December 11
“Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.”
-Simone Weil
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Onward to Bethlehem
December 10
“And when the hour had come that was to move
The long days onward to Bethlehem…
a moment paused,
Above a quiet place, and found, just this,
A woman wrapped in silence, and the seed
Of silence was her heart that tried to give
All that it held to give, and ever more.”
-John W. Lynch, Excerpt from A Woman Wrapped in Silence
The coming of life
December 9
“The Father of mercies willed that the Incarnation should be preceded by assent on the part of the predestined mother, so that just as a woman had a share in the coming of death so also should a woman contribute to the coming of life.’
-Lumen Gentium #56
Pure as the stars
December 8
Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary
Pure and spotless
December 7
“Within the sphere of humanity and in the natural world, there had to be a pure and spotless being capable of receiving the divine element, a feminine principle enlightened by grace.”
-Nicholas Berdyaev
Mary’s surrender
December 6
“God the Father communicated to Mary His fruitfulness, inasmuch as a mere creature was capable of it, in order that He might give her the power to produce His Son and all the members of His Mystical Body.”
-St. Louis Grignion de Montfort
Will you surrender?
December 5
“Surrender to God is the only absolute power with which creature is endowed.”
-Gertrud von le Fort
The attentive Virgin
December 4
“Mary is the attentive Virgin, who receives the word of God with faith, that faith which in her case was the gateway and path to divine motherhood, for, as St. Augustine realized, “Blessed Mary by believing conceived Him [Jesus] whom believing she brought forth.”
-Pope Paul VI
A field for the word
December 3
“To be a field for the word means to be earth which allows itself to be absorbed by the seed, which assimilates itself to the seed, renouncing itself so as to make the seed germinate. With her motherhood Mary transfused into it her very substance, body and soul, so that a new life might come forth…Mary makes herself completely available as the soil, she allows herself to be used and consumed so as to be transformed into him.
-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI)
Close against her heart
December 24
A little girl
Had wandered in the night, and now within
The shadows of a broken stall, was waiting,
While the night winds and the breath of time
Were moving over her.
The beat of pulses and the hush of heat
Had made a silence more intent within
Surrounding silence. Deepening of night.
…And then a moment’s fall,
…A sigh, unheard within the dark, and then…
She…wrapped him up in swaddling clothes, and laid
Him in a manger.
She knelt and held Him close against her heart,
And in the midnight, adoration fused
With human love, and was not separate.
And very near, the man named Joseph came.
He was the first
To find her thus, the first of all the world.
And when her faint smile called for him to take
Him for a breathless moment, he was first
To know there is no other blessedness.
(Excerpted from A Woman Wrapped in Silence By John W. Lynch)
