4th Sunday of Advent

 

The Lord is now nigh: come, let us adore Him.

Today is the last Sunday of Advent. In a few days, He will be here again. Here's something I learned: the name of Bethlehem means 'House of Bread.' Go figure! Could it the Living Bread come down from heaven? I wonder?!

Anyway, I would like to share something from the 'Liturgical Year' by our beloved Abbot Gueranger. It is a hymn taken from the Anthology of the Greeks. It's about our Blessed Mother.

'As a royal throne, thou carriest the Creator; as a living couch, thou encirclest the King, O creature most dear to God:

Branch most vigorous, thou didst bud forth the Christ on whom we lean and are supported; for Aaron's branch, which, of old, budded unplanted, was a type of thee, thou chaste dove, and ever a Virgin.

To sing the more than wonderful manner of thy extraordinary and incomprehensible maternity, is above the power of all the choirs of men: for not mind, no thought, no understanding, no words, can reach the mystery.

Isaias, seeing the unspeakable miracle, the ineffable miracle of thy maternity, spoke thus divinely: The holy Spirit hath come upon thee, O Mother of God! preserving thee, as heretofore he kept entire the burning bush: and, therefore, we cry out with the angel: 'Rejoice, O thou tabernacle of God!'

GOSPEL (Lk. 3:1-6).

 

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and Philip his brother tetrarch of Iturea and the country of Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilina, under the high priests Annas and Caiphas: the word of the Lord came to John the son of Zachary in the desert. And he came into all the country about the Jordan, preaching the baptism of penance for the remission of sins, as it is written in the book of the sayings of Isaias the prophet: A voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low: the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways plain: and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.



Is it not a great spectacle, when we thus behold the nations of the earth, in the fullness of time, all subservient to the one almighty will of God? Like clouds, we behold them driven over the face of the universe, one misty shape following fast upon another, until, suddenly dividing, the Sun of Justice shines gloriously forth in their midst. "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight His paths, every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low: and the crooked shall be made straight: and the rough ways plain." Thus the prophet had said. The Lord Himself, having prepared the way for His Son upon earth, when all the valleys had been filled, and all the mountains brought low, when all the crooked had been made straight and all the rough ways plain--sent down His salvation from on high, and the glorious mystery of Bethlehem spread over all the world.


COME, LORD JESUS!