Acknowledging that we haven’t yet reached our destination can be frustrating but should also be a source of hope in our lives.
Back in the halcyon days of my childhood, each summer our family would pile into our baby-blue minivan and drive to Florida. During the entirety of the 12-hour drive, my brothers and I would go wild, arguing over who got to sit in which seat, quibbling over who was invading the sovereign territorial space already claimed by a brother, and begging our parents for gas station snacks.
This was in the days before laptops and DVD players, so our only entertainment was the books we brought, travel versions of board games, and whatever music we could listen to before the batteries in the Walkman died. The trip felt like an eternity.
I’m sure my parents felt the dilation of time into infinity at least as acutely as we did. One year, my dad got so desperate that he picked us up out of our beds and piled us into the car at 3 a.m. so we would sleep through the first half of the drive and leave him alone. He may have been starting his vacation sleep deprived but at least we weren’t driving him crazy.
“This hymn was commissioned by the Benedict XVI Institute under the patronage of James Hudon. Part of the text was set to music by the composer Frank La Rocca. The sources of the hymn are fourfold: the main verses borrow from Christina Rossetti’s stanza in the classic “In the Bleak Midwinter” and draw on the nativity narratives of Matthew and Luke’s Gospels; the poem as a whole is shaped according to the Eastern Orthodox Akathist Hymn tradition, particularly its practice of offering seven praises after a chanted prose reading; and, finally, the third chorus of praises draws on the Western litany tradition and paraphrases the Litany of the Blessed Virgin.“
This Sunday’s poem is one by Jessica Powers, written in 1948, an apt poem for today, usually the Feast of the Immaculate Conception but this year coinciding with the second Sunday of Advent.
Advent
I live my Advent in the womb of Mary.
And on one night when a great star swings free
from its high mooring and walks down the sky
to be the dot above the Christus i,
I shall be born of her by blessed grace.
I wait in Mary-darkness, faith’s walled place,
with hope’s expectance of nativity.
I knew for long she carried me and fed me,
guarded and loved me, though I could not see.
But only now, with inward jubilee,
I come upon earth’s most amazing knowledge: someone is hidden in this dark with me.
~Jessica Powers, The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, p. 81.
I posted this 13 years ago. After reading this meditation the first time, I hung a star in my room as a reminder. It has moved with me over the years and still hangs in my room.
Take a moment–perhaps with a cup of tea and a lit candle–to sit quietly and read this editorial from this month’s Magnificat [December 2011] by Fr. Peter John Cameron. If you don’t have time at the moment, print it out or bookmark it to read at a time when you have the space and quiet to read it slowly. Don’t scan this quickly; it deserves the right pace to speak to your soul. And may it speak deeply to your soul . . .
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that Jesus knew and loved us each and all during his life, and gave himself up for each one of us (see 478). Which means that from the moment Christ is conceived in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Jesus is loving us and giving himself to us personally. He is calling to our hearts, wooing us with all his tenderness.At this very moment, the aged Simeon stands at his post in the temple… vigilant… filled with expectation… looking for Mary’s baby. Once the infant Jesus appears, no one will need to tell Simeon that this is the One he has been waiting for all his life.
For five years already a lame man has been lying by the sheep pool in Bethesda, too weak to hoist himself into the stirred up waters. Even now, Jesus begins his approach to him. It will be thirty-three years more before Christ stands beside the man, but even now he asks him the question we are all aching to hear: “Do you want to be healed?”
Any day now a mother and a father will give birth to a little girl who will grow up to acquire a bleeding disease that will baffle all doctors and afflict her for twelve years. Even now, Jesus is pitying her, healing her, and calling her “daughter.”
Who can say how long the leper has lived alone, lurking in the shadows? Yet even now something has happened that will not allow his tortured heart to give way to despair. So even now, from a distance, he starts searching the faces in every crowd, certain that some day Someone will appear to whom he will beg, “Sir, if you will to do so, you can cure me!”
At the moment, the woman destined to be the Gospel’s famous widow is a beautiful young maiden newly betrothed. She spends all her passion in preparing for her wedding – for the day she will be a bride. Yet the days of her marriage will not last long. And with the death of her husband, she will spend her life loving others with a total gift of self. Even now Jesus the Bridegroom is watching, commending her for giving all she has to live on.
Even now Bartimaeus in the abyss of his blindness is crying from his misery, “Son of David! Have pity on me!” The child born in the city of David is readying even now to restore his sight.
Even now Jesus is settling on the tree up which Zacchaeus will scurry. Even now Jesus plans to stop, and look up, and call Zacchaeus from his limb. Even now Jesus is promising him, “I mean to stay with you today.”
At this point in time, the Samaritan woman at the well has not yet married Husband Number One. Little does she know that she will have five husbands and another man besides. But even now Jesus is appealing to the thirst that is her life and promising to slake it with the gift of his very self.
Even now the mere lad Matthew hasn’t any idea about what he will be when he grows up. What leads him one ill-fated day to betray his religion, his nation, and himself in becoming a tax collector we will never know. But even now Jesus is making his way to Matthew’s tax collecting post and summoning him from his heart with the words, “Follow me.”
Even now something makes the centurion restless, uneasy. He cannot truly be himself until he professes, “This man was the Son of God!”
Just about now the little boy Peter is beginning to learn how to fish from his father. But even now Jesus sees him on the seashore and summons him to be a fisher of men. Even now Jesus is forgiving his sins and calling Peter “Rock.”
Even now Jesus is silently beckoning us all: Come to me, you who are weary and find life burdensome, and I will refresh you. Your souls will find rest in me. I am gentle and humble of heart. Do not live in fear. I have come that you might have life and have it to the full. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me. I am the way, and the truth, and the life. I am the Bread of Life. I call you friends. I am with you always.
Even now a wondrous star has arisen in the heavens of the far-off East. Even now Magi have left all else behind, and have begun to make their way to a manger, following a path laid out by the shining star’s luster. Let us go with them.
Rev. Peter John Cameron, O.P. Copyright Magnificat
There is no other poem more lovely for the first Sunday of Advent than this one so I am resharing it. May you know his coming to you personally during this season.
I have shared Jan Richardson’s poems before. She’s perhaps on my mind because every Advent I pull out her book, Circle of Grace, to accompany me on my Advent journey. Here’s another of her poems that I love.
Go slow If you can. Slower. More slowly still. Friendly dark or fearsome, this is no place to break your neck by rushing, by running, by crashing into what you cannot see.
Then again, it is true: different darks have different tasks, and if you have arrived here unawares, if you have come in peril or in pain, this might be no place you should dawdle.
I do not know what these shadows ask of you, what they might hold that means you good or ill. It is not for me to reckon whether you should linger or you should leave.
But this is what I can ask for you:
That in the darkness there be a blessing. That in the shadows there be a welcome. That in the night you be encompassed by the Love that knows your name.
Witnesses to Hope 