Hogmanay Scotland

HAPPY NEW YEAR - Hogmanay

Scottish Hogmanay at Edinburgh is a major international attraction, and now is to extend to a four day celebration

The sound and sight of fireworks reached as far the Abbey from 25 miles.

At the Guest house Hours of Adoration in the Oratory lead up to the ringing out of the New Year 2009. The Vigil of the Night Office was in the monastery. In the morning Mass for the Solemnity of the Mother of God and Peace was celebrated in the Guesthouse for the visitors..

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Abbot Raymond

Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God.

Dear Friends,

I am off to Africa on 3rd January to make an official Visitation. I will be away for three weeks.

I ask your prayers for a safe journey and for the success of my mission.

Meanwhile you will find below a few words on the Motherhood of Mary.

God bless

Fr Raymond

Priory of Our Lady of the Angels. Cistercian Monks, Nsugbe, Nigeria

(See left Sidebar Link Nsugbe Priory)

Homily

By Water and Blood

The very sublimity of Mary’s title: ‘Mother of God’ can sometimes obscure for us the deep human reality of her Motherhood of Jesus. St John provides a balance by giving us three witnesses: Water and Blood witnessing to his Humanity and the Spirit witnessing to his Divinity.

This witness of the Spirit to his Divinity isn’t visible and tangible like water and blood, yet it is able to bring us an inner conviction far greater than that of our senses. Jesus compares it to the wind. You hear it, you feel it, yet you can’t see it, even though its power is one of the greatest forces in nature.

But let’s concentrate this morning on the other two witnesses: Water and Blood. “Jesus came by water and blood”, John tells us. This can hardly be the Blood and Water of the Cross. They certainly testified to the reality of his humanity but they were the Blood and Water by which Christ left this world, not by which he came into this world. And it is precisely this point: that he came by water and blood, which John offers us as such an irrefutable testimony to the reality of his humanity.

John, whether he does it consciously and deliberately, or whether he is unconsciously guided by the Spirit, speaks of Blood and Water when he speaks of Christ’s death, but he reverses the order and speaks of Water and Blood when he speaks of his birth. He left us by Blood and Water but he came to us by Water and Blood

So, by thus describing his Birth as, his Coming by Water and Blood, John gives us perhaps the ultimate and most basic evidence possible of the reality of Jesus’ human nature. The birth of every human child is accomplished in ‘water and blood’. First comes the breaking of the Mother’s waters and then the issue of the child smeared with blood, and by giving the water and the blood as signs of the genuineness of his humanity John assures us that the birth of Jesus of the Virgin Mary was no exception: It too came by water and by blood. John is embarrassingly explicit. That is precisely how real was the human birth of Jesus: Can any evidence be more compelling?

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