my aunt and the reason for my not posting.  Today, of course, I am a bit weary.  The funeral went well, but now, in addition to what I call the “mother-wound” I carry in my heart because of the loss of my own mother, I now have an “aunt-wound” because of the loss of my “other mother”.   This morning when I prayed, I picked up a collection of Amy Carmichael’s writings called Thou Givest . . . They Gather and read this:

“I cannot get the way of Christ’s love.  Had I known what He was keeping for me, I should never have been so faint-hearted”, Samuel Rutherford wrote long ago.  Have we not often had cause to say so too?  But if for a season we are in heaviness, if the morning after a night of pain, or prayer, or fierce fight of temptation, or any other weariness, finds us arid as a burnt-up bit of land, there is a perfect word waiting to hearten us: Grace to help in time of need–in time of need–that is the word.  Often and often I have drunk of that living water very thirstily.  Blessed be God for this brook in the way.  “For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but One that has been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.  Let us therefore draw near with boldness to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help in time of need.” (Heb 4.15-16)

Now, I must honestly confess that I sometimes have mixed reactions to reading something like this.  This is what I begin to think: “But will I really feel refreshed after I pray?  Many a time I have continued on arid after coming to Him.”  (I call to mind that time I spoke of earlier when I cried out, “Lord, have you forgotten me?”)  But even as I thought that this morning, I felt the Holy Spirit prompting me: “But can you not trust that if that is the case, that the Father, in His love, has a greater purpose in allowing it?”  And, you know, I cannot but answer yes to that because I know “in my knower”–as they say–that all that the Father does, He does in love.  If I continue on in weariness and grief and aridity, He must have a greater purpose in it all.  And I thank Him for reminding me of that.