December 28
“True love of God consists in adhering perfectly to His holy will, not desiring to do or to be other than what God indicates for each of us, to the point of becoming, as it were, “a living will of God.”
-Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, OCD
December 27
“The Blessed Mary certainly did the Father’s will and so it was for her a greater thing to have been Christ’s disciple than to have been His mother, and she was more blessed in her discipleship than in her motherhood.”
-St. Augustine
December 26
Her Feet Shod with Holiness
And, if our faith had given us nothing more
Than this Example, of all Womanhood,
So mild, so merciful, so strong, so good,
So patient, so peaceful, loyal, loving pure –
This were enough to prove it higher and truer
Than all the creeds the world had known before.
Virgin, who lovest the poor and lonely,
If the loud cry of a mother’s heart
Can ever ascend to where thou art,
Into thy blessed hands and holy
Receive my prayer of praise and thanksgiving.
Let the hands that bore our Savior bear it
Into the awful presence of God;
For thy feet with holiness are shod,
And, if thou bearest it, he will hear it.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
December 25
Tall men were these, the shepherds come from flocks
And wearing sheephides with the dew still wet
Upon the wool…
No further movement
Till the youngest, kneeling still, moved on
From out the rest, and when his eyes had marked
The swaddling bands… and did not shrink at what he saw.
The full words spilled out to her in eagerness
Of quiet flocks, the brightness of the sky…
The music that had sifted
Down, more fragile than the light of stars…
The upswept choirs and surge and flight of wings:
I bring you tidings of great joy, that shall be to all the people: for this day is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger…Glory to God in the highest: and on earth peace to men of goodwill.
(Excerpted from A Woman Wrapped in Silence By John W. Lynch)
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)
December 23
There was no room for them within the inn.
And Joseph turned away.
To find again,
A woman wrapped in silence. Had she heard?
No sign appeared, nor stir of tranquil veil
To tell of it.
But Joseph knew. And silence and the glance
That smiled at him could not shut out the need
For shelter that was yet unsaid. He knew!
And suddenly it rose in him again
What it was he knew, and what was here
Beseeching in the night. An innocence
That had been burnished flawless to return
All brightness, till the Inexhaustible
Had searched for her this last and utter grace
That left no more to give.
…Like blessedness that had not been before…
And he was guardian. Guardian!
Whose task to fear not, but to throw his life
About her as a cloak. To be a strength
Between her and the world’s uncertainties.
To fend, and guard, and break the fall of harsh
Rejection…
He had not thought refusal was a word
Remaining in a language that had held
Her name.
(Excerpted from A Woman Wrapped in Silence By John W. Lynch)
December 22
A little while,
And then the day was slipping down behind
The dark, and clung there, like a crystal drop…
O, was there here some haste
That pushed the light more hurriedly, as if
This were an ending era, and the last
Of days? …
Then suddenly, the road
Was turning, and ahead, some clustered roofs…
He turned,
And called to her: “Mary. It is here.
This is Bethlehem.
So now he pulled the bridle on a path
Well worn, ahead of him.
…A fire and feel that there were others near.
A kind of courtyard, square, but with a roof
Around the edges, and a gate to close…
Joseph’s eyes were hopeful as he stood
To wait an answer. Then he heard them say,
There was no room for them within the inn.
(Excerpted from A Woman Wrapped in Silence By John W. Lynch)
December 21
“A Christmas Journey of Prayer
Then the word came with the iron
Of empire forged in it:…
Of enrollment. Lands and provinces,
They’d said, and men and citizens and slaves.
And Joseph also went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem…to be enrolled with Mary, his espoused wife, who was with child.
And then,
A door was closed behind them, and the sound
Was loud in isolated emphasis
Against the stillness and the dawn’s cold fog…
A woolen shawl
And wrappings clutched together for the cold
Enveloped her…
A final glance had shut away this house
That had been hers, the echo of her movement
Fades to silence…
It’s true enough, that they had often stopped,
And she had gone, as one among the rest
Of women then to find relief against
The road’s fatigues, and when the fires were made,
She worked among them in the fading day.
Did they not know? Could they not feel the nearness?
…The Source? Already, some unheld reflection
Of the questing light that was to rest
Forever in His eyes, looked out from hers
As answering, she said: “To Bethlehem.”
(Excerpted from A Woman Wrapped in Silence By John W. Lynch)
December 20
“No one could ever say more truly than Mary: ‘I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me.’”
-Fr Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, OCD
December 19
“… Mary acquired a very special relation with God. The blood of Jesus, the heart of Jesus and the body of Jesus are formed by the blood of Mary. By adoring the blood, the sacred wounds and the heart of Jesus, we adore something proceeding from Mary which was assumed by the Son of God.”
-Blessed James Alberione
