Born in Bethlehem Gregory Great

29 DECEMBER   Christmas Season Night Office         First Reading Colossians 1:1-14           Responsory' Col1:12-13; Jas 1:17 Let us give thanks to God our Father, + because he has rescued us from the power of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. V. Every good and perfect gift comes to us from above, from the Fa­ther of light. t Because he has ...   Second Reading From a homily by Saint Gregory the Great (Hom. 8: PL 76, 1103-1105) Born as an alien In those days a decree was promulgated by Caesar Augustus that a census should be taken of the whole world. Why was a census of the whole world taken when the Lord was about to be born if not to give a clear indication that One was coming in a human body who would enroll his elect in eternal life? On the other hand, the prophet says of the wicked: Let them be blotted out from the book of the living, and not enrolled among the just.    It was fitting for the Lord to be born in Bethlehem, because Bethlehem means the house of bread, and he himself said: I am the living bread which came down from heaven. The place where the Lord was born was named the house of bread because he who would refresh the minds of the elect with inner abundance was destined to appear there in the body. The fact that his birth took place not in his parents' home but while they were travelling was undoubtedly to show that, in a certain sense, through his assumed humanity, he was born as an alien. I do not mean that he was an alien with regard to his power, but by reason of the nature he had taken upon himself. Of his power it is written: He came to his own, and indeed in his own nature he was born before the beginning of time, but in ours he came in time. Since therefore he appeared in time while remaining eternal, he descended as an alien. God says through the prophet that all flesh is grass, but when the Lord became man he turned our grass into wheat, since he said of himself: Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain. Therefore he also lay in the manger as a newborn babe to refresh all believers, like holy animals, with the nourishment of his own body, and assuage their hunger for the food of eternal knowledge. The angel announced the birth of a king, and choirs of angels sang and rejoiced with him, proclaiming: Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth. Before our Redeemer was born as a man we were at odds with the angels, being kept far from their glory and purity by our original fault and daily sins. For since our sins made us strangers to God, the angels of the city of God considered us excluded from their fellowship. On the other hand, when we recognized our King, the angels recognized us as fellow-citizens. They no longer dared to despise as weak and beneath them that which, in the King of Heaven, they worshiped above them. Nor, worshiping above them a God who is human, do they disdain human fellowship. Let us, therefore, who in the eternal foreknowledge are citizens of the city of God and equal to the angels, take care that no impurity defiles us. Human beings are called gods: for the honor of God, then, let us guard ourselves against sin, for whose sake God became man, who lives and reigns for all eternity. Amen.

Nyssa Prayer Choir Leader

The Night Office, today the Reading re-echoed from Nyssa’s Sunday Reading.

It beautifully and powerfully enlightens our hearts on PRAYER.

On Sunday, Luke 18:1-8, gave the theme;

“There are lots of teachings on PRAYER.

I wondered what is the difference in Continuous Prayer and Continual Prayer?

Then the version of ‘Pray Constantly’ –‘Uninterrupted’.

It is a gift of grace, it is life in God’s presence.

In the Asperges in the Mass Introduction,  we are reminded of the flow of life beginning at our Baptism.”

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Prayer; continual, continuous, or constant

Something is continual if it happens repeatedly: Our holiday was ruined by the continual rain (it rained often but not all the time). It is continuous if it goes on without a break: Our holiday was ruined by the continuous rain (it rained all the time). If something is constant it happens many times in the same manner: Ruth suffered from constant colds as a child.

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Wednesday 29^th Week Ord Time Yr II - Second Reading

From the writings of Saint Gregory of Nyssa
(The Christian Way of Life II: Jaeger VIII, 77-79)

Prayer is like a choir leader in the choir of virtues

In speaking about the different virtues, we cannot say that one is better than the rest, or that we should pursue them in order of merit. For in fact they are of equal importance with one another, and linked together they lead those who practice them to the height of perfection. Sincerity leads to obedience, obedience in turn to faith, and faith to hope, hope to righteousness, righteousness to service, and service to humility. From humility we learn gentleness which leads to joy, as joy leads to love, and love to prayer. Thus bound to one another and binding their zealous follower, the virtues lead him to the very height of his desires, just as the various forms of wickedness lead those attached to them down the oppo­site way to the utmost depths of evil.

But we must above all devote ourselves to prayer; for prayer is like a choir-leader in the choir of virtues, by means of which we ask God for the virtues we still lack. Devotion to prayer unites the Christian to God in the communion of a mystic sanctity, in a spiritual possession and a disposition of the soul that no words can describe. With the Spirit then to guide and help him, his love for the Lord like a bright flame, he prays unceasingly in ardent desire, always burning with love for the divine good and refreshing his soul with renewed zeal. As scripture says: Those who eat me will hunger for more, and those who drink me will thirst for more; and elsewhere: You have filled my heart with gladness; so too the Lord says: The kingdom of heaven is within you.

By the kingdom within us he certainly means that joy which the Spirit instills into our souls from above, as an image and a pledge, reflecting the eternal joy which the souls of the faithful possess in the life to come. So the Lord comforts us in all our afflictions through the working of the Spirit, to keep us safe and to grant us a share of spiritual gifts and of his own special grace. He comforts us in all our troubles, says the apostle, so that we may be able to comfort others in their distress. And the psalmist says: My whole being cries out with joy to the living God; and: My soul is richly feasted, indicating in all such symbolic sayings the joy and comfort that come from the Spirit.