The little way of the infant Jesus by Caryll Houselander

WOOD OF THE CRADLE, WOOD OF THE CROSS


The little way of the infant Jesus

Caryll Houselander

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The Infant

It is of absolute necessity for our peace that we surrender ourselves wholly to God. Most people want to do this, but they do not because they are afraid.



If, in their rasher moments of fervor, they have made heroic self-offerings, they go about their business afterwards distinctly uneasy, fearful that some catastrophe will overtake them in order to detach them from the earthly affections which they suppose to be hindering their perfection.



If, to seek reassurance, they turn to those saints who are said to have sanctified themselves through leading "ordinary" lives, they are even more perturbed by the extraordinary way in which they did so.



To give one example, the very thought of the hourly, even momentary, little sacrifices made by St. Theresa of Lisieux, opens up a terrifying prospect, all the more so because such lives are secret and without even the encouragement of friends. To think of oneself going on and on, denying self, giving up all the tidbits, refusing oneself the relief of a little complaining or a little flattery, spending one's life in small coin down to the last penny: this is beyond the power of human nature - or at least of our human nature.



Both these anxieties can be put to rest by a little thought about God's approach to us, His way with human beings.



It is not a way of detachment but of attachment; not a way of indifference but of love. He approaches not by catastrophes, but by gentleness; not demanding our surrender but winning it, if we put no obstacle, almost before we realize who it is that sues for our love.



An obstacle would be a refusal of any love, a shutting of the door on those who want to come into our life. To put no obstacle is to have the door always open to everyone who has any need of us. "Behold!" our Lord says, "I stand at the door and knock.45 An obstacle to surrendering to Him would simply be not to open the door. If we opened it and saw who it is that knocks, we should not find it a difficult or a frightening thing to give Him what He asks of us.



The Old Testament, which many imagine to be the revelation of a terrifying God, is full of the gentleness of His approach. He comes as a "still, small voice";46 He covers His face, lest it should wither away the light of a man's eyes by its majesty. He is compared to the coming of morning light and to rain falling upon the thirsty earth: "We shall know and we shall follow on, that we may know the Lord. His going forth is prepared as the morning light, and He will come to Us as the early and the latter rain to the earth.47



Sometimes, indeed very often, His approach to us coincides with a catastrophe and is in the midst of it, and for that reason is hardly noticed. We are too intent on the din of the disaster to hear the "still, small voice," or we drown it with noisy tears. Disasters are not God's will; they are the result of sin and opposed to God's will; but in His mercy He does allow the suffering resulting from them, although never the sin that caused them, to be caught up into His love and do good. Thus Christ's first coming on earth was in the midst of the disaster of the world's suffering caused by sin, and it was precisely to take hold of this suffering and transform it by love that He came.



How small and gentle His coming was! He came as an infant. The night in which He came was noisy and crowded; it is unlikely that, in the traffic of the travelers to Bethlehem, the tiny wail of the newly born could be heard.



God approaches gently, often secretly, always in love, never through violence and fear. He comes to us, as He Himself has told us, in those whom we know in our own lives. Very often we do not recognize Him. He comes in many people we do not like, in all who need what we can give, in all who have something to give us, and for our great Comfort. He comes in those we love, in our fathers and mothers, our brothers and sisters, our friends and our children. Because this is so, we must not be content ever to love with only natural love. We must also love everyone with a supernatural, sacramental love. We must love Christ in them with Christ's love in us. It would be well if those seeking perfection ceased trying so painstakingly to learn how not to love and learned instead how to love well.



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That other hindrance to surrender to God, the fearful prospect of abandoning ourselves to the pursuit of perfection even if we dared, can only be overcome by experiment; for those who live heroically through small things have already surrendered to God. Their perseverance is not, as it seems to us, a continual strain; on the contrary, it is the repeated relief of giving spontaneous expression to a love that is too great to be endured without it.



Knowing that God supplies all our necessities, and that one of our necessities is that we surrender to Him, we should not be, surprised that He comes to us as an infant; for surrender to an infant, any infant, is easy. Surely never did God receive more fully what is due to Him from man than when He was an infant. Every infant demands and receives the most complete self-giving that we are capable of. The perfection of surrender to God is Mary with the infant Christ.



There is nothing more mysterious than infancy, nothing so small and yet so imperious. The infancy of Christ has opened a way to us by which we can surrender self to Him absolutely, without putting too much pressure on our weak human nature.



Before a child is born the question which everyone asks is "What can I give him?" When he is born, he rejects every gift that is not the gift of self, everything that is not disinterested love. He rejects everything but that because that is the only thing he can receive: disinterested love - not one-sided love. One-sided love is never a consummated love, never a communion. It is a disintegrating, destructive thing; but disinterested love, objective love without conscious self-interest, is as near to perfection as anything human can be.



The first giving of this love to a newly born child is the reshaping of our whole life, in its large essentials and in its every detail, in our environment, our habits, ourselves. The infant demands everything and, trivial though everything may seem when set out and tabulated, the demand is all the more searching because it seizes upon our daily lives and every detail of which they are built up.



The sound of our voice must be modulated - the words that we use considered, our movements restrained, slowed down, and trained to be both decisive and gentle.



Our rooms must be rearranged; everything that is superfluous and of no use to the infant must be thrown out; only what is simple and necessary to him must remain, and what remains must be placed in the best position, not for us, but for him. The temperature of the room, the warmth, and the air must be adjusted to his fragile body, the light shaded for the eyes that have always been in darkness.



There must be a new timing of our lives, a more holy ordering of our time, which is no longer to be ruled by our impulses and caprice, but by the rhythm of the little child. We must learn to sleep lightly, aware of the moonlight and the stars, conscious even in our deepest sleep of a whimper from the infant and ready to respond to it. We must learn the saving habit of rising with, or a little before, dawn.



The rhythm of our own bodies must be brought into harmony with his. They must become part of the ordered procession of his day and night, his waking and feeding and sleeping. Our lives, because of his and like his, must include periods of silence and rest. We must return with him and through him to the lost rhythm of the stars and the seed.



All our senses must be given to him, and we must give him our hands. We must give him our hands, tending his needs and washing his clothes. In his service we must overcome all delicacy and fastidiousness.



For years I have been haunted by a single line in an unpublished poem which seems to me to be very close to a definition of sanctity: "Hands that will dip in any water."48 I have seen the hands of a foster-mother chapped and bleeding from continually being dipped in hard water in frosty weather, and have thought to myself that the stigmata are not, after all, reserved for a few rare mystics.



Our hands are one medium of the communion that must come about between us and the infant. They are fumbling and clumsy, yet they become acutely sensitive to every quiver of his body, to his dumb necessities. He teaches them by being himself. In continual contact with his defenseless sensitivity, our hands grow sensitive; they carry messages from the depths of his wordless consciousness through our fingertips to our brain. Yet we remain aware of our clumsiness and the fallibility of our touch. Our hands only become really sensitive to his needs when we have so mingled our life in his that his pulses beat in ours, his blood flows in ours, and his little bones are in the marrow of our bones.



Our clumsy hands remind us that we ourselves are in the hands of God. Our hands seek like a blind man's to learn an unknown world of consciousness through their fingertips. In spite of our loving will, our touch can hurt; but God's hands touch and hold with infallible love. He turns us this way and that, disposes us thus and thus, lifts us up and puts us down in infinite power and infinite pity and infinite knowledge. Every fiber of our being is known to Him, because His being is our being.



In this reordering of our life, this resetting of it to the pace of the infant's life and the new simplicity imposed on it, we ourselves are made new; we are restored to the lost wonder of childhood. We begin to respond again to morning and evening: to wake with the coming of light, to receive the stillness of the night in a draught of peace when darkness comes. We wake and sleep with birds and flowers and animals. We no longer contradict the sun; we no longer violate the stars. In and through a little child we become as little children, and while still on earth we enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.



In the service of the infant we are made whole. Every detail of our life is set by it into a single pattern and ordered by a single purpose. We are integrated by the singleness of one compelling love.



It is this wholeness which alone makes possible the complete surrender to God in which is the secret of our peace.



It demands of us voluntary poverty, the giving up of self, which is holy poverty. As long as we have something else to give, we always cling to self; but the infant lays his minute hand on that and rejects everything else.



This love, austere, childlike, and poor, is life-giving love. I do not use the constantly abused and hackneyed word creative because nothing of ours is creative, neither our love, nor our genius. God only can create; He only is Creator. But this love sustains life; that is its meaning and its purpose.



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This is the point at which contemplation through our love of an infant begins.



Christ's immemorial plan is that His life shall survive until the end of time, as it began in Bethlehem, not in the great and powerful but in the lowliest and least: "He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble."49



For two thousand years Christ has seized upon, inhabited, and survived in the littlest and frailest.



The fostering of an infant's life is a thing of terror as well as of beauty. We are face-to-face with life at its most precious, housed in its frailest. That life depends for its survival upon us, upon the intelligence, the skill, the perseverance, the unceasing, untiring vigilance of our love.



It requires of us a love that is as strong as the worn and hollowed rock, and as delicate as the dew that trembles within it.



We stand on one side of the cradle, death stands on the other. The new life is still a spark, a spark that we kneel to fan with the warm breath of our own life, a spark that death could blow out so easily.



So is it with the Christ-life in each of us and in the world. It is lodged in little ones, in the weakest and puniest, and love and death stand over it face-to-face. In the mysterious period of natural life between birth and babyhood, there is a parable of the Christ-life in the soul.



Infancy is something complete in itself. It is a mysterious growth from darkness to light. Once again, we are reminded of the seed, of the thrust of the frail sapling life through the darkness and through the hard crust of the earth into the light.



In time, when the infant has become an established baby, the world will approach him from outside himself. Every new sound and sight and touch will be a new experience, not of himself alone, but of the world and himself.



But while he is an infant, the human creature works his own way from inside his own darkness and aloneness outward. He comes out of a world of darkness and silence and warmth into a world of painful light and noise and cold, of sensation and of pain.



He is alone for a long time even in his mother's hands; the communion between them is not yet realized. He cannot yet respond, and no skill of hers can reach his deepest being in its primal darkness. He is here, in the room, in his little cot, yet he is away and aloof, just as the dying, whose cold hands we chafe with ours, are with us and yet are aeons and aeons away.



Both for the infant and the mother this time has an element of sorrow; for he is fighting his way through to the consciousness which is the beginning equally of joy and grief, of pleasure and pain, of life and death, and the way is a journey alone through darkness.



In the infant's first struggle to lay hold of his life, we can see in embryo the passion of man, the passion that recurs all through his life. Later it will be disguised, hidden by the grown man's reserve, but now it is naked, defenseless. The beginning of every life is a lonely fight with death, a dim shadow and showing of the Man who is in all men coming back from the tomb.



Our life in Christ is the risen life. We live in the life of One who has overcome death, who has come back from the dead and laid hold of the world again with wounded hands, who has taken hold of its soil with wounded feet and loved it with the heart which it has already betrayed and broken and pierced.



Volumes of sentimentality are written about a baby's first smile. If we share the neurotic world's fear of sentiment, we shall miss its significance. It is the "Consummatum est"50 of the naked showing of the Passion of Christ in man, which is at the heart of the mystery of infancy. The fight between life and death is consummated. The infant gives place to the baby, and he lays hold of the life of the risen Christ.



Gradually the uncertain hands that served the infant have brought him security; gradually the face that has so often leaned over him in the night has become known by him. On that face there has been a smile, a smile which no anxiety, no awareness of the fierce, suffering quality of life could prevent, because it is the smile of joy that a man has been born into this world.



The child's first smile is a reflection. It is his and yet not his; it is the reflection of the mother's joy in his life, given back to her.



Birth and resurrection in their countless manifestations in the Body of Christ on earth bear a striking resemblance to His historical birth and Resurrection.



The life of the baby following the life of the infant has a quality of reassuring ordinariness.



This quality of ordinariness in the risen life is an age-long reassurance: this risen Jesus is no ghost, no apparition of terror and judgment bringing the frozen air of the grave with Him. This is a man of flesh and blood, and this is God, endowing all that He touches with life, but touching what is ordinary, the substance of our life; making life supernatural, but living our natural daily life; eating and drinking with us, bidding us touch His wounds, not to reproach us with them, but to convince us that He is still the same Christ, who overcame death by dying. He is still the Word made flesh, who has lived all our lives, who has been wounded with all our wounds, and who has died all our deaths, and who has risen from the dead, a living man of flesh and blood still, to live in us and to live our ordinary lives.



Now the baby, too, has become ordinary; the Christ-life that was almost visible in him has become hidden; his own personality is already a disguise. The elemental miracle is not seen any more.



The mystery of the night is over; the procession through the darkness is accomplished; the peculiar beauty of infancy has gone forever, and with it the minute face of sorrow, and the helplessness of the beautiful hands that were like sea anemones floating gently upward in shallow water.



The spark of life that we fanned with our breath burns the single tiny flame that can enkindle the whole earth: the flame of resurrection, the Lumen Christi - the "Light of Christ."



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The service of the infant is a thing of love, therefore of joy. There is joy even in the saddest love, and the love of an infant, even when it has a quality of tragedy as in our days it too often has, is fundamentally joyful. It must be so, for it is the purest love of the purest life.



Think back for a minute to the fear that the ordinary sinful human creature experiences in considering the saint's life of daily and momentary self-surrender to God. We have already reflected that for them such a life is not one of hardship and repression but of joy and relief.



So is it with ordinary people who foster the Christ-life in their souls, just as they would foster the life of an infant, housed in its human frailty, were such a thing asked of them.



No one, having received a little child, could count the cost. They could not list what must be done and given and given up for an infant. Every twenty-four hours could not be a period of trial made up from ceaseless small tortures.



But if anyone in such circumstances did count the cost in that way, turning the focus on self, their life would become insufferable; there would be that in it of which they must either rid themselves or else they would be broken by it. But if the focus is on the infant, there is no hardship the life of the mother, like the life of the saint, is not a life of repression but of the spontaneous, necessary expression of love.



If, in fostering the little seed of light which is Christ's life in us, the concentration is on self, on what we are giving and what we are suffering, then, indeed, we put ourselves into the place of the mother who is not a mother, the woman who counts the cost of loving her own child, and we force ourselves to face the choice of giving up the life in us, or of destroying ourselves in conflict between self and the life that has been given to us.



Christ came, and comes now, that we should have life and have it in its fullness, that we should be wholly human, wholly natural, wholly supernatural, that in all our loves He should be our life. If our mind and heart and eye are fixed not on self, but on the Christ-life in us, we shall realize the wonder of truth in His words "My yoke is sweet and my burden is light."51



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Yet we know that of ourselves we can do nothing; how then can we hope to save this life that is housed in our own weakness?



Many times every day we make the Sign of the Cross. Possibly we make it without considering what it means, beginning with the words "In the name of the Father" but without reflecting on their meaning.



"In the name of the Father": in the name - that is, in the power - of the Father, we cherish the Christ-life in us.



More truly, it is the Father Himself who cherishes it. We must put the infant Christ in our souls into the Father's arms. We must trust Him to hold us in His hands, to put us wherever we should be, to arrange the environment that is best for us, to rock us to sleep when we should sleep, to wake us when we should wake, to ease our pain when our pain should be eased, to feed us when we should be fed, to lift us up and to put us down according to the wisdom of everlasting love.



Everything felt for an infant by everyone in whom human nature is not dead is a dim reflection of God's love for the world. All that grace and miracle of sustaining love in us is His shadow in our soul. We are made in His image and likeness, but we have almost obliterated, almost effaced, His image in us by the grotesque travesties with which we have overlaid it. In the presence of infancy man is restored to the image of God.



Now, most wonderfully, we can learn God's care for us, by searching our own hearts.



The father and mother within us is only the faint image of the Father and Mother in God. He is the Father and Mother whose heart never sleeps, whose hands never lift from their works that they have made. He is the One who has numbered the hairs on our heads.52 In His humanity we are clothed as in a warm woolen garment. In Him we live as in our home. He is our food and our drink, our shade in the heat, our comfort in sorrow, our healing when we are wounded, our light in darkness.



The Christ-life in us, the infant Christ of our soul, is the only-begotten Son in the hands of God.



It is His creative love that has given us life, that sustains life, that is our life. He it is who says,



"Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb? And if she should forget, yet will I not forget thee."53







NOTES:



45. Rev. 3:20.

46. 3 Kings 19:12 (RSV = 1 Kings 19:12.

47. The Liturgy for Good Friday (Cf. Hos. 6:3).

48. An unpublished poem by John Bartlett.

49. Luke 1:52.

50. John 19:30: "It is finished."

51. Matt. 11:30.

52. Matt. 10:30; Luke 12:7

53. Isa. 49:15.

Dec. 7 - DAILY MEDITATIONS BY BISHOP CHALLONER

DECEMBER 7TH


ON OUR LORD'S GIVING SIGHT TO THE BLIND, AND RAISING THE DEAD TO LIFE

Consider first, that our Lord, during his mortal life, often restored the sight of the light of this world to them that were corporally blind; but oftener by far, both then and ever since, has by his great mercy opened the eyes of them that were spiritually blind, to see the light of God, and his eternal truths. He gave sight to him that was born blind, (John ix.,) by spreading clay upon his eyes, and ordering him to wash in the pool of Siloe; (which is interpreted 'sent' to instruct us that we who, according to the soul, are all born blind, by original sin, must have our eyes opened to the light of truth by the application of this mystical clay, of self-knowledge, to our inward eyes; and by being washed in him, who was sent from God, to be the true light of the world. In the supplication we make to him, for the obtaining the sight of this divine light, we must, like the blind men of Jericho, show ourselves quite in earnest, by the fervour and importunity of our prayer; and not be discouraged by the opposition we meet with from the crowd of distractions, &c., that rebukes us, as it were, and seeks to stop our mouths; but cry out so much the more for mercy, even as they did, Matt. xx. 31, and our Lord will not fail to show us the mercy we call for, and to enlighten the eyes of our souls.



Consider 2ndly, that in the gospel we read of three whom our Saviour raised from death to life: one was the daughter of Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, a girl of twelve years old; another was a young man, the son of a widow of the city of Nain; the third was Lazarus of Bethania, the brother of Martha and Mary. The first was but just then dead, and was raised to life by our Lord with two words: 'Talitha cumi;' that is, Girl, arise. The second was carried out in order to be buried; and for the raising of him to life, something more was done; for our Lord came near, and touched the bier, and stopped them that carried it; and then said to the deceased, 'Young man, I say to thee, arise; and he that was dead sat up and began to speak,' &c. But Lazarus had been dead and buried four days; and before our Lord restored him to life we read, John xi., that 'he groaned in the spirit, and troubled himself,' verse 33; that he went to the sepulchre, and wept, verses 34, 35; that he 'groaned again in himself,' and ordered the stone to be taken away, verses 38, 39; that 'He lifted up his eyes to heaven, and prayed to his Father, and then cried, with a loud voice, Lazarus come forth,' verses 41, 42, 43. The first of these represents such souls as have but just now fallen into sin; who by a timely and fervent application to our Lord, who alone can raise the dead to life, may more easily be recovered out of the jaws of death and hell, and brought back to the life of grace. The second represents such souls as are not only fallen into the death of sin, but are already laid upon the bier and carried towards the sepulchre of a sinful habit, by repeated acts of sin. For the raising of these to life, stronger graces are required; signified by our Lord's touching the bier and causing the bearers of it, that is the criminal passions, which are hurrying the poor sinner to his grave, to stop and stand still. But Lazarus represents the more dismal condition of such as are already buried in inveterate habits of mortal sin; whose case requires still more extraordinary graces, signified by tears. groans, prayers, and the loud cry of the Son of God. O! Christians, let us dread the death of sin above all other evils; but much more the being buried in the grave of sinful habits; from which we shall not be raised again, without a greater miracle than even that by which Lazarus was called out of his monument. And who shall dare to be so presumptuous as to go on in his sins, flattering himself with the expectation of such a miracle being wrought in his favour?



Consider 3rdly, that in these miracles wrought by our Lord, in raising the dead to life, we find he was pleased to let himself be moved by the tears of the living, as in the case of the widow's son, and of Lazarus: to encourage us to present to him our prayers and tears, for poor sinners dead and buried in sin; with an humble confidence, that in his great mercy he will have pity on them, (who, alas! have no pity on themselves,) and restore them to life. O what a happiness will it be for a Christian to be instrumental in this manner of bringing back any one from death to life! How agreeable will such prayers and tears be to our good Lord, which deliver a soul from sin and hell; and how beneficial to ourselves in covering a multitude of sins! But mark well the care our Lord took, for the future well-being of those men whom he raised to life. He ordered that they should give to eat to he daughter of Jairus, as soon as her soul was returned into her body, Luke viii. 56; to signify, that the sovereign means to keep her soul in life, and to recover her strength and health, is a frequent and worthy participation of the blessed sacrament. He had no sooner given life to the widow's son, in consideration of her tears, but he delivered him to his mother, Luke vii. 15; to signify the special care he expects from the church, the common mother of all the faithful, of all these her children, whom by his grace he brings back from the death of sin, at the intercession of her prayers and tears. And with regard to Lazarus, whom he called out of his monument, bound feet and hands with winding bands, &c., he immediately ordered that they should 'loose him, an let him go,' John xi. 44; to signify the necessity of discharging the bands of the affections and occasions of sin, in order to maintain a new life in such as were buried a little while before in bad habits; and to the end they may be qualified henceforward to go; that is, to begin and to continue the great journey they are to make to the mountain of eternity.



Conclude, from the consideration of these miracles of our Saviour, to have recourse to him on all occasions, with a humble confidence in his mercy and goodness, for obtaining of light, life and all other good, both for thyself and thy neighbours. Thou canst not do him a greater pleasure, nor thyself a greater service.

Dec 6 - DAILY MEDITATIONS BY BISHOP CHALLONER

DECEMBER 6TH


ON THE LESSONS THAT ARE TO BE LEARNT ROM OTHER MIRACLES OF OUR LORD

Consider first, that the miracles of our Lord were generally wrought in favour of such as applied to him with a lively faith and profound humility, or by the means of earnest prayer; to teach us the great efficacy of faith, of humility, and of fervent prayer, and to encourage us to seek the cure of our souls with the like dispositions. Thus the woman that had laboured for twelve years under the issue of blood, humbly coming behind our Lord, in the crowd, and touching the hem of his garment, was instantly healed in reward of her faith, as our Lord himself assured her, Luke viii 48. Thus the centurion, by his faith and humility, obtained of our Lord the immediate cure of his servant by those words: 'Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under my roof: speak only the word, and my servant shall be healed,' Matt. viii 8. Thus the woman of Canaan, by her pious importunity, accompanied with the like faith and humility, obtained the cure of her daughter, Matt. xv. 28. And so in many other cases. Whilst at other times those that have only presented themselves before our Saviour, without presuming either to touch him or his garments, or even so much as to speak to him - by the silent eloquence of their humility have obtained their cure, as in the case of the man that had the dropsy, Luke xiv. O let us learn this kind of eloquence!



Consider 2ndly, the particular lessons we may learn from the miraculous cure of the paralytic, (Matt. ix. and Luke v.) Our Lord was teaching in a house, surrounded by a great crowd of people, so that there was no coming in through the door, when behold, men brought in a bed a man that had the palsy, desiring to present him before him, but not finding by what way they might bring him in because of the multitude, they went up upon the roof of the house, which was flat, and uncovering it let him down through the tiles, with his bed, by ropes, into the midst before Jesus. See here what pains were taken by these men to come to the heavenly physician, from whom they expected the cure of their friend. Who would have thought of men going up to the roof of another person's house, and uncovering it, and letting down a sick man in a bed, over the heads of a crowd? Nothing but a strong faith on the one hand, and an earnest desire of a cure on the other, could ever have suggested such an extraordinary proceeding, which loudly condemns the indolence or indifference of so many Christians nowadays, who lying ill of palsy, which disables them in all their limbs, and threatens them with the approaches of an everlasting death, suffer themselves to be kept off from Christ by every trifling obstacle or apprehension of difficulty. O Christians, where is your faith? Where is your concern for eternity? Why will you not be much more solicitous about the health and welfare of your immortal souls than about those worldly toys, or those carcasses of yours, that must quickly be the food of worms?



Consider 3rdly, how our Lord upon this occasion was pleased to begin the cure of the sick man by first healing his soul from sin: 'Son', said he, 'thy sins are forgiven thee;' to give us to understand that our corporal maladies are oftentimes sent in punishment of our sins, and that the first thing we have to do when visited with sickness is to apply for the remission of our sins by repentance and confession; and then we may expect that the scourge may be removed when the cause is removed. The Scribes and Pharisees took occasion from those words of our Saviour to charge him with blasphemy in their minds; but he, that knew their secret thoughts, publicly confuted them by working so great and evident a miracle, in proof of his power of forgiving sins, as to restore upon the spot both health and strength to the man sick of the palsy, with only these words: 'Arise, take up thy bed, and go into thy house;' upon which the paralytic 'immediately rising up before him, took up the bed on which he lay, and went away to his own house, glorifying God.' See here, my soul, that thou hast a physician in the person of thy redeemer, who is both able and willing to heal all thy infirmities; but see also that he expects of all such as apply to him for their cure that they should lie no longer in their beds, by continuing on in the habits or immediate occasions of their sins, but that they should arise without delay, and take up their beds, by bearing with courage the labour and conflicts of a penitential life, and should make the best of their way, by the exercises of solid virtue, to their true home, glorifying all the way they go, both by their words and by their lives, their great deliverer.



Conclude to spare no means to come to Christ, in order to be healed by him of all thy spiritual diseases; but remember to carry along with thee a lively faith and a profound humility: these will not fail of introducing thee to him, and obtaining of him all thou desirest.

Dec 5 - DAILY MEDITATIONS BY BISHOP CHALLONER

DECEMBER 5TH

ON OUR LORD'S STILLING THE STORM AT SEA AND FEEDING THE MULTITUDE

Consider first, the lessons we are to learn from the miracle of Christ's stilling the storm at sea by his word, Matt. viii. 23, &c., 'He entered into a ship, and his disciples followed him. And behold a great storm arose at sea, so that the ship was covered with the waves; but he was asleep. And his disciples came to him, and awakened him, saying, Lord, save us: we perish. And Jesus said to them: Why are you fearful, O ye of little faith? Then rising up, he commanded the winds and the sea, and there came a great calm.' Christians, we are all embarked as it were in a ship during our mortal life, in order to sail towards the haven of a blessed eternity. And for our comfort we have on board with us not only the disciples of Christ, that is, the pastors of the church, the successors of the apostles but also our Lord himself, according to his promise, Matt xxviii. 20, 'Lo, I am with you all days, even to the end of the world.' In this voyage we are often exposed to storms, which threaten sometimes the whole church - as in cases of grievous persecutions, heresies, or other more general evils; at other times we are in danger from temptations and tribulations, from which, more or less, no one can expect to be exempted in the midst of the winds and waves of the boisterous ocean of this world. But we have Christ on board with us, and therefore we have nothing to fear if we will but have proper recourse to him, with a lively faith and confidence in him. And though he oftentimes seems to sleep, and defers his aid, for a trial of our faith, and to make us more sensible of the necessity we have of him, and more earnest in praying to him, he will not fail in his good time, (if we continue, like his disciples, calling out to him, 'Lord, save us: we perish,') to rise up, and to command the winds and the sea, and restore a calm.



Consider 2ndly, the lessons we are also to learn from the miracles of our Saviour's feeding at one time five thousand men with five loaves, and at another time four thousand with seven loaves. Our Lord himself has taught us, upon occasion of the former of these miracles, John vi. 26, 27, that we are not to seek or to follow him for the sake of the loaves - that is, for procuring a corporal livelihood or any temporal advantage - for this would be but catching at the shadow and losing the substance - that 'we are not to labour for the meat that perisheth, but for that,' said he, 'which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man will give you.' So that the great lesson he would have us to learn from his feeding the multitude is, that we should have recourse to him for the food and nourishment of our souls unto everlasting life; for that he himself is the living and life-giving bread, which, without any consumption or diminution, he distributes to all those that come to him, seeking from him the refreshment of their souls, either by communicating himself to them really in the holy sacrament, or spiritually by a communion of faith and love.



Consider 3rdly, in the miracles of our Lord's feeding the multitude, what other lessons may be learnt from the circumstances in which he wrought these wonders. 'I have compassion,' said he, 'on the multitude; for behold, they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat; and if I sent them away fasting to their own houses they will faint on the way, for some of them came from afar off,' Mark viii. 2, 3. The people whom he favoured with these miracles had followed him into the desert; they had preferred the attending upon him, and the hearing of his divine word, before all other occupations or recreations; they had continued with him for three whole days, without taking any thought for their bodily nourishment; and therefore our Lord, after feeding their souls with the word of life, and healing all that stood in need of cure, was pleased to provide also for their corporal sustenance, according to what he promised, Matt vi. 33, 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things (that is, meat, drink, and clothes,) shall be added unto you.' Learn from hence, Christians, what wonders your Saviour is disposed to work In favour of those that follow him into the wilderness by a spiritual retreat - that is, by retiring from the noise and hurry of the world to attend upon him; that are not quickly wearied with his company, but continue diligently with him, (notwithstanding the difficulties and oppositions they meet with from the world, the flesh, and the devil,) and that gladly hearken to his divine word. O! such as these will not fail of being refreshed by him.



Conclude to follow Christ into the wilderness by making at least a little wilderness for him in thy own soul, and there frequently attending upon him by recollection and mental prayer, assure thyself that he will never send thee away fasting, but will have compassion of thee, and frequently feed thee with his hidden manna, lest thou faint in the way; for thou hast as yet a great way to go before thou canst reach thy eternal home.

Dec 4 -DAILY MEDITATIONS BY BISHOP CHALLONER

DECEMBER 4TH

ON OUR LORD'S CLEANSING THE LEPERS

Consider first, that the cleansing the leprosy is one of those miracles of our Lord which is more particularly instructive, because the leprosy was an emblem or figure of sin. Hence we find so many prescriptions in the Levitical law, (Lev. xiii. and xiv.,) with regard to such as had contracted the leprosy; and the judgment that was to be made of them by the priest, to whose inspection they were committed by the law; and the rites and sacrifices by which they were to be cleansed; which were all figurative and expressive of what was to be done by, or for them, who had contracted the spiritual leprosy of sin. The first mentioned to have been cleansed by our Lord of his leprosy, was he that came (after our Saviour's coming down from the mountain, Matt. viii. 2, 3) And worshipped him, saying: 'Lord if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying: I will: be thou made clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.' See Christians, by this example, in what manner you are to apply to your Lord, if you desire to be cleansed of your spiritual leprosy. See with what a strong and lively faith, accompanied with a profound humility, this leper presents himself before our Saviour; and learn to imitate him. Faith and humility are very efficacious with your heavenly physician. It was appointed, Levit. xiii. 44, &c., that whosoever was defiled with the leprosy, and separated by the judgment of the priest, should keep a respectful distance, with regard to the rest of the faithful; and should both by his outward habit, and by the cry of his voice, declare aloud, that he was defiled and unclean, to signify the humble dispositions which are necessary in the case of the spiritual leprosy before we can expect to meet with a cure.



Consider 2ndly, how our Lord having cleansed the leper, to teach us to avoid all ostentation and vain glory in doing good, said to him: 'See thou tell no man: but go show thyself to the priest and offer the gift which Moses commanded, for a testimony to him.' Our Lord sent those whom he cleansed from the leprosy to the priest, to conform to the prescription of the law of Moses; and at the same time, to give us to understand that even when, by the grace of a perfect contrition, he cleanses souls from the leprosy of sin, he still expects that they should show themselves to his priest, by a sincere confession of their sins; in consequence of his divine law, by which he has given to his priest the inspection and judgment of the leprosy of the soul; with the power of binding and loosing forgiving and retaining sins; and the dispensation of all the mysteries and sacraments. The person that was cleansed from the leprosy, and sent to the priest, was ordered to offer the the gift which Moses commanded, and consequently to observe the other prescriptions of the law (Levit. xii.). He was, in order to his purification, to be sprinkled seven times with the blood of a bird, immolated over living waters; he was to wash all his clothes; he was to shave all his hair; and to be washed himself all over with water; and then after seven days he was to offer a burnt offering, and a sin offering; and to be fully cleansed and expiated by the blood of the lamb, offered for sin, and by the oil of the sacrifice, that had been sprinkled seven times before the Lord; to signify to us, by these mysterious ceremonies, that such as desire to be thoroughly cleansed from the spiritual leprosy of sin, must by repeated washings of their consciences with the waters of compunction, by frequently sprinkling their souls with the blood of the Lamb of God, and by the applying to the the unction of their sevenfold grace of the Holy Ghost, attain to this perfect purification.



Consider 3rdly, what we read, Luke xvii., of ten other lepers, who applied to our Lord for their cure: 'they stood afar off, and lifted up their voices, saying: Jesus, O master, have mercy on us. And when he saw them, he said, Go show yourselves to the priest. And it came to pass, that as they went, they were cleansed.' See, my soul, how quickly thy Lord is moved to show mercy to them that with a loud cry call for mercy; that is with a loud cry of fervent prayer, joined with a profound humility, and a true sense of their own misery and unworthiness; expressed in the case of these men by their standing afar off, as not daring to come nearer to our Lord, by reason of their uncleanness. O let us learn to apply to our Saviour for the cure of our spiritual leprosy, with the like fervour and humility! But then mark also what follows: 'And one of them, when he saw that he was cleansed, went back, and with a loud voice glorified God: and he fell on his face before his feet, giving thanks, and this man was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering, said, Were there not ten made clean? And where are the nine? There is no one found to return, and to give glory to God, but this stranger.' O Christians, let us learn by this example the sentiments of love and gratitude, devotion and humility with which we ought to praise and glorify God, after being cleansed by his mercy from the unhappy leprosy of sin; the great value also we ought to set upon the grace of our purification and reconciliation to his divine majesty; and the care we ought to take never more to incur this worst of all uncleanness and of evils. alas! where these sentiments are wanting in penitents, it is much to be apprehended, that they are not far off from relapsing again into their former leprosy, and that in a worse degree than before.



Conclude to dread and to fly from the spiritual leprosy of sin more than from any other evil; but if at any time you have reason to apprehend that you have incurred this dreadful uncleanness, learn from the foregoing considerations to whom, and in what manner, you are to apply for your cure, and how you are to behave after having found this mercy.

Practice During Advent from THE LITURGICAL YEAR BY THE VERY REV. DOM PROSPER GUÉRANGER, ABBOT OF SOLESMES

CHAPTER THE THIRD

PRACTICE DURING ADVENT

If our holy mother the Church spends the time of Advent in this solemn preparation for the threefold coming of Jesus Christ; if, after the example of the prudent virgins, she keeps her lamp lit ready for the coming of the Bridegroom; we, being her members and her children, ought to enter into her spirit, and apply to ourselves this warning of our Saviour: ‘Let your loins be girt, and lamps burning in your hands, and ye yourselves be like unto men who wait for their Lord!’ [St. Luke xii. 35, 36]. The Church and we have, in reality, the same hopes. Each one of us is, on the part of God, an object of mercy and care, as is the Church herself. If she is the temple of God, it is because she is built of living stones; if she is the bride, it is because she consists of all the souls which are invited to eternal union with God. If it is written that the Saviour hath purchased the Church with His own Blood [Acts xx. 28], may not each one of us say of himself those words of St. Paul, ‘Christ hath loved me, and hath delivered Himself up for me’ [Gal. ii. 20]. Our destiny being the same, then, as that of the Church, we should endeavour during Advent, to enter into the spirit of preparation, which is, as we have seen, that of the Church herself.



And firstly, it is our duty to join with the saints of the old Law in asking for the Messias, and thus pay the debt which the whole human race owes to the divine mercy. In order to fulfil this duty with fervour, let us go back in thought to those four thousand years, represented by the four weeks of Advent, and reflect on the darkness and crime which filled the world before our Saviour’s coming. Let our hearts be filled with lively gratitude towards Him who saved His creature man from death, and who came down from heaven that He might know our miseries by Himself experiencing them, yes, all of them excepting sin. Let us cry to Him with confidence from the depths of our misery; for, notwithstanding His having saved the work of His hands, He still wishes us to beseech Him to save us. Let therefore our desires and our confidence have their free utterance in the ardent supplications of the ancient prophets, which the Church puts on our lips during these days of expectation; let us give our closest attention to the sentiments which they express.



This first duty complied with, we must next turn our minds to the coming which our Saviour wishes to accomplish in our own hearts. It is, as we have seen, a coming full of sweetness and mystery, and a consequence of the first; for the good Shepherd comes not only to visit the flock in general, but He extends His solicitude to each one of the sheep, even to the hundredth which is lost. Now, in order to appreciate the whole of this ineffable mystery, we must remember that, since we can be pleasing to our heavenly Father only inasmuch as He sees within us His Son Jesus Christ, this amiable Saviour deigns to come into each one of us, and transform us, if we will but consent, into Himself, so that henceforth we may live, not we, but He in us. This is, in reality, the one grand aim of the Christian religion, to make man divine through Jesus Christ: it is the task which God has given to His Church to do, and she says to the faithful what St. Paul said to his Galatians: ‘My little children, of whom I am in labour again, until Christ be formed within you!’ [Gal. iv. 19].



But as, on His entering into this world, our divine Saviour first showed Himself under the form of a weak Babe, before attaining the fulness of the age of manhood, and this to the end that nothing might be wanting to His sacrifice, so does He intend to do in us; there is to be a progress in His growth within us. Now, it is at the feast of Christmas that He delights to be born in our souls, and that He pours out over the whole Church a grace of being born, to which, however, not all are faithful.



For this glorious solemnity, as often as it comes round, finds three classes of men. The first, and the smallest number, are those who live, in all its plenitude, the life of Jesus who is within them, and aspire incessantly after the increase of this life. The second class of souls is more numerous; they are living, it is true, because Jesus is in them; but they are sick and weakly, because they care not to grow in this divine life; their charity has become cold! [Apoc. ii. 4]. The rest of men make up the third division, and are they that have no part of this life in them, and are dead; for Christ has said: ‘I am the Life.’ [St. John xiv.6].



Now, during the season of Advent, our Lord knocks at the door of all men’s hearts, at one time so forcibly that they must needs notice Him; at another, so softly that it requires attention to know that Jesus is asking admission. He comes to ask them if they have room for Him, for He wishes to be born in their house. The house indeed is His, for he built it and preserves it; yet He complains that His own refused to receive Him [Ibid. i. 11]; at least the greater number did. ‘But as many as received Him, He gave them power to be made the sons of God, born not or blood, nor of the flesh, but of God.’ [Ibid. 12, 13].



He will be. born, then, with more beauty and lustre and might than you have hitherto seen in Him, O ye faithful ones, who hold Him within you as your only treasure, and who have long lived no other life than His, shaping your thoughts and works on the model of His. You will feel the necessity of words to suit and express your love; such words as He delights to hear you speak to Him. You will find them in the holy liturgy.



You, who have had Him within you without knowing Him, and have possessed Him without relishing the sweetness of His presence, open your hearts to welcome Him, this time, with more care and love. He repeats His visit of this year with an untiring tenderness; He has forgotten your past slights; He would ‘that all things be new.’ [Apoc. xxi. 5]. Make room for the divine Infant, for He desires to grow within your soul. The time of His coming is close at hand: let your heart, then, be on the watch; and lest you should slumber when He arrives, watch and pray, yea, sing. The words of the liturgy are intended also for your use: they speak of darkness, which only God can enlighten; of wounds, which only His mercy can heal; of a faintness, which can be braced only by His divine energy.



And you, Christians, for whom the good tidings are as things that are not, because you are dead in sin, lo! He who is very life is coming among you. Yes, whether this death of sin has held you as its slave for long years, or has but freshly inflicted on you the wound which made you its victim, Jesus, your Life, is coming: ‘why, then, will you die? He desireth not the death of the sinner, but rather that he be converted and live.’ [Ezechiel xviii. 31, 32]. The grand feast of His birth will be a day of mercy for the whole world; at least, for all who will give Him admission into their hearts: they will rise to life again in Him, their past life will be destroyed, and where sin abounded, there grace will more abound. [Rom. v. 20].



But, if the tenderness and the attractiveness of this mysterious coming make no impression on you, because your heart is too weighed down to be able to rise to confidence, and because, having so long drunk sin like water, you know not what it is to long with love for the caresses of a Father whom you have slighted - then turn your thoughts to that other coming, which is full of terror, and is to follow the silent one of grace that is now offered. Think within yourselves, how this earth of ours will tremble at the approach of the dread Judge; how the heavens will flee from before His face, and fold up as a book [Apoc vi. 14]; how man will wince under His angry look; how the creature will wither away with fear, as the two-edged sword, which comes from the mouth of his Creator [Ibid. i. 16], pierces him; and how sinners will cry out, ‘Ye mountains, fall on us! ye rocks, cover us!’ [St. Luke xxiii. 30]. Those unhappy souls who would not know the time of their visitation [Ibid. xix. 44], shall then vainly wish to hide themselves from the face of Jesus. They shut their hearts against this Man-God who, in His excessive love for them, wept over them: therefore, on the day of judgement they will descend alive into those everlasting fires, whose flame devoureth the earth with her increase, and burneth the foundations of the mountains [Deut. xxxii. 22]. The worm that never dieth [St. Mark ix. 43], the useless eternal repentance, will gnaw them for ever.



Let those, then, who are not touched by the tidings of the coming of the heavenly Physician and the good Shepherd who giveth His life for His sheep, meditate during Advent on the awful yet certain truth, that so many render the redemption unavailable to themselves by refusing to co-operate in their own salvation. They may treat the Child who is to be born [Is. ix. 6] with disdain; but He is also the mighty God, and do they think they can withstand Him on that day, when He is to come, not to save, as now, but to judge? Would that they knew more of this divine Judge, before whom the very saints tremble! Let these, also, use the liturgy of this season, and they will there learn how much He is to be feared by sinners.



We would not imply by this that only sinners need to fear; no, every Christian ought to fear. Fear, when there is no nobler sentiment with it, makes man a slave; when it accompanies love, it is a feeling which fills the heart of a child who has offended his father, yet seeks for pardon; when, at length, love casteth out fear [1 St. John iv. 18], even then this holy fear will sometimes come, and, like a flash of lightning, pervade the deepest recesses of the soul. It does the soul good. She wakes up afresh to a keener sense of her own misery and of the unmerited mercy of her Redeemer. Let no one, therefore, think that he may safely pass his Advent without taking any share in the holy fear which animates the Church. She, though so beloved by God, prays to Him to give her this fear; and in her Office of Sext, she thus cries out to Him: ‘Pierce my flesh with Thy fear.’ It is, however, to those who are beginning a good life, that this part of the Advent liturgy will be peculiarly serviceable.



It is evident, from what we have said, that Advent is a season specially devoted to the exercises of what is called the purgative life, which is implied in that expression of St. John, so continually repeated by the Church during this holy time: Prepare ye the way of the Lord! Let all, therefore, strive earnestly to make straight the path by which Jesus will enter into their souls. Let the just, agreeably to the teaching of the apostle, forget the things that are behind [Phil. iii. 13], and labour to acquire fresh merit. Let sinners begin at once and break the chains which now enslave them. Let them give up those bad habits which they have contracted. Let them weaken the flesh, and enter upon the hard work of subjecting it to the spirit. Let them, above all things, pray with the Church. And when our Lord comes, they may hope that He will not pass them by, but that He will enter and dwell within them; for He spoke of all when He said these words: ‘Behold I stand at the gate and knock: if any man shall hear My voice will open to Me the door, I will come in unto him.’ [Apoc. ii. 20].

Dec 3 - DAILY MEDITATIONS BY BISHOP CHALLONER

DECEMBER 3RD


ON THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST OUR LORD

Consider first, that Christ our Lord did not only teach us his heavenly truths by his preaching, by his parables, and by his maxims laid down in the gospel, but his whole life, and all his actions were designed to be an instruction to us; and that his miracles in particular were not only wrought to confirm our faith and our hope in him, and to be so many evidences of his goodness and charity to poor mortals; but to give us also great lessons for our practice, if we would take care to look well into them, and to learn the mysterious meaning of them. Especially, we must ever remember, that as the diseases and corporal infirmities we are liable so in this life, mystically represent the spiritual maladies of our vices and passions, so we are to learn from the miracles wrought by our redeemer, in healing all manner of diseases of the body, to apply continually to him for the cure of the like diseases in the soul, which are indeed the far more grievous evils of the two, and if not healed, are attended with far more dreadful consequences. But alas! how seldom do the children of this world take to heart the seeking of the cure of these spiritual diseases; or apply in a proper manner to this great physician for his aid; who when he was here upon earth, never cast off any that applied to him? So much more are worldlings concerned for the body than for the soul; for time than for eternity. O my soul, let us at least be more wise.



Consider 2ndly, what were the miracles which our Saviour more frequently wrought, from the time of his first beginning to preach his gospel. 'He went about all Galilee,' says St. Matthew, 'healing all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease among the people; and his fame went throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all sick people, &c., and such as were possessed by devils, and lunatics, and paralytics, and he healed them,' Matt. iv. 23. And there 'came to him great multitudes, having with them he dumb, the blind, and the lame, the maimed, and many others; and they cast them down at his feet, and he healed them,' Matt. xv. 30. 'And whithersoever he entered into towns, or into villages or cities, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought him that they might but touch the hem of his garment, and as many as touched him were made whole,' Mark vi. 56. 'and all the multitude sought to touch him, for virtue went out from him and healed all,' Luke vi. 19. See, Christians, how ready your Lord was, during his mortal life, to cure all kinds of bodily diseases, and how wholesome it was to come near to him, or to touch either him or his garments, by reason of the virtue that went out from him to heal all. O assure yourselves, he is no less ready or willing now to heal your souls; for his power, his mercy, his goodness, his charity and love for you know no bounds! It is no ways diminished since he shed his blood for the love of you, and carried it with him into the sanctuary of heaven, there to present it to his father in your behalf. Examine then, and see what our diseases are, and run with confidence to him for your cure. You need not go far to seek him: for though he is gone to heaven, he still will be with you even to the end of the world. You may find him in the Eucharist; where a virtue continually goes out from him, for the healing of all; you may find him at any time, and in any place, in this divine person; especially in his temple, in the centre of your souls; for there is no place in which he either more willingly resides, or more frequently works his wonders, than in the interior of such Christians, as duly seek him by a spirit of recollection and an internal life.



Consider 3rdly, that 'Christ our Lord continually went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed by the devil,' Acts x. 38. As he came to deliver men from the tyranny and slavery of the devil, so his miracles were most frequently wrought in casting out devils; in destroying the works of the devil, and in forcing Satan out of his usurped dominions. See, Christians, what occasion your souls may have for this fort of miracles. Are they not spiritually possessed, or besieged by this wicked spirit; by the means of some or other of the capital sins; for where any of these are predominant, there Satan reigns. Does not this wicked one render you spiritually deaf and dumb, with regard to the voice of God, and the confession of your sins? Does he not bend you down to the earth by worldly affections, like the crooked woman in the gospel, Luke xiii. 16. Does he not make you blind, by obstructing your interior sight, with regard to the light of truth, &c.? In all these cases you must run to Christ our Lord to be dispossessed, or to be delivered from this mortal enemy of your souls. Christ's hand is not shortened; he will cast out this wicked one, at your humble request; but O take care not to be of the number of those who, by wholly giving themselves up to their carnal passions, are rather swine than Christians; for of such as these the devil has so great a hold, that he will not easily be cast out. Our Lord himself gave a licence to a whole legion of devils to enter into swine, and whither did they hurry them, but down a precipice into a deep, where they all perished; Take care this never be your case!



Conclude to consider henceforward the miracles of our Lord, not only as confirmations of the truth of the Christian faith, and evidences of the power, mercy, and goodness of the author of it, and consequently as strong inducements to believe in him, hope in him, and love him above all things - but also to study well the practical lessons which are to be learnt from these miracles; inasmuch as they point out to us the sovereign means of ridding ourselves of all our evils, by having recourse, with a lively faith and humble prayer, to the great source of all our good.

The Mystery of Advent from THE LITURGICAL YEAR BY THE VERY REV. DOM PROSPER GUÉRANGER, ABBOT OF SOLESMES

CHAPTER THE SECOND

THE MYSTERY OF ADVENT

If, now that we have described the characteristic features of Advent which distinguish it from the rest of the year, we would penetrate into the profound mystery which occupies the mind of the Church during this season, we find that this mystery of the coming, or Advent, of Jesus is at once simple and threefold. It is simple, for it is the one same Son of God that is coining; it is threefold, because He comes at three different times and in three different ways.



‘In the first coming,’ says St. Bernard, ‘He comes in the flesh and in weakness; in the second, He comes in spirit and in power; in the third, He comes in glory and in majesty; and the second coming is the means whereby we pass from the first to the third.’ [Fifth sermon for Advent].



This, then, is the mystery of Advent. Let us now listen to the explanation of this threefold visit of Christ, given to us by Peter of Blois, in his third Sermon de Adventu: ‘There are three comings of our Lord; the first in the flesh, the second in the soul, the third at the judgement. The first was at midnight, according to those words of the Gospel: At midnight there was a cry made, Lo the Bridegroom cometh! But this first coming is long since past, for Christ has been seen on the earth and has conversed among men. We are now in the second coming, provided only we are such as that He may thus come to us; for He has said that if we love him, He will come unto us and will take up His abode with us. So that this second coming is full of uncertainty to us; for who, save the Spirit of God, knows them that are of God? They that are raised out of themselves by the desire of heavenly things, know indeed when He comes; but whence He cometh, or whither He goeth, they know not. As for the third coming, it is most certain that it will be, most uncertain when it will be; for nothing is more sure than death, and nothing less sure than the hour of death. When they shall say, peace and security, says the apostle, then shall sudden destruction come upon them, as the pains upon her that is with child, and they shall not escape. So that the first coming was humble and hidden, the second is mysterious and full of love, the third will be majestic and terrible. In His first coming, Christ was judged by men unjustly; in His second, He renders us just by His grace; in His third, He will judge all things with justice. In His first, a lamb; in His last, a lion; in the one between the two, the tenderest of friends.’ [De Adventu, Sermon III.]



The holy Church, therefore, during Advent, awaits in tears and with ardour the arrival of her Jesus in His first coming. For this, she borrows the fervid expressions of the prophets, to which she joins her own supplications. These longings for the Messias expressed by the Church, are not a mere commemoration of the desires of the ancient Jewish people; they have a reality and efficacy of their own, an influence in the great act of God’s munificence, whereby He gave us His own Son. From all eternity, the prayers of the ancient Jewish people and the prayers of the Christian Church ascended together to the prescient hearing of God; and it was after receiving and granting them, that He sent, in the appointed time, that blessed Dew upon the earth, which made it bud forth the Saviour.



The Church aspires also to the second coming, the consequence of the first, which consists, as we have just seen, in the visit of the Bridegroom to the bride. This coming takes place, each year, at the feast of Christmas, when the new birth of the Son of God delivers the faithful from that yoke of bondage, under which the enemy would oppress them. [Collect for Christmas day]. The Church, therefore, during Advent, prays that she may be visited by Him who is her Head and her Spouse; visited in her hierarchy; visited in her members, of whom some are living, and some are dead, but may come to life again; visited, lastly, in those who are not in communion with her, and even in the very infidels, that so they may be converted to the true light, which shines even for them. The expressions of the liturgy which the Church makes use of to ask for this loving and invisible coming, are those which she employs when begging for the coming of Jesus in the flesh; for the two visits are for the same object. In vain would the Son of God have come, nineteen hundred years ago, to visit and save mankind, unless He came again for each one of us and at every moment of our lives, bringing to us and cherishing within us that supernatural life, of which He and His holy Spirit are the sole principle.



But this annual visit of the Spouse does not content the Church; she aspires after a third coming, which will complete all things by opening the gates of eternity. She has caught up the last words of her Spouse, ‘Surely I am coming quickly’ [Apoc. xxii. 20]; and she cries out to Him, ‘Ah! Lord Jesus! come!’ [Ibid.]. She is impatient to be loosed from her present temporal state; she longs for the number of the elect to be filled up, and to see appear, in the clouds of heaven, the sign of her Deliverer and her Spouse. Her desires, expressed by her Advent liturgy, go even as far as this; and here we have the explanation of these words of the beloved disciple in his prophecy: ‘The nuptials of the Lamb are come, and His wife hath prepared herself.’ [Ibid. xix. 7].



But the day of this His last coming to her will be a day of terror. The Church frequently trembles at the very thought of that awful judgement, in which all mankind is to be tried. She calls it ‘a day of wrath, on which, as David and the Sibyl have foretold, the world will be reduced to ashes; a day of weeping and of fear.’ Not that she fears for herself, since she knows that this day will for ever secure for her the crown, as being the bride of Jesus; but her maternal heart is troubled at the thought that, on the same day, so many of her children will be on the left hand of the Judge, and, having no share with the elect, will be bound hand and foot, and cast into the darkness, where there shall be everlasting weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is the reason why the Church, in the liturgy of Advent, so frequently speaks of the coming of Christ as a terrible coming, and selects from the Scriptures those passages which are most calculated to awaken a salutary fear in the mind of such of her children as may be sleeping the sleep of sin.



This, then, is the threefold mystery of Advent. The liturgical forms in which it is embodied, are of two kinds: the one consists of prayers, passages from the Bible, and similar formula, in all of which, words themselves are employed to convey the sentiments which we have been explaining; the other consists of external rites peculiar to this holy time, which, by speaking to the outward senses, complete the expressiveness of the chants and words.

First of all, there is the number of the days of Advent. Forty was the number originally adopted by the Church, and it is still maintained in the Ambrosian liturgy, and in the eastern Church. If, at a later period, the Church of Rome, and those which follow her liturgy, have changed the number of days, the same idea is still expressed in the four weeks which have been substituted for the forty days. The new birth of our Redeemer takes place after four weeks, as the first nativity happened after four thousand years, according to the Hebrew and Vulgate chronology.



As in Lent, so likewise during Advent, marriage is not solemnized, lest worldly joy should distract Christians from those serious thoughts wherewith the expected coming of the sovereign Judge ought to inspire them, or from that dearly cherished hope which the friends of the Bridegroom [St. John iii. 29] have of being soon called to the eternal nuptial-feast.



The people are forcibly reminded of the sadness which fills the heart of the Church, by the sombre colour of the vestments. Excepting on the feasts of the saints, purple is the colour she uses; the deacon does not wear the dalmatic, nor the sub-deacon the tunic. Formerly it was the custom, in some places, to wear black vestments. This mourning of the Church shows how fully she unites herself with those true Israelites of old who, clothed in sackcloth and ashes, waited for the Messias, and bewailed Sion that she had not her beauty, and ‘Juda, that the sceptre had been taken from him, till He should come who was to be sent, the expectation of nations.’ [Prov. viii. 31]. It also signifies the works of penance, whereby she prepares for the second coming, full as it is of sweetness and mystery, which is realized in the souls of men, in proportion as they appreciate the tender love of that divine Guest, who has said: ‘My delights are to be with the children of men.’[Gen. xlix. 10]. It expresses, thirdly, the desolation of this bride who yearns after her Beloved, who is long a-coming. Like the turtle dove, she moans her loneliness, longing for the voice which will say to her: ‘Come from Libanus, my bride! come, thou shalt be crowned. Thou hast wounded my heart.’ [Cant. iv. 8, 9].



The Church also, during Advent. excepting on the feasts of saints, suppresses the angelic canticle, Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis; for this glorious song was sung at Bethlehem over the crib of the divine Babe; the tongues of the angels are not loosened yet; the Virgin has not yet brought forth her divine Treasure; it is not yet time to sing, it is not even true to say, ‘Glory be to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men of good will.’



Again, at the end of Mass, the deacon does not dismiss the assembly of the faithful by the words: Ite missa est. He substitutes the ordinary greeting:

Benedicamus Domino! as though the Church feared to interrupt the prayers of the people, which could scarce be too long during these days of expectation.



In the night Office, the holy Church also suspends, on those same days, the hymn of jubilation, Te Deum laudamus.’ [The monastic rite retains it. Tr.] It is in deep humility that she awaits the supreme blessing which is to come to her; and, in the interval, she presumes only to ask, and entreat, and hope. But let the glorious hour come, when in the midst of darkest night the Sun of justice will suddenly rise upon the world: then indeed she will resume her hymn of thanksgiving, and all over the face of the earth the silence of midnight will be broken by this shout of enthusiasm: ‘We praise Thee, O God! we acknowledge Thee to be our Lord! Thou, O Christ, art the King of glory, the everlasting Son of the Father! Thou being to deliver man didst not disdain the Virgin’s womb!’



On the ferial days, the rubrics of Advent prescribe that certain prayers should be said kneeling, at the end of each canonical Hour, and that the choir should also kneel during a considerable portion of the Mass. In this respect, the usages of Advent are precisely the same as those of Lent.



But there is one feature which distinguishes Advent most markedly from Lent: the word of gladness, the joyful Alleluia, is not interrupted during Advent, except once or twice during the ferial Office. It is sung in the Masses of the four Sundays, and vividly contrasts with the sombre colour of the vestments. On one of these Sundays, the third, the prohibition of using the organ is removed, and we are gladdened by its grand notes, and rose-coloured vestments may be used instead of the purple. These vestiges of joy, thus blended with the holy mournfulness of the Church, tell us, in a most expressive way, that though she unites with the ancient people of God in praying for the coming of the Messias (thus paying the debt which the entire human race owes to the justice and mercy of God), she does not forget that the Emmanuel is already come to her, that He is in her, and that even before she has opened her lips to ask Him to save her, she has been already redeemed and predestined to an eternal union with Him. This is the reason why the Alleluia accompanies even her sighs, and why she seems to be at once joyous and sad, waiting for the coming of that holy night which will be brighter to her than the most sunny of days, and on which her joy will expel all her sorrow.

DAILY MEDITATIONS BY BISHOP CHALLONER - DEC 1 & 2

Richard Challoner (29 September 1691 – 12 January 1781) was an English Roman Catholic bishop, a leading figure of English Catholicism during the greater part of the 18th century. He is perhaps most famous for his revision of the Douay Rheims translation of the Bible.




DECEMBER 1ST


ON THE TIME OF ADVENT

Consider first, that the time of Advent, (so called from being set aside by the church for worthily celebrating the advent, that is, the coming of Christ,) is a penitential time, and a time of devotion, in which we are every day called upon by the church of God to prepare the way of the Lord, to make straight his paths; to enter into the like dispositions of those which St. John the Baptist required of the people when he was sent to preach to them conversion and penance, in order to prepare them for their Messias; that so we also, by turning away from our sins, by sorrow and repentance, and turning ourselves to the Lord our God with our whole heart, by love and affection, may dispose our souls to welcome our Saviour whose birth we are about to celebrate, and to embrace in such manner the mercy and grace which he brings with him at his first coming as to escape hereafter those dreadful judgments which his justice shall execute upon impenitent sinners at his second coming. See then, my soul that thou dedicate this holy time to suitable exercise of devotion and penance, that thou mayest answer the end of this institution.



Consider 2ndly, in what manner we are all summoned by the church, at the beginning of this holy time, (in the words of St. Paul, Rom xiii. 11, read in the epistle of the First Sunday in Advent,) to dispose ourselves now for Christ. 'Knowing the time,' says the apostle, 'that it is now the hour for us to rise from sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is passed, (or far spent,) the day is at hand; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armour of light; let us walk decently, as in the day,' &c. O! my soul, let us consider these words as particularly addressed to us, in order to awaken us, and to stir us up to begin now a new life. Alas! have we not hitherto been quite asleep as to the greatest of all our concerns? Are not far the greatest part of Christians quite asleep by their unaccountable indolence in the great business of the salvation of their souls and of a happy eternity? Are they not sleeping too, which is worse, in the very midst of dangers and of mortal enemies, who are continually plotting their destruction, an even upon the very brink of a precipice, which if they fall down will let them in a moment into hell? O let us then all hearken seriously to this summons, and rouse ourselves now, whilst we have time, out of this unhappy lethargy, and from this hour begin to apply ourselves in good earnest to that only business for which we came into this world. O let us cast off now and for ever the works of darkness, and put on Jesus Christ.



Consider 3rdly, that on the First Sunday of Advent, the terrors also of God's justice are set before our eyes, in the description given in the gospel of the great accounting day; to the end, that they that will not correspond with the sweet invitations of God's mercy, and awake from sleep at the summons addressed to them in the epistle, may be roused at least by the thunder of his justice, denounced in the gospel; and be induced by the wholesome fear of the dreadful judgments that are continually hanging over the heads of impenitent sinners, to make good use of this present time of mercy, lest hereafter there should be neither time nor mercy for them. Ah! sinners, if this day you hear the voice of the Lord, either sweetly inviting you with the allurements of his mercy, or terrifying you with the threats of his judgments, see you harden not your hearts. For now is your time. Sleep on no longer, lest you come to sleep in death, as it happened to them of old, who by refusing to hearken to God's voice, provoked him so far, that he swore to them in his wrath, that they should never enter into his rest. O remember that 'the day of the Lord and his judgments shall come as a snare upon all them that will not watch,' Luke xxi. 55.



Conclude to enter now into the true spirit of this holy time - which is a penitential spirit - and to prepare the way of the Lord, by putting away all thy sins, and purifying thy soul for him; thus shalt thou welcome him at his coming, and shalt be welcome to him.





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DECEMBER 2ND

ON WHAT WE MUST DO TO PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD

Consider first, that the church, in the office appointed for this holy time, frequently puts us in mind of the mission and preaching of St. John the Baptist, and of the manner in which he endeavoured to prepare the people for Christ; to the end that we may learn, from the doctrine of this great forerunner of our Lord, in what dispositions we ought also to be if we would duly prepare the way for him. Now what the Baptist continually preached to the people was; that they should turn from their evil ways, and do penance, because the kingdom of heaven was at hand; that they should bring forth fruits worthy of penance, if they would escape the wrath to come - and this without delay - for that now the axe was laid at the root of the tree, and that every tree that did not bring forth good fruit should be cut up and cast into the fire. That they should not flatter themselves with the expectation of impunity or security, because they had Abraham for their father; for that God was able to raise up from the very stones children to Abraham; and therefore without a thorough conversion from their sins, they were to expect that the kingdom of God, and the grace and dignity of being children of Abraham, (the father of all the faithful,) should be taken away from them and given to the Gentiles. He added, that he baptized them indeed with water unto penance; but that another should come after him that should 'baptize them with the Holy Ghost and with fire; that his fan was in his hand, and that he should thoroughly cleanse his floor, and gather his wheat into the barn; but the chaff he would burn with unquenchable fire,' Matt. iii. This was the way St. John prepared the people for Christ; and it is by conforming ourselves in practice to these his lessons, at this holy time, that we must also prepare the way of the Lord, and be prepared for him.



Consider 2ndly, that the great theme of the preaching of St. John, in order to prepare the way of the Lord, was the virtue of penance; inasmuch as this was the only means by which sinners could ever effectually be reconciled to God, after actual mortal sin; and therefore this theme was at all times perpetually inculcated by all that were ever sent with commission from God to reclaim unhappy souls that had gone astray from him. It is then by this virtue of penance we also are to prepare the way of the Lord, at this holy time; this is the proper devotion for the time of Advent. Now this virtue of penance, (which always was, always is, and always will be, absolutely and indispensably necessary for the bringing back sinners to God,) implies three things: first, the renouncing and destroying of all our sins, by which we have offended so good a God; secondly, a turning of ourselves to God with our whole heart, and a dedicating ourselves henceforward to him both for time and eternity; and thirdly, an offering of ourselves to him, to make him what satisfaction we can for our past offences, by a penitential life. Christians, this is our great business at this holy time, if we hope to prepare ourselves for Christ; this is the proper exercise for it - to pass over in our mind, in the bitterness of our soul, all our years that have been spent in sin; to bewail and lament every day of this holy season, all our past treasons against the divine majesty; to turn now to God with our whole heart; to offer our whole souls to him; to exercise ourselves in his love, and to enter into new articles with him of an eternal allegiance, with a full determination of rather dying than being any more disloyal to him; and letting not one day pass without offering him some penitential satisfaction for our past guilt, to be united to, and sanctified by the passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. O! how happy are they that employ the time of Advent in this manner! O! how willingly will our Lord, at the approaching Christmas, communicate himself to such souls as these.



Consider 3rdly, that at the approaching solemnity of Christmas, the church, by thrice celebrating the sacred mysteries on the same day, commemorates three different births of Christ: his eternal birth from his father; his temporal birth from his mother; and his spiritual birth by which he is born by grace in our souls. Hence the best devotion for the time of Christmas, is that which conduces the most to bring Christ into our souls by this spiritual birth; and consequently the best devotion for the time of Advent is to cleanse and to purify our souls, that he may find nothing in them that may disqualify them for his visits, or hinder him from coming to be spiritually born in us. For he will never come into an unclean soul, nor be born in a mansion where Satan resides. See then, my soul, what measures thou art to take, at this holy time, to prepare thy Inward house for the spiritual birth of this king of glory: 1. Thou must cleanse and purify it from sin and Satan; 2. Thou must adorn it with virtue and piety; and 3. Thou must daily invite thy Lord thither by fervent prayer; thus shalt thou prepare the way of the Lord in the manner that is best pleasing to him.



Conclude to put in practice all these lessons to the best of thy power, at this holy time: an Advent spent in this manner, in devotion and penance, cannot fail of bringing thee a happy Christmas.

Divine Preparations - Time of Advent from CHRIST IN HIS MYSTERIES by Dom Columba Marmion, O.S.B.- Part IV

IV

What are these dispositions? They can be summed up in four.



Purity of heart. Who was the best disposed for the coming of the Word to earth? Without any doubt, it was the Blessed Virgin Mary. At the moment when the Word came into this world, He found Mary's heart perfectly prepared, and capable of receiving the Divine riches which He willed to heap upon her. What were the dispositions of her soul?



Assuredly she possessed all the most perfect dispositions; but there is one which shines with particular brilliancy: that is her virginal purity. Mary is a virgin. Her virginity is so precious to her that it is her first thought when the angel proposes to her the mystery of the divine maternity.



Not only is she a virgin, but her soul is stainless. The liturgy reveals to us that God's special design in granting to Mary the unique privilege of the Immaculate Conception was to prepare for His Word a dwelling place worthy of Him: "Deus qui per immvaculatam Virginis conceptionem dignum Filio tuo HABITACULUM PRAEPARASTI" (Collect for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception). Mary was to be the Mother of God; and this eminent dignity required not only that she should be a virgin, but that her purity should surpass that of the angels and be a reflection of the holy splendour wherein the Father begets His Son: "In splendoribus sanctorum" (Ps 59:3). God is holy, thrice holy; the angels, the archangels, the seraphim hymn His infinite purity: "Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus" (Is 6:3). The bosom of God, of an infinite purity, is the dwelling-place of the Only-begotten Son of God. The Word is ever in "sinu Patris"; but, in becoming Incarnate, He also willed, in ineffable condescension, to be in "sinu Virginis Matris". It was necessary that the tabernacle that Our Lady offered Him should recall, by its incomparable purity, the indefectible brightness of the light eternal where as God He ever dwells: "Christi sinus erat in Deo Patre divinitas, in Maria Matre virginitas" (Sermo, XII, in Append. Operum S. Ambrosii).



Thus the first disposition that attracts Christ is a great purity. But as for ourselves, we are sinners. We cannot offer to the Word, to Christ Jesus, that immaculate purity which He so much loves. What is there that will take the place of it in us ? It is humility.



God possesses in His bosom the Son of His delight, but upon this bosom He also presses another son,-the prodigal son. Our Lord Himself tells us so. When, after having fallen so low, the prodigal returns to his father, he humbles himself to the dust, he confesses himself to be miserable and unworthy; and, at once, without a word or reproach, the father receives him into the bosom of his compassion: Misericordia motus (Lk 15:20).



Do not let us forget that the Word, the Son, only wills what His Father wills. If He becomes Incarnate and appears upon earth, it is in order to seek sinners and bring them back to His Father: "Non vend vocare justos sed peccatores "(Mt 9:13), This is so true that later Our Lord will often be found, to the great scandal of the Pharisees, in the company of sinners; He will allow Magdalen to kiss His Feet and bathe them with her tears.



We have not the Virgin Mary's purity, but let us at least ask for the humility of Magdalen, a contrite and penitent love. O Christ Jesus, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come to me; my heart will not be for Thee a dwelling-place of purity, misery dwells there. But I acknowledge, I avow this misery; come and relieve me of it. O Thou Who art mercy itself; come and deliver me, O Thou Who art almighty: Veni ad liberandum nos, Domine Deus virtutum!



A like prayer, joined to the spirit of penance, draws Christ to us because the humility that abases itself in its nothingness thereby renders homage to the goodness and power of Jesus: Et eum, qui venit ad me, non eficiam foras (Jn 6:37).



The sight of our infirmity ought not, however, to discourage us; far from that. The more we feel our weakness, so much the more ought we to open our soul to confidence, because salvation comes only from Christ.



Pusillanimes, confortamini et nolite timere, ecce Deus noster veniet et salvabit nos (Communion for the 3rd Sunday of Advent, cf. Is 35:4). "Ye faint-hearted, take courage and fear not: behold God, our God, will come and will save us." See what confidence the Jews had in the Messias. For them, the Messias was everything; in Him were summed up all the aspirations of Israel, all the wishes of the people, all the hopes of the race; to contemplate Him was all their ambition; to see His reign established would have fulfilled all their desires. And how confident and impatient the desires of the Jews became: "Come, O Lord and do not delay" (Alleluia for the 4th Sunday of Advent) "Shew us Thy face, and we shall be saved" (Ps 79:4).



Oh, if we who possess Christ Jesus, true God as well as true Man, really understood what the Sacred Humanity of Jesus is, we should have an unshaken confidence in it; for in His Humanity are all the treasures of knowledge and of wisdom; in it the Divinity itself dwells. This God-Man, Who comes to us is the Emmanuel, He is "God with us," He is our Elder Brother. The Word has espoused our nature, He has taken upon Himself our infirmities so as to know by experience what suffering is. He comes to us to make us partakers of His divine life; all the graces for which we can hope He possesses in their fulness in order to grant them to us.



The promises that, by the voice of the prophets, God made to His people so as to arouse in them the desire of the Messias, are magnificent. But many of the Jews understood these promises in the material and gross sense of a temporal and political kingdom. The good things promised to the just who awaited the Saviour were but the figure of the supernatural riches which we find in Christ; we have the divine reality, that is to say the grace of Jesus. The liturgy for Advent constantly speaks to us of mercy, redemption, salvation, deliverance, light, abundance, joy, peace. "Behold the Saviour cometh; on the day of His Birth, the world shall be flooded with light" (Antiphon for Lauds of the 1st Sunday in Advent; "exult then with joy, O Jerusalem, for the Saviour shall appear" (Antiphon for Lauds for the 3rd Sunday in Advent); "peace shall fill our earth when He shews Himself" (Response for Matins for the 3rd Sunday in Advent). Christ brings with Him all the blessings that can be lavished upon a soul: "Cum illo omnia nobis donavit" (Rom 8:32).



Let then our hearts yield themselves up to an absolute confidence in Him Who is to come. It is to render ourselves very pleasing to the Father to believe that His Son Jesus can do everything for the sanctification of our souls. Thereby we declare that Jesus is equal to Him, and that the Father "hath given all things into His hand" (Jn 3:35). Such confidence cannot be mistaken. In the Mass for the first Sunday in Advent, the Church thrice gives us the firm assurance of this. "None of them that wait on Thee shall be confounded": "Qui te exspectant non confundentur."



This confidence will above all be expressed in the ardent desire to see Christ come to reign more fully within us. "Adveniat regnum tuum!" The liturgy gives us the formula of these desires. At the same time that she places the prophecies, especially those of Isaias, under our eyes, and causes us to read them again, the Church puts upon our lips the aspirations and the longings of the just men of old time. She wills to see us prepared for Christ's coming within our souls in the same way as God willed that the Jews should be disposed to receive His Son. "Come, O Lord, They mercy, and grant us Thy people" (Alleluia for the 4th Sunday of Advent). "Shew us, O Lord, Thy mercy, and grant us Thy salvation" (Offertory for the 2d Sunday of Advent). "Come and deliver us, Lord, God Almighty! Raise up Thy power, and come" (Collect for the 4th Sunday of Advent).



The Church makes us constantly repeat these aspirations. Let us make them our own, let us appropriate them to ourselves with faith, and Christ Jesus will enrich us with His graces.



Doubtless, as you know, God is master of His gifts; He is sovereignly free, and none may hold Him to account for His preferences. But, in the ordinary ways of His Providence, He hears the supplications of the humble who bring their needs before Him: "Desiderium pauperum exaudivit Dominus" (Ps 9:17). Christ gives Himself to us according to the measure of the desire that we have to receive Him, and the capacity of the soul is increased by the desires that it expresses: "Dilata os tuum, et implebo illud" (Ps 80:2).



If then we want the celebration of Christ's Nativity to procure great glory for the Holy Trinity, and to be a consolation for the Heart of the Incarnate Word, a source of abundant graces for the Church and for ourselves, let us strive to purify our hearts, let us preserve a humility full of confidence, and above all let us enlarge our souls by the breath and vehemence of our desires.



Let us ask our Lady to make us share in the holy aspirations that animated her during those blessed days that preceded the Birth of Jesus.



The Church has willed--and what is more just?--that the liturgy of Advent should be full of the thought of the Blessed Virgin; she continually makes us sing the divine fruitfulness of a Virgin, a wonderful fruitfulness that throws nature into astonishment: "Tu quae genuisti, natura mirante, tuum sanctum genitorem, virgo pries ac posterius" (Antiphon Alma Redemptoris Mater).



Mary's virginal bosom was an immaculate sanctuary whence arose the most pure incense of her adoration and homage.



There is something veritably ineffable about the inward life of the Virgin during these days. She lived in an intimate union with the Infant-God Whom she bore in her bosom. The soul of Jesus was, by the Beatific Vision, plunged in the Divine light; this light radiated upon His Mother. In the sight of the angels, Mary truly appeared as "a woman clothed with the sun": "Mulier amicta sole" (Rev 12:1), all irradiated with heavenly brightness, all shining with the light of her Son. Her feelings indeed reached the high level of her faith. She summed up in herself all the aspirations, all the impulses, all the longings of humanity awaiting the world's Saviour and God, at the same time going far beyond them and giving them a value that they had never hitherto attained. What holy intensity in her desires! What unshaken assurance in confidence! What fervour in her love!...



This humble Virgin is the Queen of Patriarchs, since she is of their holy lineage, and since the Child Whom she is about to bring into the world is the Son Who resumes in His person all the magnificence of the ancient promises.



She is, too, the Queen of Prophets, since she is to bring forth the Word by Whom all the prophets spoke, since her Son is to fulfil all prophecy and announce to all people the good news of redemption (Lk 4:19).



Let us humbly ask her to make us enter into her dispositions. She will hear our prayer; we shal1 have the immense joy of seeing Christ born anew within our hearts by the communication of a more abundant grace, and we shall be enabled, like the Virgin, although in a lesser measure, to understand the truth of these words of St. John: "The Word was God... and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory... full of grace and truth... And of His fulness we have all received, and grace for grace" (Jn 1:14-16).