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| The Cluny emblazon |
Odilo of
Cluny (c.962-1048): thoughts, from the Monastic Office of
Vigils, gave the more light thoughts on the Reading.
The versatility of Odilo is a good Circus
juggler of happy turns of words,'both
the prophetic oracles and the apostolic preaching are in accord.'.
Saturday of Epiphany
Night Office from the Word of the Season edition 2001,
and here Downloaded from the Edition 1981.
First Reading
Baruch 4:30 – 5:9.
Second Reading
A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST ODILO OF
CLUNY
From a Sermon
by St Odilo of Cluny, Sermo 1 in
nativitate Domini (PL 142, 993-994).
With these
sacred words of the evangelist both the prophetic oracles
and
the apostolic preaching are in accord.
Know
that I am with you every day until the end of the world. If our Lord has promised to be with his
faithful people every day, we can expect him to be even closer to us on the day
of his birth; the greater our eagerness to serve him, the more we shall
perceive his presence among us. Yes, he who spoke through Solomon, saying: I came forth from the mouth of the Most
High, as the firstborn of all creation,
and again; The Lord possessed me when
his purpose first unfolded, before the earliest of his works; from everlasting
I was firmly established; he who
said through Isaiah: Do I not fill heaven
and earth? – he it is who, in the
mysterious plan of his own providence, is born on earth and laid in a manger.
While Solomon’s words teach us that
Christ was eternally in existence before the world began, Isaiah’s declare that
there is no place in the whole of creation from which he is absent. And if he
exists always and everywhere, he cannot be absent from ourselves. The testimony
of the ancient prophets to Christ’s eternal being and his boundless divine
presence is indeed trustworthy. Our
Saviour himself tells the Jews in the Gospel: Before Abraham ever existed, I am. With God the Father from all
eternity, before Abraham existed (more accurately, before anything existed) he
had his eternal being; and yet he chose to be born in time from the stock of
Abraham – Abraham who was told by God the Father: In your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed.
The blessed patriarch David was also
granted privilege of a similar promise. Revealing to him hidden secrets of his
wisdom, God the Father told him: The
fruit of your body I will set upon your throne. These two received the
promise of the Saviour’s coming more plainly than any of our other fathers, and
so they deserved to be given the first and most important place in the records
of our Lord’s ancestry according to the evangelist Matthew, the opening words
of whose Gospel are: The genealogy of
Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. With these sacred words
of the evangelist both the prophetic oracles and the apostolic preaching are in
accord.
The man in the Gospel who was freed from
the darkness of ignorance and enlightened by faith addressed God’s Son as Son of
David. Not only did he receive spiritual insight, but he also deserved to
have his bodily sight restored. Christ the Lord desires to be called by this
name, knowing that there is no other name by which the world can be saved. And
if we ourselves wish to be saved by him who is the one and only Saviour, each
of us must also say to him: Lord, son of
David, have mercy on us. Amen.
St Odilo of Cluny (962-1049), Sermo 1 in nativitate Domini (PL 142, 993-994), from Word in Season 1
St. Odilo
of Cluny (c.962-1048/1049): Sermo 1
In Nativitate Domini (PL 142, 993-994), from
the Monastic Office of Vigils, December 21st in Advent Year I.
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