Charm with your stainlessness these winter nights,
Skies, and be perfect!
Fly vivider in the fiery dark, you quiet meteors, and disappear.
You moon, be slow to go down,
This is your fill!
Thomas Merton
Day 13 – Deep solidarity
The joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the people of our time, especially of those who are poor or afflicted in any way, are the joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well. Nothing that is genuinely human fails to find an echo in their hearts. For theirs is a community composed of human beings who united in Christ and guided by the Holy Spirit, press onwards towards the kingdom of the Father and are bearers of a message of salvation intended for all. That is why Christians cherish a feeling of deep solidarity with the human race and its history.
The Church in the Modern World
Day 12 – I long
Oh God you are my God, for you I long;
for you my sould is thirsting.
My body pines for you
like a dry weary land without water.
So I gaze on you in the sanctuary
to see your strength and your glory.
Psalm 63
Day 11 – By love
God saw the world falling to ruin because of fear and immediately acted to call it back with love. God invited it by grace, preserved it by love, & embraced it with compassion.
Peter Chrysologus
Day 10 – Cry of the poor
Yes, the cry and the anguish of the poor
trigger off our cry and anguish;
we touch our point of pain and helpness.
But then we discover the new name of God,
the name revealed by Jesus,
of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit;
the Father will send the “paraclete.”
It is a beautiful name, meaning literally
“the one who answers the cry or the call.”
Like a mother
who takes in her arms her weeping child.
She is a paraclete.
The name of God is “the one who answers the cry.”
Mercy and misery embrace!
We can only know the incredible mercy and love of God
if we accept to decend into our misery
and there cry out to him.
Then he will answer,
“Here I am, Beloved,”
and will enfold is in his arms with a long embrace.
Jean Vanier
Day 9 – The beginning of the end
The Advent mystery is the beginning of the end of all in us that is not yet Christ.
Day 8 – Rights
That man say we can’t have as much rights as a man “cause Christ wasn’t a woman.” Where did you Christ come from? From God and a woman. Man had nothing to do with it.
Marketplace Grace
Day 7 – Truth resounds
Above the clamor of our violence
your word of truth resounds,
O God of majesty and power,
Over nations enshrouded in despair
your justice dawns.
Grant your household
a discerning spirit and a watchful eye
to perceive the hour in which we live.
Hasten the advent of that day
when the weapons of war shall be
banished,
our deeds of darkness case off,
and all your scattered children gathered
into one.
Prayer Sunday of Advent
Day 6 – Love preceeds
Face to face with our limits,
Blinking before the frightful
Stare of our fraility,
Promise rises
Like a posse of clever maids
Who do not fear the dark
Because their readiness
lights the search. Their oil becomes
the measure of their love,
Their ability to wait —
An indication of their
Capacity to trust and take a chance.
Without the caution or predictability
Of knowing day or hour,
They fall back on that only
Of which they can be sure:
Love preceeds them,
Before it
No door will ever close.
T. J. O’Gorman