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Posted on 09/01/2012 7:05:48 AM PDT by Mad Dawg
Clearly we need to seek, to beg God's help in the coming election. I invite all to join in a "Novena" -- a LONG one -- with just such an intention.
If you start on 9/11 (!) and pray for 56 days, you end the day before election day.
If you start on 9/13 and pray for 54 days... you do the math. :-)
I am asking us to consider ADDING something to our daily prayers. I know you all are busy and I suspect many of you spend a good deal of time in prayer anyway. I do not seek to bind burdens on anyone's back. Though prayer sometimes involves teeth-gritting, that should not be the main theme! The main themes should always be hope, joy, and gratitude, IMHO.
But the prayer of a just man avails much, and we are justified in Jesus! So let us pray! Please consider adding ONE thing -- an act of charity and mercy, a little extra time in prayer and/or with Scripture, maybe a little fast -- or a even little extra physical exercise! But add just one thing to the Glory of our loving God and with a petition that He do HIS will in the coming election.
[Boring technical stuff for non-Catholics. The term "novena" refers to a period of prayer. It derives from, so to speak, riffing on the nine days of prayer between the Ascension and the Pentecost. Hence the name, which pretty much means "niney-thing" -- Mad Dawg translation.
[ Not so long ago, in our tradition, somebody was instructed to pray a novena of 6 novenas -- 3 of petition and 3 of thanksgiving. Good stuff ensued. Thus arose the 54 day novena. With JPII's change of the Rosary, a figure divisible by four is tidier for those who pray the Rosary. Hence my suggestion of 56 days.]
So. A another twofer:
The Third Sorrow) The Loss of the Child Jesus in the Temple. (Luke 2:43-45)
As I said last time, since Mary is (as we hold) without sin, and since she became aware of the absence of Christ, therefore it is not necessarily sinful to be aware of the absence of Christ.
But the “moral” is clear. Even as, even though, he is near to all the broken-hearted, yet the nearness he seeks, the closeness we need, is one of heart and will. Therefore his nearness may sometimes be more the beginning than the end of a search. It is he who gives thirst to the hart who seeks the water-brook, that he may satisfy that thirst in the deepest parts of our being.
So seek him among your friends and your kinfolk. If you do not find him there, seek him in the Father’s house. If you do not see him there, in the place where his glory abides, then beg him to enter your heart and to cleanse your eyes. He is no doubt there.
But know this: A dear friend was painfully aware of the absence of God at a time when she needed or, at any rate, strongly desired his presence. Her friends prayed. They prayed long, intently, with tears. And wonders happened.
So we may know that your seeking is not for yourself alone. He has promised that if you seek, you will find. And when you find, it is not for yourself alone. The search is for all of us. So search intently. You will find.
The Fourth Sorrow) Mary Meets Jesus on the Way to Calvary.
But when you find, do not be surprised if you find him torn, weak, staggering, bearing a heavy and a deadly burden. It is your sorrows he bears.
Ping for later read.
5) IHS dies on the Cross
It is almost an impertinence, almost flippant for me to address this. The huge surd of death, the irreconcilable and unacceptable fact, the mystery demands silence. To judge by appearances, the dead cannot hear anyway. What is the good of our speech? If we had an explanation, still it would not solve the problem.
I think we cannot believe it,at least not at first. When one of my lambs died, my mind would play tricks on me. Even though I had felt no heartbeat, suddenly I was sure I had seen the lamb take a breath.
And that was 'just' a lamb. This is a man -- a man who welcomed children, whose shrewd wit made divine wisdom accessible to all his hearers, whose country analogies and, even, sense of the ridiculous (just for a minute imagine a man with a log in his eye -- "I think you're gonna need a bigger handkerchief there, buddy"), must have made his followers smile, before they became thoughtful.
Now he is still. Or his body is. Looking at the dead, we cannot say where they themselves are or what they are doing.
Their bodies rest.
When Holy John says, "the light shines in darkness," I suppose the usual image is of the darkness being scattered, obliterated by the light. My speculation is that there is a deeper light, one more powerful. It burrows into darkness, not only not grasped, but not seen. In darkness it gathers, like troops behind enemy lines, and prepares to burst through from the depth of darkness back toward us who, with our dim vision, cannot penetrate too far into the mystery of death.
Darkness closed over him as water closes over the thrown pebble -- a few ripples (earthquakes, torn veils) then all is still. The Sabbath of God begins.
6)Mary Receives the Body of IHS into her Arms
While God's Sabbath begins with the setting of the sun and the coming of the night, will Mary rest? Will she sleep? Will her sleep be deep? Or will it be broken as once the utterance of an infant and the swelling of her breasts disturbed it? Will her arms reach for the child not there, her cheek long for the silken softness of a missing child's cheek?
With the bereft, which is where we must be if we are to be with Mary, with our brothers and sisters everywhere who now are torn with grief, we must at least taste what it means to say, "Look, and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow."
If we are to return rejoicing, shouldering our sheaves, we must be ready to go forth weeping with seed for sowing. This is a hard teaching, too hard to bear by ourselves alone
We are not by ourselves alone.
Sorry.
Ping to above.
Maybe one day I’ll learn how to do this properly.
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The problem with non-Christian religions is this: On the one hand, without the supernatural help of God, man will end up worshipping himself.
On the other, this self-worship can be seen as the despairing response to the (almost) universal sense of a hunger for something somehow transcendent and awareness of the numinous, the transcendent glimmering behind the everyday and immanent.
Just for truth's sake, we have to sympathize with everyone who longs for the some kind of relationship with something somehow "beyond," and we must acknowledge at least the truth-bearing parts of the pagan perception of the mystery. In fact, I think we would say that some pagans, though they may not be quite awake, nonetheless have useful dreams of what waking life might be like. They have, that is, a more urgent awareness of mystery than many purported Xtians.
At least, the mystery of vegetative growth, of the weed-like hydra which only multiplies in the face of opposition, ought to give everyone who has weeded a garden some wry amusement!
But it is a great sadness that the greater wonder of the germinating seed has been lost by so many. We plant something small, dry, and hard. Up comes something large, moist, soft ... and sometimes good to eat!
It is not just sowing or planting. Some pine cones, I am told, need to be scorched by fire if they are to open and release their seeds. Can anyone fail to see the wonder in that?
Paul says it is sown a "psychikon" (physical? natural?) body, it is raised a spiritual body.
And so we come to the entombment of the Sacred Body of our Lord. It is recorded that the Twelve didn't understand what IHS could have meant by "rising from the dead." But I wonder if any of them, years later ever thought, "What dunderheads we were! So he said it would be! So the Law and the Prophets told us! So our wise folk wrote, and our psalmists sang! And without and around them, so every molting locust or growing stalk of wheat proclaimed. Even the serpents slough off the old dull skin and slither away shining and new.
This is not to proclaim some spaced-out environmental mysticism which lifts us above the trials of life. We are creatures of mind and will, fallen creatures of sin and remorse. It is therefore unavoidable that we sow in tears. But it would be a shame if we let those tears blind us to the coming reaping in joy.
A body was laid in the tomb. A wonder burst out of the tomb.
From today’s morning devotional:
Psalm 12
To the leader: according to The Sheminith. A Psalm of David.
1 Help, O Lord, for there is no longer anyone who is godly;
the faithful have disappeared from humankind.
2 They utter lies to each other;
with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.
3 May the Lord cut off all flattering lips,
the tongue that makes great boasts,
4 those who say, ‘With our tongues we will prevail;
our lips are our own—who is our master?’
5 ‘Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan,
I will now rise up,’ says the Lord;
‘I will place them in the safety for which they long.’
6 The promises of the Lord are promises that are pure,
silver refined in a furnace on the ground,
purified seven times.
7 You, O Lord, will protect us;
you will guard us from this generation for ever.
8 On every side the wicked prowl,
as vileness is exalted among humankind.
What can I say?
Yup. Look to him. Ain’t nothin’ else worth lookin’ to.
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Thank you all for your constant and QUALITY sharing.
:-)
As we are taught to say, Praise God!
He is the Word through whom we have words, the Word behind the words which gives them meaning.
1) The Prophecy of Simeon
In my KJV, the prophecy that a sword will pierce Mary's “soul” is put in parentheses. I think the translators wanted to convey that it was the the sign that would be spoken against that would reveal the thoughts of many, not Mary's pierced heart.
So, let's grant them their parentheses. Then our Lady's sorrow is parenthetical. And our sorrows? Do they get at least a mention? What about ME?
Sed Contra, such glory as I may be destined for will shine its best in parentheses. I am, you are, rightly said to be at the center of the heart of IHS. But that only matters because HE is the center, not you.
Where I live there is a last range of hills to the east before we come to the coastal plain, broken by the “fall line”. Some mornings the mist on the mountains rolls down their west side. By a wonder of optics, they seem to carry the light with them, and a golden river slowly sinks into the hollows.
But let's remember. The mist is just droplets of water. It is beautiful, but at its most beautiful it reflects. Each droplet shares the light with every other droplet, and receives light from every other.
But the poignancy of the beauty is precisely that the droplets promise and prove something beyond themselves, and that promise fills them with the light which enraptures us. By themselves, they would only obscure vision. Lit by the sun, even they, insignificant creatures, urge us to look beyond even the sun to the Son who gives light to all.
There is ample glory, more than enough glory, in our parentheses. Everything that Mary is and does reflects the Glory of the Son. We too are called to shine in his light.
O ROOT OF JESSE
December 19
Symbols: Plant with Flower
Come to deliver us, and tarry not.
O Root of Jesse, who stands for an ensign of the people, before whom kings shall keep silence and unto whom the Gentiles shall make supplication: Come to deliver us, and tarry not.
O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum, super quem continebunt reges os suum, quem gentes deprecabuntur: veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.
The flower which springs up from the root of Jesse is another figure of Christ. Isaiah prophesied that the Savior would be born from the root of Jesse, that He would sit upon the throne of David, and in Christ this prophecy is fulfilled.
Recommended Readings: Isaias 11:1-12
I did not think, three weeks ago when I started this exercise, that I would end it with nights of insomnia caused by the bounce-back from the sedatives the physicians gave me before their, ahem, invasive procedure. I didn't anticipate the sniffles, coughs, headaches, mild confusion, crushing depression and lassitude. (I am reporting, not complaining. This is light travail.) I completely failed to think of the dreaded "Christmas rush," that wonderful synergy between Satan and society which distracts us from contemplating the second or the first coming of our Lord.
So now I type, fearful of meaninglessness or, worse, of self-indulgent blather, cloaking spiritual triviality in a haze of bogus profundity. There was no angel to me or to anyone close to me. There was no voice or dream saying, "Arise, take the child and his mother. Flee!"
We speak of The Flight into Egypt, and haste comes to mind. And surely they did leave quickly. But once they were on their way, surely they plodded, one step after another, as we all do.
We have a name for where we hope we are headed. We have been told, we have reason to believe that we are headed toward safety. But we are still in flight. We cannot make much speed, but neither can we rest for long where we are. It is always brief and troubled rest, making the most of too little time, and then up and on.
All we know is that we are not staying here, cannot stay here. There is nothing here for us except distraction, perhaps momentary delight, perhaps bleak unpopulated wilderness. We may glance, may even take brief pleasure, but then it is wearily up and unsteadily on.
But there was a dream. There was an angel, a messenger who brought tidings. There was a voice, an "unfamiliar voice." Sometimes it seems that all we have is a dream. But there is also a child, a child of unimaginable preciousness. We do not know what will happen to the child or to us. But we know that we must move on.
IHS says, "Stay [μενετε] with me." But to stay with him is to move on, to leave behind what we know, to go where we know not, except that he travels with us.
I may wander. I may dither foolishly and write without meaning. But he travels with me. I will seek my abiding, my staying, where he is. There is no rest anywhere else.
There is no rest anywhere else.
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Pure truth!
“The Lord Is with You
Israel’s worst moments were when they conceived of themselves as alone, without God. As in the desert, when they sought strange gods to rescue them; or when they faced the hostility of Babylon and relied on their strategies rather than on God. This sad tendency goes back to Adam and Eve, who turned from God to follow the lie that they would be gods themselves, and became so blind to themselves that they hid when God came to be with them. While our hearts long to be with God, our sin makes us forget him and resist his advances toward us. Who will save us from this impossible situation? Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Mary said “Yes” to God’s desire to be with us. No one participated in God’s life and lived with God in such a humanly intimate way as did Mary. She is the dawn that promises what life can now be. Not a life of doubt and alienation, like an abandoned child, but a life with God; a union so deeply human that it begins to participate in the divine. Mary gives us the possibility to receive the greeting, “The Lord be with you.” Let us never take these words for granted, for they are now radically and unimaginably possible through Mary’s Yes.”
…Fr. Richard Veras (2012 Magnificat Advent Companion)
O KEY OF DAVID
December 20
Symbols: Key
Come, and bring forth the captive from his prison.
O Key of David, and Scepter of the House of Israel, who opens and no man shuts, who shuts and no man opens; Come and bring forth the captive from his prison, he who sits in darkness and in the shadow of death.
O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israël, qui aperis, et nemo claudit, claudis, et nemo aperuit: veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris, sedentem in tenebris, et umbra mortis.
The key is the emblem of authority and power. Christ is the Key of the House of David who opens to us the full meaning of the scriptural prophecies, and reopens for all mankind the gate of Heaven.
Recommended Readings: Isaias 22:22-25
Today it's brief and simple.
We should not be concerned if we perceive that we have lost the Lord. We cannot HAVE the Lord in the first place. He is not ours to lose. We can have the consolation of feeling his presence, of discerning his loving care. Or not.
Before I learned of Mother Teresa's desolation, I already knew of other great saints, clear windows through which the light of God passed, whose closeness to our Lord was chiefly felt in a desire to cry out "Why have you forsaken me?" So desolation, though painful, is not a disaster, however much it feels like one.
The disaster would be if the Lord lost us. If you fear THAT disaster, you know what to do. Pray HARD. Remember who he is. Read Psalm 77 and see how the cosmic Lord, the Lord whose advent stirs up tempest and earthquake and pierces through the deep -- THAT Lord, who he sees us and treats us a sheep to be gently led.
Sometimes I had to upend my sheep and trim their hooves. They hated it. They utterly loathe having their lower limbs held. But I did it so they wouldn't get lame.
He will, from time to time, upend us. We won't like it. But he never ceases his care.
Mary and Joseph thought they had lost IHS. Okay. But he never lost them.
O RADIANT DAWN
December 21
Symbols: Sun with Rays
Come, and shine on those seated in darkness, and in the shadow of death.
O Dawn, splendor of eternal light, and sun of justice, come, and shine on those seated in darkness, and in the shadow of death.
O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae, et sol justitiae: veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris, et umbra mortis.
Just as the natural sun gives light and life to all upon whom its rays fall, so Christ, the Rising Dawn, dispels darkness and brings eternal life and light.
Recommended Readings: Malachias 4:2-6
O KING OF THE GENTILES
December 22
Symbols: Crown and Scepter
Come, and deliver man, whom You formed out of the dust of the earth.
O King of the Gentiles and their desired One, the Cornerstone that makes both one; Come, and deliver man, whom You formed out of the dust of the earth.
O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum, lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum: veni, et salva hominem, quem de limo formasti.
The crown and scepter signify Christ's universal kingship. As we sing in the fifth O Antiphon, Christ is not only the King of the Jewish nation, but the "Desired One of all," the cornerstone which unites both Jew and Gentile.
Recommended Readings: Apocalypse 15:1-4
O EMMANUEL
December 23
Symbols: Manger
Come to save us, O Lord our God.
O Emmanuel, God with us, our King and Lawgiver, the expected of the nations and their Savior: Come to save us, O Lord our God.
O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster, expectatio gentium, et Salvator earum: veni ad salvandum nos, Domine, Deus noster.
The manger reminds us of the simplicity and poverty surrounding the birth of Jesus and is representative of His life of humility.
Recommended Readings: Isaias 9:2-7
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