Congratulations

Congratulations to our three Dominican brothers: Maurice Colgan OP, Brian Doyle OP and Denis Murphy OP, who were ordained deacons on the 2nd of January. The Irish Dominican Vocations blog has some very good pictures of the ceremony, here.

1st January: Octave Day of Christmas

Arms outstreched to save. This image of the babe in the crib with arms outstretched to save has been with me all week. “You shall call his name Jesus because He is the one to save his people from their sins”. All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. What an extraordinary definition of sin and its consequences- a falling short of the glory of God.

All of us have sinned. And what is God’s response to our rejection of Him? Is it as we would expect one of criticism, of judgment, of condemnation, of banishment, of exclusion? No, rather wonder of wonders, God’s response to our disobedience is one of concern, concern for us. He doesn’t want us to be deprived of the happiness union of life with Him would bring us.

Because of our sin we have forfeited the glory God had destined for us. Our sin excludes us from participating in the fullness of the Divine Love. And so that we who have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God could regain access to that glory, God sent his Son in a mortal nature like ours to do away with sin by nailing it to the Cross in His very person, thereby enabling us to be adopted as children of God.

How much love is contained in God’s decision to become Man. What depth of yearning for us to participate in his divine life provoked such a drastic solution. The All Holy, All powerful unseen God, Creator of the heavens and the Earth and all they contain sends his Son, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity to take flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary and to become one like us, for us. In Jesus, the babe in the manger we see our God made visible. In Him we see God’s total gift of Himself to us. We see the distance love was prepared to travel. In this is love not that we loved God but that He first loved us and sent His Son so that in Him we might be enabled to make the return journey into the heart of the Trinity. “No one has ever seen God but it is the only Son who is nearest the father’s heart who has made him known”. In Jesus we see the heart of God laid bare. “This is how much I love you” God says to us through the Infant in the Manger.

Is it by chance or by some hidden design of God that the Infant in the Crib is so often depicted with arms wide open as if He is asking to be taken up and embraced? I am deeply struck by this. It looks as if he is willing to go to anyone, to everyone. How symbolic. Here we see the unconditional love of God. He makes no demands, no conditions. He leaves himself vulnerable, willing to be taken to anyone’s heart, more than that even, yearning, almost in supplication, to be taken to every one’s heart. As at birth so also in life and death Jesus surrenders himself into the hands of others.
It seems that all we have to do is to be willing to receive Him. He asks nothing more of us than that we be willing to take him into our arms. And yet to reach out and clasp Him to ourselves, we have to let go of anything else in our grasp. We have to drop whatever we are holding on to no matter how small or how light our hold. New born infants are fragile they have to be enfolded completely with an all absorbing attention.

Christ is not whole without the Church so Blessed Isaac of Stella reminded us during Advent. We are His body. And so the challenge is posed – Are my arms opened to embrace Jesus as He comes to me in the guise of another ? Am I prepared to be Jesus open and vulnerable ready to give myself to everyone without reservation?
It is in that embrace that we will encounter the living God and be caught up into the God we do not see.

Mary,

You who not only
Gave God’s infinity,
Dwindled to Infancy
Welcome in womb and breast,
Birth milk and all the rest
But mother each new grace
That does now reach our race.
Come and make new
Nazareths in us,
Where you shall yet conceive
Him, morning noon and eve,
New Bethlems, and he be born
There, evening, noon and morn
G M Hopkins (adapted)

Feast of the Holy Family

Sunday within Octave of Christmas
Mass Readings - Cycle A
1st Reading - Eccles 3:2-6;12-14
2nd Reading - Col 3:12-21
Gospel Mt 2:13-15;19-23

"Let the message of Christ, in all its richness, find a home with you".

Who better than Mary and Joseph, who made a home for the Incarnate Word, can teach us to welcome Jesus into our hearts and homes?
Mary and Joseph belonged heart and mind to those who waited expectantly to welcome the Messiah, belonged to the holy remnant foretold by the prophets.
"I will leave as a remnant in your midst a people humble and lowly, who shall take refuge in the name of the Lord: the remnant of Israel.
They shall do no wrong, and speak no lies, nor shall there be found in their mouths a deceitful tongue.
On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem : Fear not, O Sion, be not discouraged! The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty Saviour; He will rejoice over you with gladness and renew you in his love. He will sing joyfully because of you, as one sings at festivals.

Mary and Joseph were imbued with this generous spirit, totally open to the work of God on the nothingness of their being totally trusting and surrendered to God's plan.

'Get up and take the Child and his Mother... So Joseph got up'. Twice, we are given these words in the short passage from the Gospel.

Who can doubt that Jesus mirrored the virtues taught at home - He went down to Nazareth and lived under their authority. Jesus increased in wisdom, in stature and in favour with God and men.

The reading from Ecclesiaticus also describes the obedient caring and loving son giving of his all to help his parents but notice God is already at work with his loving mercy. "Whoever respects his father is atoning for his sins' and again, "kindness to a father shall not be forgotten but will serve as reparation for your sins".

The readings of the Mass are a real antidote to the two seerious problems of our day - the disrespect for life - for each and every living person, the breaking up of family life, and secondly, the sad plight of so, so many refugees all over the world. But let us not lose hope as we ponder like Mary on the Word of God and bring these intentions before the throne of God. Every time we make an effort to reach God, in whatever way, there is an immediate energy on the part of God that rushes our way. (quoted from the 'Gifts of the desert').
"You are God's chosen race, his saints, he loves you. Always be thankful".

Everyone can be born again, the world can be renewed. It is possible to build a future of justice and peace starting today. As long as one is filled with hope that God, through us, is working to shape a new creation. (Christmas letter of the Master of the Dominican Order - Fr Bruno Cadore)

A Christmas Reflection

A short reflection given by one of our sisters for the First Vespers of Christmas.

We have just sung the antiphon: “The Word of God born of the Father before time began, humbled himself today for us and became man”. Again at 2nd Vespers we will sing: “The Word was God in the beginning and before all time, today he is born for us, the Saviour of the world”.

I would like to focus on the word ‘today’ which occurs so often in our Christmas liturgy. In our celebration of this wonderful feast of Christmas God’s eternal unchanging day breaks into our temporal day and we are caught up in the mystery of God.

The Father eternally begets the Son in an act of total self-emptying love while the Son eternally receives His entire being in an act of total self-surrendering love, totally pouring himself out in response to the total love of the Father. This eternal generation takes place in the bond of loving union who is Himself the Person of the Holy Spirit. This is the mystery, which breaks into our world of time in the human birth of the Word of God. The kenosis, the self-emptying that takes place in the Incarnation of the Word, which will eventually lead to Calvary, mirrors the eternal self-emptying love at the heart of the Trinity.

Eckhart reminds us that Christ’s birth in Bethlehem is of no avail if he is not born in us today – so we can say ‘today Christ is born in me as my Saviour’. All He needs is a welcoming, open heart like Mary’s and an empty space which does not need to be perfect – just as the inn in Bethlehem was not the perfect place for the birth of the Son of God. To quote Gregory Nazianzen: “Christ takes each of us – takes me - whole and entire within Himself, with all my misery in order to destroy in Himself all trace of sin, like fire that dissolves in itself the wax,” thus transforming me into himself, bringing me into his own relationship with the Father in the bosom of the Trinity. Just as there is one God in three Persons, so in Christ, we are all members one of another; there is and we are called to become a single Man in a multitude of persons.

All this takes place in silence – as 15th century author puts it:
Thou shalt know Him when He comes -
Not by any din of drums; Nor the vantage of his airs; Nor by anything He wears
Neither by His crown; Nor His gown
For His presence known shall be by the holy harmony that His coming makes in thee

Yes His presence – His birth - within us creates harmony with our God, with ourselves, with our sisters and brothers and with the whole of creation. Is this not the angels’ message when they sang: “Glory to God in highest heaven and peace on earth to those who enjoy His favour”.

The 'O' Antiphons: 23rd December

O Emmanuel – You are our King and Judge,
the one whom the peoples await and their Saviour.
Come and save us Lord Jesus, Come.

The time of waiting is coming to an end. Soon the mystery of the Incarnation will be re-enacted once more in our liturgical celebrations and especially in our hearts. What have we to offer the Christ Child this year? Maybe not much, and yet the whole raison d’être for his coming hinges round the question – why is the Father about to send his own Beloved Son to take on our humanness, our earthiness, our poverty?
God sends his Son for one reason only: because he loves us – in fact he is madly in love with us.

Will we ever fathom this reality? He comes in silence, in lowliness, in poverty to knock at our door and asks us to give him a lodging for the night – for every night.
All he asks of us is an empty space where he can rest and find us waiting and watching for him.
Wouldn’t you think that we should come to God laden with the gold of good deeds? No – definitely no – the gift I must give my God is my brokenness. The thing God is waiting for me to offer him is the point where I am characteristically weak. This is the place, the stable where Jesus knocks with his baby hands and pleads with me -- may I come in? Give me lodgings in your inn.

For the past few weeks the cry Maranatha - Come Lord Jesus has been our spoken and unspoken prayer. But there is another side to this longing desire. While looking for a quotation in my bible I chanced to open Chapter 2 in the Song of Songs, where the Bridegroom speaks to his Bride: “Come my lovely one, come.”
It came home to me very forcibly - not only am I pleading with Jesus to come but far more earnestly is he saying to me:
“Come then my love, my lovely one come,
Show me your face,
Let me hear your voice”
Two hearts were meeting and held momentarily in stillness.

How well Blessed Teresa understood the need Jesus has for our love, when she wrote:
“We need to know deep inside that Jesus thirsts for us.”

And so, when he comes may he find us watching in prayer, our hearts filled with wonder and praise as we look at Mary who bore Jesus in her womb with a love beyond all telling.

My God, what a mystery,
Maranatha - Come Lord Jesus come
Delay no longer.

The 'O' Antiphons: 22nd December

Today we have the sixth 'O' Antiphon bringing us nearer to our wonderful celebration.
O King whom all the peoples desire,
you are the cornerstone which makes all one.
O come and save man whom you made from clay.

Jesus is our King, our hearts are waiting for the joy and peace that he brings to each one of us so to pitch his royal tent within us. Are we ready to be part of the building of which Christ is the corner stone? Are we ready to be made one and alive, for Christ is the living stone on which we build our lives. St Paul writes to the Ephesians: In union with him you too are being built together with all the others into a place where God lives through the Spirit.

We pray "O come" and indeed our King comes to save us who he made from clay. Such is the clay that we have to become in God's hands, clay that is made firm by faith and moulded by God's holy Word. It is only through the events of life that we can progress through the firing kiln of God's creative love and it is only through his Spirit that we become the refined vessels of his living joyful love to be given, poured out and filled again, to be, as St Paul told the Corinthians, as clay pots holding God's spiritual treasure.

It is at this holy time that we come to realize more deeply the wonder of how God the Son took to himself our human clay, and as he lay as a little child in his mother's arms, he showed us just how beautiful our human clay can become.

O come our King, who is all we desire, fill us with yourself, so that we may become your royal, clay vessels to be used for your praise and glory.

The 'O' Antiphons: 21st December

“ O Rising Sun, you are the splendour of eternal light and the sun of justice. O come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.”

In this “O” Antiphon the three metaphors- the rising Sun, splendour of the eternal light and sun of justice – all symbolise Christ, the Son of God, the promised Messiah whose birth as our Saviour we will celebrate in four days time.

Jesus calls Himself the ‘Light of the World’ in St. John’s Gospel( 9:5) and St. John, in the Prologue says that He is the “ true light who enlightens all men” and “ a light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower”.(1:5)

This assurance gives us courage to turn to Christ in our own various darknesses which may be a darkness of : prejudice; lack of compassion; judging and condemning others; resentment; anger; envy; selfishness or the darkness which blinds us to the awareness of our own sins, shortcomings and failures. We acknowledge that we are in great need of light and healing from Christ, the source of light and the singing of this antiphon in a few minutes time will give us the opportunity to turn to Him in earnest prayer asking Him to shed His light on us and on all humanity so that the darkness of sin may be dispelled from our hearts and we may be healed and renewed by His love.

We can call upon the Saints and Blesseds to intercede for us for they mirrored this light of Christ in their own lives, radiated it and reflected it to others. I am thinking especially of Mother Teresa of Calcutta – now Blessed Teresa – whom Jesus asked to be His light to the poorest of the poor.
“Come, be My light”, he said to her. She did become His light and radiated His light and love to others, especially to the poor. Paradoxically while she radiated Christ’s light and love to others she herself experienced a painful spiritual darkness in her inmost being. St. John of the Cross, in explaining this dark night of the soul using the metaphor of the sun, says –“the more one looks at the brilliant sun the more the sun darkens the faculty of sight, deprives it and overwhelms it in its weakness” Similarly, Mother Teresa’s interior darkness was not due to the absence of God but rather to the intense proximate presence of God in her soul, God, whose brightest light is total darkness to us in this life.

In one of her letters to Father van der Peet, she wrote:
“God is in love with us and keeps giving Himself to the world – through you – through me..
May you continue to be the sunshine of His love to your people and thus make your life
something truly beautiful for God.”

This prayer can be directed to each one of us too.

May Mother Teresa, intercede for us now as we call upon the Lord to enlighten us, for she said and promised “If I ever become a saint, I will surely be one of ‘darkness’. I will continually be absent from Heaven, to light the light of those in darkness on earth.”

O Rising Sun, you are the splendour of eternal light and the sun of justice. O come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.