Novena to St Dominic - Day 2: The paradox of the Cross

Novena to St Dominic

31^st July 2018, Day 2

“For everything there is a season,

and a time for every matter under heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; …

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; …

A time to mourn, and a time to dance; …

A time to love, and a time to hate …”  (Ecclesiastes, cf 3:1-9)                        

There is never, however,

a time to despair, and no matter how challenging or

God-less the time in which we find ourselves seems to be,

we are called at all times to be creatures of hope.

St Dominic’s time was not more desperate than ours, yet more than anything it could be said of him that he was a man of hope because of his amazing confidence in God and of his reverence for the length to which Christ went, in order to save us.

The paradox of the Cross:

A place of failure and of triumph;

A place of horror and also of indescribable love.

Pope St John Paul II frequently spoke and wrote of JESUS as the answer to all the questions man seeks an answer to, in order the better to know and understand himself and how to be human.

We could say that the shape of all the answers we seek, is the shape of the Cross.  … … … Difficult to gaze upon, and difficult to understand, and extremely difficult to reconcile with love – especially with divine love.  It is, nevertheless, the shape of all the answers we seek, and St Dominic knew and understood this so well, from the many hours he spent contemplating it. For the Cross is, among other things, also the shape of wisdom, which, when we put it on, becomes the shape of the freedom which is so essential to enabling us to be truly human.

To know that we are children of God is wisdom.  To have the courage to live according to this knowledge is holiness and a grace that we have only to ask for, to receive it. 

St Dominic embraced this truth all his life and lived it in union with the Lord whom he served so devotedly in his preaching and in his unceasing prayer.

The book of Ecclesiasticus encourages us with the following ‘thought’:

            “… wisdom is like her name, and is not manifest to many.

            … Put your feet into her fetters, and your neck into her collar.

            Put your shoulder under her and carry her, and do not fret under her bonds.

            Come to her with all your soul, and keep her ways with all your might.

            Search out and seek, and she will become known to you; and when you get hold of her, do

                                                                                                                                    not let her go.

            For at last, you will find the rest she gives, and she will be changes into joy for you.

            Then her fetters will become for you a strong protection, and her collar a glorious robe.

            Her yoke is a golden ornament, and he bonds are a cord of blue.

            You will wear her like a glorious robe, and put her on like a crown of gladness”

Cf Sir 6:22-31 (RSVCE).

This is the Cross Dominic wore: a Cross of wisdom and of truth; of triumph and of glory; a Cross of Divine power and love: the Cross of Christ.

Dare to Believe?

Inspiration ...

Next Sunday's Gospel from Matthew speaks about 'your virtue' going 'deeper than that of the Scribes and Pharisees.'  This is prompted a very interesting reflection just a while ago, as Sisters in our Community shared a little, the words of this Gospel with which they have been praying during this week.

You will remember that in Luke's Gospel, when the sisters Martha and Mary welcomed the Lord to their home, Mary sat at his feet and listened to Him (cf Lk 10:38-42).

Well, the connection in my head and in my reflection was that Jesus is our virtue - God is our virtue.  We believe and we know that the source of all goodness is in God ... in fact is God working in us, with our free desire to be and to do good.  We are not by any means puppets or marionettes!  But the thought that came to me was simply that Goodness, and consequently virtue and wisdom, along with all that we associate with God ... is a Person: is personified in God Himself.

How amazing!  Jesus, then, is telling us that He is our virtue and more .. He who is God wants us to possess this virtue - to possess Him.  Almost as though He would like to be a marionette for us, 'our puppet.'  He wants to dwell very deeply within us, within YOU ... you are as essential as that to Him.  

Why?
LOVE.  The love of the Lord is utterly mind-boggling, that He would make Himself small enough to fit inside us. 
It is a very amazing gift to have been called like Mary, to sit at His feet and listen to Him.  And when we listen, sometimes what we hear is overwhelming.

Maybe it would be worth giving Him a little extra thought ... who knows?  He might whisper that He loves you; and from where we are here, in the monastery, it seems as though there are not enough of us giving Him the chance to do just that:  and very very very many of us need to hear it. 

Who doesn't like hearing how precious they are?

19th December - O Root of Jesse

O Root of Jesse, You stand as a signal for the nations; kings fall silent before You whom the peoples acclaim. O come to deliver us, and delay no longer.

Like all the other ‘O Antiphons’ this one too is steeped in Old Testament imagery. (See Isaiah chapter 11 and 12). Jesse, who was David’s father and one of Jesus’ great ancestors, is mentioned in St Matthew’s genealogy. Because of infidelity to the covenant, David’s royal line is dethroned at the time of the exile to Babylon and became shrouded in oblivion but the Prophet Isaiah prophesies that from the stump or root of Jesse a new twig will spring forth – a twig that becomes a branch for all the nations. It is clear that the prophet is speaking of the Messiah.

Reflecting on this antiphon and Chapter 11 and 12 of Isaiah brings us hope in our present situation in the Irish Church. Throughout history we have ample proof and documentation of the sinful and evil lives of clerical and lay members of Christ’s Church – we have all sinned and fallen short, have betrayed our God in whom we profess our faith and our fellow pilgrims to whom we owe love and respect. Yet the Church (Christ’s Mystical Body) never ceases to renew itself through the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ promise - to be with His people always until the end of time - gives us hope and quiet confidence even in the midst of our present pain and bewilderment. It is the responsibility of each of us to live as He taught us while we pray that from the ashes of our shame He will again raise up saints who will show forth the true image of the Church by preaching the Good News to the poor, libery to captives, sight to the blind, and set the downtrodden free (cf Lk 4:18).

In today’s antiphon we call out: “O come and deliver us and delay no longer! – bring us the longed for healing and reconciliation; let us know your comforting Presence in our need; open our hearts to receive your love that we in our turn may be able to love.”

We remember St Catherine of Siena’s prayer:

O great and Eternal Trinity, as if intoxicated with love and gone mad over Your creature, seeing that since it was separated from You who are Life, it could produce only the fruit of death, You provided a remedy for it with the same love with which You created it and grafted Your divinity on to the dead tree of our humanity; O sweet and gentle grafting! You who are greatest sweetness deigned to unite Yourself to our littleness; You who are Brightness with darkness; You, Wisdom with foolishness; You Life with death; You Who are infinite with us who are finite. What constrained You to do this in order to restore us to life? ONLY LOVE!

Second Week of Advent

The readings for this Sunday are full of hope and enouragement - as we all know, we, Irish people are greatly in need of such hope in our present crises.
One can almost feel that these readings were selected specially for us!!!

The entrance antiphon which we sing in our community for the Mass of this Second Sunday of Advent expresses very well these sentiments of hope which God's loving providence provides:

People of Zion, the Lord will come to save all nations, and your hearts will exult to hear his majestic voice. The people of God will sing songs of joy, like songs in the night. They will have gladness of heart. People of Sion the Lord will come to save all nations and your hearts will exult to hear his majestic voice. On every high mountain streams will flow and there will be light - as you are healed by the Lord. Yes on every high mountain, streams will flow and there will be joy, for your are loved by the Lord

In the Gospel this Majestic voice - the Word of God - came to John the Baptist in the wilderness. So too with us God's word comes to us in the wilderness - in the ordinariness, of our own lives and in bewildering circumstances - if only we have an open ear and an open heart to listen and hear His message. John's message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins is one of hope. No matter how far we may have strayed from God, He is always there at our side - for we cannot escape His all seeing eye - waiting for us to return. Like the father in the parable of the prodigal son (Lk 15) our heavenly Father is always ready to embrace us once we repent of our sin and turn back to Him.

Recently I came across the following poem by Péguy - perhaps it may speak to you, our readers, as it did to me?

You may wonder, you may ask yourself: but how is it
That this fountain of Hope flows eternally,
Eternally young, eternally pure.
Eternally fresh, eternally flowing.
Eternally living.....
My good people, says God, it is not tricky....
If she wanted to make pure springs out of pure water
If she wanted to make springs of pure water,
Then she would never find enough of it in the whole of my creation.
Because there is not a whole lot of it.
But it is precisely with the impure water that she makes her springs of pure water.
And that is the reason she never runs out.
but that is also why she is Hope...
...and that is the most beautiful secret in the garden of the world!

And so we pray with St Paul in the second reading:

May our love for each other increase more and more and never stop improving our knowledge and deepening our perception so that we can always recognise what is best and so become pure and blameless and prepare us for the Day of Christ when we will reach the perfect goodness which Jesus Christ produces in us for the glory and praise of God.

WORD OF LOVE?

The Readings for this Sunday’s Eucharist could be said to be difficult – difficult to understand and difficult to accept – at least the Reading from the Book of Daniel, and the Gospel from St Mark.

Here is just a little ‘piece of my mind’ that I would like to share, on the Gospel, as I tried to see a little more than what at first meets the eye.

I reminded myself that as I hear: ‘This is the Gospel of the Lord’ I must remember that this is a word of love - so if I can’t find the ‘love’, then I must take a closer look. As we were reminded here during the week, we must not only accept the words of Scripture which appeal to us – all Scripture, every syllable, is a communication of the love of God to each of us. So I looked again, and the words which caught my attention were there in the parable of the fig tree:

‘.. know that he is near; at the very gates’..

With the help of our community sharing on the readings for today, what came to me was the conviction and the promise of Jesus, that he is with us – always – to the end of time. The Gospel opens, giving an idea of the end of the world almost, a great depression, a great sense of hopelessness and of nothing to live for – even the stars and the sun and the moon will fail. But why are we told this, if not to be invited to keep our eyes open – ‘see these things happening’ and ‘know that he is near’. Don’t be afraid!

As one of our sisters reflected last night – at the foot of the cross, all these things did happen – Jesus, God himself gave up his life for us – ‘there was darkness over the whole land’ (Mk 15:33); ‘the earth quaked, the rocks were split..(Mt 27:51). All of his followers, his disciples and friends, all but his mother, a few women and the beloved disciple had deserted him in fear – what could be more hopeless?

Where is the word of love in all this? If I look again, the word ‘see’ catches my attention, and I remember that Jesus is constantly inviting me to follow him, to keep my heart set on him, to trust him and to love him. In all this he is asking me to seek HIM, and I remember the first words I noticed – ‘know that he is near; at the very gates’.

Jesus asked his own mother to wait with him at the foot of the cross – to watch her only son die – would you wish such pain on anyone? And she loved him enough to be there, to want nothing other than to be there where he needed her to be. There was Love – His first, because before she existed, He loved her; but hers too, Mary’s pure love – at the worst time you can imagine, the two greatest loves we will encounter, were there in the darkest darkness.

We people who hope in God, and who believe in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord and Redeemer, we need to keep our eyes open to Him always, and if we do – truly and with the humility to acknowledge that it is not always easy – if we call on Him when we are left with nothing, we will discover that he IS near – ‘at the very gates’.

Think about the gates too – things you pass through to get out of one place and through to another. Jesus – He is there, in the place you are leaving behind and already there where you are going – always waiting for you.

Always waiting for YOU.