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GEERTGEN tot Sint Jans
The Tree of Jesse |
Advent Great O Antiphons,
19 DECEMBER
Year II
First Reading
Isaiah 47:1.3-15
Responsory Is 49:13; 47:4
Rejoice, 0 heavens, and celebrate, 0 earth; .0 mountains, cry
out with praise; + for the Lord will have compassion on his
poor.
V. Our redeemer, the Lord God of power and might is his name, the
Holy One of Israel. + For the Lord ...
Second Reading From the writings of
Caryll Houselander (The Reed of God, 30-32)
Today Christ is dependent upon us
When a woman is carrying a child she develops a certain instinct of
self-defense. It is not selfishness; it is not egoism. It is, cm absorption
into the life within, a folding of self like a little tent around the child's
frailty, a God-like instinct to cherish, and some day to bring forth, the life.
A closing upon it like the petals of a flower closing upon the dew that
shines in it’s heart. This is precisely the attitude we must have to Christ,
the life within us, in the Advent of our contemplation.
We could scrub the floor for a tired friend, or dress a wound
for a patient in a hospital, or lay the table and wash up for the family; but
we shall not do it in martyr spirit or with that worse spirit of self-congratulation,
of feeling that we are making ourselves more perfect, more unselfish, more positively
kind. We shall do it just for one thing, that our hands may make Christ's hands
in our life, that our service may let Christ serve through us, that our patience
may bring Christ's patience back to the world.
By his own will Christ was dependent on Mary during Advent: he was
absolutely helpless; he could go nowhere but where she chose to take him; he could
not speak; her breathing was his breath; his heart beat in the beating of her heart.
Today Christ is dependent upon us. In the host he is literally put into a man's
hands. A human being must carry him to the dying, must take him into the prisons,
work-houses, and hospitals, must carry him in a tiny pyx over the heart onto the
field of battle, must give him to little children and "lay him by" in
his "leaflight" house of gold. The modem world's feverish struggle for
unbridled, often unlicensed, freedom is answered by the bound, enclosed helplessness
and dependence of Christ - Christ in the womb, Christ in the host, Christ in the
tomb.
This dependence of Christ lays a great trust upon us. During this
tender time of Advent we must carry him in our hearts to wherever he wants to
go, and there are many places to which he may never go unless we take him to them.
None of us knows when the loveliest hour of our life is striking. It may be when
we take Christ for the first time to that gray office in the city where we work,
to the wretched lodging of that poor man who is an outcast, to the nursery of
that pampered child, to that battleship, airfield, or camp.
Charles de Foucauld, a young French soldier of our own day, became
a priest and a hermit in the desert, where he was murdered by some of the Arabs
whom he had come to serve. His life as a missionary hermit seemed no more than
a quixotic spiritual adventure, a tilting at windmills on the desert sands, but
he knew and said that is was worthwhile for just one thing: because he was there
the Sacred Host was there. It mattered nothing if the heroic priest could not
utter the wonder that was in his heart; the Blessed Sacrament was there in the
desert;
Christ was there, silent, helpless, dependent on a creature; that
which his servant could not utter in words Christ would utter, in his own time,
in silence.
Sometimes it may seem to us that there is no purpose in our lives,
that going day after day for years to this office or that school or factory is nothing
else but waste and weariness. But it may be that God has sent us there because
but for us Christ would not be there. If our being there means that Christ is there,
that alone makes it worthwhile.
ResponsonJ Lk 1:45-46; Ps 66:16
Blessed are you who have believed that the Lord's promises to you
would be fulfilled. And Mary said: + My soul proclaims the great-
ness of the Lord.
V. Come, and listen, and I will tell what great things God has
ac-
complished in me. + My soul proclaims ...
The first to learn that Christ was here to stay was a group of sinners that most needed to hear that kind of 'good news' Fr William Grimm, MM
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Saying the O Antiphons as a family, whether during grace at meals, in front of the manger scene, or in front of the Christmas tree, is a wonderful Advent devotion. To make this devotion even more fruitful, read and meditate together on the Scripture texts on which the antiphons are based.
