Christmas Greeting - Life's Adventure

Fr. Stephen - 88

   

Dear William,
Thank you for the gift of your Christmas Message and Painting for each of the privileged monks.
Not least is of Fr. Stephen, who celebrated his 88th birthday and was with us at the Mass, and the later  Bridget special for dinner.
Let me see if his portrait is to hand.  (Eureka - only found in our Blog).

And your wonderful Meditation - thank you.

The art is in another dimension; . "Medieval symbols that survived into this period include the Holy Spirit entering the room in the form of a dove, the gilded rays of light emanating from the tiny figure of God in the window, and the white lilies, symbolizing the Virgin’s purity." How do we interpret the the Holy Spirit - the Dove symbol with a shadow?
Yours ...
Donald

The Annunciation with Saints and Donors, The Latour d'Auvergne Triptych  http://artnc.org/works-of-art/annunciation-saints-and-donors-called-latour-dauvergne-triptych  

----- Forwarded Message -----

From: William W ...
To: ...>
Sent: Tuesday, 11 December 2012, 5:00
Subject: Life's adventure

Dear Fathers ...,

 

I am hoping that today the post will bring you my Christmas greetings cards, sent a little early so that the stamps enclosed may give wings to the first flight of greetings to the many friends of Nunraw!

 

With the cards is a print of a solemn reflection for Christmas and I should like to explain! Whilst I was preparing to come on my retreat, my mind had been dwelling upon the mystery of life and death - how I might, so to speak, circumscribe for myself the meaning of 'life's adventure'; it was when I was with you that I believe I journeyed to its source. I settled on a concept, that of life originating through the 'Idea in the mind of God' - His Son, leading to the 'Ideal in the heart of God' realized in the Son's incarnation; it is through his own 'life's adventure' that faith finds its fulfilment, the mystery its completion. I am sure there are fine writings on this subject, but I needed to come to a way of understanding for myself.

 

It is through my love for Nunraw and the Cistercian charism that my 'life's adventure' is quickened and the journey sustained.  

 

With my love in Our Lord,

William

                            Life’s Adventure

 

The mystery of life and death holds a deep fascination for all mankind,    but for many people death presents only an aspect of fear, a dark curtain hanging over the end of an earthly existence. For the Christian, however,   it is seen as a veil through which the light of eternity can even now be discerned, drawing us onward in faith and confidence. In his Incarnation Jesus opened to us the mystery of God’s love and showed us the way of truth and life, so that, following him, we might live in longing expectation of faith’s fulfilment, the completion of life’s adventure.

 

 

I love to be suspended within the mystery of life’s adventure

Upheld by the Idea in the mind of God brought within this sphere,

His living Word expressing the celestial vision of so loving a Father

Wondrously born as man through the eternal generation of His love

 

Such heavenly wisdom through Whom all things came into being

Conceived in the womb of divinity before the dawn of salvation

The very presence of the Godhead lying in the stable before me!

Sent into the world by the Father’s compassion for His children

 

Exemplar of all that is revealed amid the myriad of creation’s wonders

I kneel before You in awe and adoration as Your life’s adventure begins,

Frail human child cradled in the arms of Your immaculate mother

The one chosen to bring into this world a most wondrous exchange

 

For the Ideal in the heart of God is realized in Your incarnation

Awakening such responsive love that had lain dormant in desire

Your birth opening the way to the promised everlasting inheritance

The fulfilment of faith, the completion of life’s adventure

 

 

 

Psalm 109:3 (Grail)   A prince from the day of your birth on the holy mountains; from the womb before the dawn I begot you. 

Hebrews 2:10-11 (AMP)  For it was an act worthy of God and fitting to the divine nature that He, for Whose sake and by Whom all things have their existence, in bringing many sons into glory, should bring to maturity the human experience necessary to be perfectly equipped for His office as High Priest through suffering. For both He Who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father.

Hebrews 9:15 (AMP) Christ, the Messiah is the Mediator of an entirely new covenant, so that those who are called and offered it may receive the fulfilment of the promised everlasting inheritance.

 

Analecta Cartusiana Edit. James Hogg Christmas. Gift

Sudden Snowscape - James Hogg

MONASTICON CARTUSIENSE

Dear James,    
Thank you for the latest issues of Analecta Cartusiana.
We appreciate this Christmas gift and thank you for the festive Greetings.
Your kind Note  gives us a window into the massive work of production of the Monasticon Cartusianse.
In Dno.
+ Donald
PS. The photography in the Analecta is amazing, and the painting and poem, 'Sudden  Snowscape' reveal  so many talents.

----- Christmas Message -----
From: James ...
To: Donald Nunraw ...
Sent: Wednesday, 28 November 2012
Subject: Sudden Snowscape

Dear  Father Donald,

 
We hope you are keeping well at your advanced age and that life at Nunraw continues as usual. Hopefully some young men may join to keep community life going even in these difficult time. 
I have given up travelling at 81, but continue to work.   
Best wishes to the community.
Yours ...,
James

Thomas Merton [1915-1968]

Dear Br. Geoff,
Thank you, for this welcome 'memorial' of Fr. Louis. (10th Dec)
Our community intercession is for Fr. Louis, and we remember our OCist Brothers at Chipping Norton.
In Dno.
Donald.

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: brabo.....
To: Nunraw ...
Sent: Saturday, 8 December 2012, 12:52
Subject: Thomas Merton [1915-1968]     

Dear all,

 

Just to remind you that on Monday, the 10th December, we will remember the tragic death of Br Louis (Thomas) Merton.

 

I leave you with this Wikipedia page is accurate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton

 

Rereading his inspiring autobiography 'The Seven Story Mountain' again, recently, I was struck by the following quote, which is probably very appropriate to reflect upon on the anniversary of his death:

 

'I was not sure where I was going, and I could not see what I would do when I got (there). But you saw further and clearer than I, and you opened the seas before my ship, whose track led me across the waters to a place I had never dreamed of, and which you were even then preparing to be my rescue and my shelter and my home...'

 

Your, with brotherly love,

 

Geoff

[Br Geoff, OCist]

_____________________________________________________

...  

O.Cist Website: http://ocista.webs.com/

E-mail: brabo1098@talktalk.net

 

If we have not silence, God is not heard in our music. If we have no rest, God does not bless our work. [Thomas Merton]

Ruth and the Mother of God. Advent

Night Office Readings.
The Venerable Godfrey of Admont is best known to us for his Sunday and Feast Day Sermons.

SECOND WEEK OF ADVENT

SUNDAY Year I

First Reading    Ruth 1:1-22

http://www.bible-art.info/Ruth.htm 

      Responsory                                                  Rv 1:16-17

Do not urge me to leave you, to return from following you, for wherever you go, I will go, and where you live, I will live. + Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die and there will I be buried.

V. May the Lord do so to me and more also if even death parts me from you. + Your people shall ...

Second Reading

From a homily by Godfrey of Admont (Homiliae Festivals: PL 174, 1026-1028)

Your gifts

In the Book of Ruth we can find something that may rather fittingly be applied to the Mother of God. In her own person Ruth was quite praiseworthy, in her family she was conspicu­ous, being born of the base and accursed people of Moab. She chose to leave her relatives and the land of her birth and to re­side in a land not her own. There, because of the great integrity of her life and habits, she was joined in marriage to a distin­guished man of the Israelite people, named Boaz, and by him she had a son named abed, who was father of the father of King David, of whose seed Christ, the Son of God, was born.

The name "Ruth" means "hastening," and the name, we think, is suited to the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was always "hastening," that is, fervent in holy and good works. Ruth was descended from the base and accursed race of the Moabites; Mary was born of that people whom the blame for original sin had rendered ignoble and accursed. Ruth left her native land and her relatives in order to practice the faith of her mother-in-law, and she resided in a land not her own. Mary left her native place and her parents when, in order to remain faith­ful to God the Father and preserve her own chastity, she sepa­rated herself from the common life of the world. She regarded  herself as an exile and pilgrim in this world, for she contemned everything that the present world loves, and she was hastening to the only true and endless glory of the heavenly homeland. From the lineage of Ruth King David was born; from the vir­ginal flesh of the Virgin Mary was born our true David, of strong arm and comely face, our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the entire world has been saved.

Tamar prayed: Most merciful Judge, recognize in me faith and hope and love of you. These are your gifts, which you have given to me; as best I could, with your help, I have preserved them as a testimony to my salvation and have brought them back to you. Since these gifts have been acknowledged by Ju­dah, that is, by God the Father, the soul shall be received into the joys of everlasting blessedness through him who lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen.

Responsory                                                           Is 40:10; In 10:1

See, the Lord God will come with power. He will pasture his flock like a shepherd. + He will gather his lambs into his arms and hold them close; he himself will carry the ewes.

V. I am the Good Shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. + He will gather ...

Dom Donald's Blog: Fourth Sunday of Advent David link three ...

19 Dec 2010

Sunday, 19 December 2010 Fourth Sunday of Advent. Not Trivia Pursuits in Bible. Genealogy: Mt 1:1-23, 1 Tamar, 2 Rehab, 3 Ruth, 4 Betsheba. I have a picture of the OT women in the mosaic on the shrine of the Dormition of ...

http://nunraw.blogspot.com/

'stainless power the Immaculate by conception'

Dear Edward,
Thank you for the Poems from your Retreat.
Especially timely for the 8th December, and happy to share.
In Dno.
Donald

Stainless and powerfullest     

Mary, immaculate,

enjoyed transcendent consistency

with the highest force of spirit and mind

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: edward ...
To: Donald ...
Sent: Saturday, 8 December 2012, 22:36
Subject: Three New Poems

Dear  Father Donald,

Today ... wish to see the
three latest poems (written during a few days' retreat).  ... We
have only had a small amount of snow on a few occasions, and it seems
to revert back to temperatures above freezing.
I am getting things in  order for my restarting (with help) of the
web-site. I have had to buy a new h.p. computer which seems excellent
and the price is not too high. I had to have a USB connection for the
Chromebox and that comes at a very low price from Holland.
Blessings and best wishes in Domino,
fr Edward O.P.

Stainless and powerfullest

Mary, immaculate,

enjoyed transcendent consistency

with the highest force of spirit and mind,

always mounting and nourished by God,

by Whom  she was called without ceasing,

ever mounting among recipient hierarchies,

deified from her conception.

Conceived as being daughter of Zion

in the shade of the unfinished Temple,

built like its predecessors on

Mount Moriah where God

tested Abraham to the limits:

tested and therefore prepared and strengthened.

Moriah, also the site where Melchisedech prophetically sacrificed

unbloodily with the breadiness of bread and the wineness of wine.

She would bear a victim shedding his own blood;

all was here to bear, to nurture, to instruct, to protect,

then to hear and learn,

to spend all her strength at the Cross

for three darkest hours –

hours of judgement on the priests who were spiritually blind

and on their Roman masters who had betrayed the Roman law,

abdicating from the truth, making their juridical process a cynical mockery.

That strength, consistent, and sacrifice-complaisant,

when a fallen creature judged its Creator guilty

to appease the envy of immoveable consciences, which would meet

a judgement of doom when an exaltation of implacable justice

would find those accusers guilty.

So in its hidden but unperceived stainless power

the Immaculate by conception

would contain in her heart the greatness of this crime,

they dried up (but she fully perceptive)

from whose descendents a trickle would,

over centuries of self-willed isolation,

pass over to become adoptive sons

in the Mystical Body, through the birth-pangs

of its Mother, Zion's begotten daughter:

herself the bridge from Old to New,

each undergoing a Pasch of total renewal.

So was Mary established in joy, the replacement mother for Eve.

A creature destined as world-carrier and -renewer,

renewed in her by her free-consenting.

With power greater than all monarchs and rulers,

holding the key to the key and turning together,

with her Son and his Vicar, united as one,

in the exaltation of the demure figure

painted by Michelangelo,

as turning aside and not seeing the judgement,

yet fully aware.

Steadfast in faith in a breakthrough of love

as it was from her beginning,

as the ensouling of her own flesh

divinely not humanly occasioned;

homely and all-embracing each evolutionised human,

as the end-product, processual and purposeful for history's duration,

formalised as time.

Once chosen and predestined without hesitation giving her consent

to mother the single body of her Son

and sought with judgment unlimited participants

of transcendentalising glory without end

as humanity's heavenly crowning with her own.

6 December 2012

Stykkishólmur - Retreat 2

Immaculate Conception - Community Mass. Homily by Fr. Aelred

    

8 December.Solemnity of the Feast of Our Lady's Immaculate Conception, which we celebrate today.
Community Mass. Homily by Fr. Aelred

Immaculate Conception

Our Lady’s greatness consisted in her total availability to God. Many are not available to God. they are too full of their own plans. No doubt, Mary too had her own plans for her life and she might have said so to the Angel. But what she said was, ‘It’s is not what I want that matters. Let what God wants done to me’.

Mary made a complete gift of herself to God, and accepted the task he gave her. Even though she didn’t understand all the implications of it, she trusted that God would give her all the help she needed.

Some people tend to see Mary as too passive, not sufficiently self-assertive. But Mary was receptive, not completely passive in God’s hands. After all, God didn’t order her to become the mother of Jesus; God asked for her consent. Mary was a free agent. She didn’t have to say ‘yes’ She could have said ‘no’.

Mary was also a strong woman, with great powers of endurance. She seemed always capable at renewing herself, no matter what misfortune hit her. She knew what oppression was when she couldn’t find a room in which to give birth to Jesus. She lived as a refugee in a strange land. She knew the pain of having a child who doesn’t follow the accepted path, and the agony of seeing her only Son executed as a criminal. Many women throughout the ages have found plenty that they can identify in her life.

A brief look at the readings for today’s Liturgy shows that in the passage from Genesis, the Mother of the redeemer is already prophetically foreshadowed in the promise of victory over the Serpent which was given to our first parents after their fall into sin. In later OT passages she is the virgin who shall conceive and bear a son, whose name shall be called Emmanuel.

She stands out among the poor and humble of the Lord, who confidently hope for and receive salvation from him. As Vatican II tells us ‘After a long period of waiting the times are fulfilled in her, the exalted Daughter of Sion and the new plan of Salvation is established, when the Son of God has taken human nature from her, that he might in the mysteries of his flesh free us from sin’.

In the Second Reading, Paul tells us that we were all chosen to be holy and spotless in Christ before the world began. This applies in its fullness for the mother who would give birth to Jesus Christ himself. The Angels greeting at the annunciation says she is filled with grace, always open to the working of the Holy Spirit.

Luke’s Gospel is about the annunciation too and not about Mary’s own conception, but they are linked. Jesus Christ comes to us as the Saviour who frees humanity from sin. Since Mary was human she had also to be freed from sin.

For centuries theologians wrestled with the problem of reconciling Mary’s sinlessness from the moment her conception with her need for redemption like this. For us, Christ’s death freed us from our sins. For Mary, Christ’s death preserved her from sin. She is perfectly redeemed.

COMMENT: Knox. Immaculate Conception of Our Lady

SEMICOLONS. COMMENT:


Ronald Knox, in this short Homily, uses the surprising number of SEMICOLONS - to count; 15 occurrences of ; (semicolon) !
In the previous Post gives learning about cyber space date.
Ronnie Knox seems to give us expert example of semicolons in punctuation, pre-basic education?
I will enjoy this execise in punctuation, to dust my addled brain.

8 December Immaculate Conception of Our Lady First Reading From the letter of Paul to the Romans (5:12-21) Second Reading For the Night Office of Immaculate BVM the Monastic ....

___________

How to use a semicolon - The Oatmeal  

theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon

... punctuation on earth. Comics: Random Most Popular All Cats Grammar Food Animals Tech · How to use a semicolon, the most feared punctuation on earth.

Immaculate Conception of Our Lady [Post from 2010]

Snow visiting us again in 2012

8 December

Immaculate Conception of Our Lady

First Reading

From the letter of Paul to the Romans (5:12-21)

Second Reading

For the Night Office of Immaculate BVM the Monastic Lectionary had a selection of four Readings, two by converts, (Knox and Newman) and two Benedictines, (Hedley and Ullathorne).

Pure and fresh snow-scape
even through grubby window glass and camera lens.
A lesson of the Immaculate

At present, the favourite of authors is Ronald Knox, as below: 

From a sermon by Ronald Knox (University and Plain Sermons pages 402-405).

• The feast of our Lady's Immaculate Conception, which we celebrate today, is the promise and the earnest of Christmas; our salvation is already in the bud. As the first green shoot heralds the approach of spring, in a world that is frost-bound and seems dead; so in a world of great sinfulness and of utter despair that spotless conception heralds the restoration of man's innocence. As the shoot gives unfailing promise of the flower which is to .spring from it, this conception gives unfailing promise of the virgin birth. Life had come into the world again, supernatural life, not of man's choosing or of man's fashioning. And it grew there unmarked by human eyes; no angels sang over the hills to celebrate it, no shepherds left their flocks to come and see; no wise men were beckoned by the stars to witness that prodigy. And yet the first Advent had begun. Our Lady, you see, is the consummation of the Old Testament; with her, the cycle of history begins anew. When God created the first Adam, he made his preparations beforehand; he fashioned a paradise ready for him to dwell in. And when he restored our nature in the second Adam, once more there was a preparation to be made beforehand. He fashioned a paradise for the second Adam to dwell in, and that paradise was the body and soul of our blessed Lady, immune from the taint of sin, Adam's curse. It was winter still in all the world around; but in the quiet home where Saint Anne gave birth to her daughter, spring had begun.   
• Man's winter, God's spring; the living branch growing from the dead root; for that, year by year, we Christians give thanks to God when Advent comes round. It is something that has happened once for all; we look for no further redemption, no fresh revelation, however many centuries are to roll over this earth before the skies crack above us and our Lord comes in judgment. Yet there are times in history when the same mood comes upon us, even upon us Christians; the same mood of despair in which the world, Jewish and heathen, was sunk at the time when Jesus Christ was born. There are times when the old landmarks seem obliterated, and the old certainties by which we live have deserted us; the world seems to have exhausted itself, and has no vigor left to face its future; the only forces which seem to possess an y energy are those which make for disruption and decay. The world's winter, and it is always followed by God's spring.    
• Behold, I make all things new, said our Lord to the saint of the Apocalypse; let us rejoice, on this feast of the Immaculate Conception, in the proof and pledge he has given us of that inexhaustible fecundity which belongs only to his grace. And let us ask our blessed Lady to win for us, in our own lives, that continual renewal of strength and holiness which befits our supernatural destiny. Fresh graces, not soiled by the memory of past failure; fresh enterprise, to meet the conditions of a changing world; fresh hope, to carry our burdens beyond the shifting scene of this present world into the changeless repose of eternity.

Vision beyond grimy window glass.
R. Knox. The purity of the elemental space, times ans seasons
in his Plain Sermon.