O Antiphons - Advent 2013

From the 17th to the 23rd December each evening at Vespers we sing the great 'O Antiphons' before and after the Magnificat.  We would like to share with readers of this blog the various reflections on these antiphons prepared by sisters:

17^th December            O Sapientia   -  O Wisdom

 

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti,

attingens a fine usque ad finem fortiter,

suaviterque disponens Omnia:

veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.

O Wisdom, you come forth from the mouth of the Most High.  You fill the universe and hold all things together in a strong yet gentle manner.  O come to teach us the way of prudence.

The liturgical texts from today invite me to thank God for His wonderful deeds, for the creation of the world and for the whole history of redemption, which is penetrated with His Wisdom.

St Matthew in the Gospel shows us a long and complicated genealogy with many people, men and women.  Each name hides a life story.  At the conclusion of it is the birth of Jesus.

I sometimes ask, like St John the Baptist, when I am surrounded be shadow and darkness; unanswered questions; by situations without solutions:

Does God know about me?

Are you the Messiah?

Are you the One who is to come or are we to expect someone else?  (Mt 11:3)

I cannot see the miracles that are happening.  But Jesus tells me: ‘The blind see again and the lame walk …’ It is the time of salvation.

The Church teaches:  God guides the world and my life in a mysterious way.  He guides everything along paths that only He knows, leading it to its perfection.  At no point in time does something that He has created fall out of His hands.

God influences both the great events of history and also the little events of our personal life, without reducing our freedom and making us mere marionettes in His eternal plans.  ‘In God we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28).  God is in everything we meet, in all the changes in our life, even in the painful events and the seemingly meaningless coincidences.  God wants to write straight even with the crooked lines of our life.  What He takes away from us and what He gives us; the ways in which He strengthens us and the ways in which He tests us – all these are arrangements and signs of His will.

St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (1891 – 1942) Edith Stein said:

            “What did not lie in my plan lay in God’s plan.  And the more often something like this

            happens to me, the livelier becomes the conviction of my faith that – from God’s

            perspective – nothing is accidental.”

I entrust all of us, and myself, into the hands of Divine Providence and pray for prudence to recognise what is right in every moment of daily life so that Jesus may be born!