I
offer this as a Christmas card to all my readers.Instead of copying and pasting a meme off the
internet, I want to post a picture of the Christmas decorated altar and
sanctuary at my parish St. Rita’s Catholic Church on Staten Island.I took this myself today.
I
love the crèche at the foot of the altar and yellow and red poinsettias rising
up to the tabernacle.
Here
is also a lesser played Christmas Carol that has its roots as a Negro Spiritual, “Oh Jerusalem in the Morning.”Actually
I think it’s a Negro Spiritual but I could not find any real information on the
song.
Here
is a magnificent version where the spiritual has been modified with a version referred to
as “Baby Born Today” or sometimes referred to as “Mary and the Baby.”I must admit some of this information is speculative on
my part.There is so little information
on the internet on this carol.From the
Vocal Ensemble, Chanticleer, with a
special guest lead vocalist, Dawn Upshaw.
Absolutely
beautiful!Where would American music be
without our beloved African-American culture?They have added so much to it.
The
lyrics are also somewhat speculative and have been modified, but here are a
portion of them.
Mother Mary, what is the
matter?
Oh, Jerusalem in the
morning
Father Joseph, what is
the matter?
Oh, Jerusalem in the
morning
Baby born today
Oh, Jerusalem in the
morning
There's a baby born today
Oh, Jerusalem in the
morning
Born in a stable
Oh, Jerusalem in the
morning
A stall was his cradle
Oh, Jerusalem in the
morning
Wrapped in his swaddling
clothes
Oh, Jerusalem in the
morning
Laying him in a manger
Oh, Jerusalem in the
morning
Born in Bethlehem
Oh, Jerusalem in the
morning
Jerusalem, Jerusalem
Oh, Jerusalem in the
morning
Baby born today
Oh, Jerusalem in the
morning
Baby born today
Oh, Jerusalem in the
morning
I should add, the carol does get the facts of Jesus' birth wrong. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not Jerusalem. But that doesn't matter.
Kerstin’s Introduction to Chapter 3: A Womb
Wider than Heaven: The Teaching of the Fathers:
From the early Church Fathers on there has been a wonder and amazement
that God would condescend to become a little baby, going through the same nine
months of development in the womb like any human. What makes this even more
unusual is that in pagan antiquity there was a contempt for women and the
bodily reality of birth was considered distasteful. Pagans may believe that
simple statues are deities, but that God would subject Himself to the messiness
of birth was unfathomable. “When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man,” sings
the Church in the Te Deum, “thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb.”
Kerstin’s Comments:
The Theotokos as Sanctuary
Earth and heaven too narrow to serve as embracing
arms, to conceal your divinity.
The womb of the earth is too small for you, and yet
the womb of Mary is large enough for you.
St. Ephrem has a ‘locational’ Christology. He sees the divine Word
taking up a series of residences, each of which, in some sense or other, is a
womb: the bosom of the heavenly Father in which he is eternally begotten in his
divinity, the earthly womb of the Blessed Virgin in which he is conceived and
carried in his humanity, the watery womb of the Jordan in which as man he is
baptized, the deathly womb of Sheol into which in his human soul he descends.
Mother of Manna
The liturgical imagery applied by the Fathers to the expectant Theotokos
sometimes becomes explicitly Eucharistic. “Mary,” says St. Ephrem, “gave us the
living bread instead of the bread of trouble, which Eve gave.” She carries in
her womb him who is the Bread of Life, the heavenly Manna.
Nestorianism and the Unborn Christ
In the 5th century the debate over the divine and human natures of
Christ was intensely explored. Nestorius took the stance of indwelling,, the
man Jesus is the temple in which the divine Word dwells. This means that God is
only attached to a human being, and therefore Mary cannot be the Theotokos, the
Mother of God. It was chiefly St. Cyril who brought more clarity to the issue
and preserved not only the full divinity of Christ but also Mary as the
Theotokos.
St. Cyril and St. Proclus came to see that the temple and dwelling-place
images of Scripture, indeed all the figures of containment and enclosure, apply
with greater precision to the Mother of God than to her Son. The Lord Jesus
Christ is Emmanuel, God-with-us, God-made-man, God the Word personally present
in the flesh. When for nine months the Virgin carries him in her womb, she is
the consummate Ark and Temple of God.
Nestorianism, which removes God from Mary’s womb, was therefore declared
a heresy.
Womb and Bridal Chamber
According to the Patristic understanding, the Virgin’s womb is not only
a church, the shrine of divine presence; it is also a chamber, the scene of
divine nuptials. “The nuptial union is between the Word and the flesh,” says
St. Augustine (354–430), “and the bridal chamber of the union is the Virgin’s
womb.”
…The description of the virginal womb as Christ’s “bridal chamber” is
liable to misunderstanding in another way. It does not sufficiently show that
the Incarnation takes place through the Blessed Virgin’s faith as well as in
her flesh. She is not simply the scene of the Word’s marriage to humanity, the
impersonal place in which the knot of the two natures is tied. She is actively
engaged, personally involved. God does not force his Son upon mankind.
Incarnation is not invasion. He wants humanity to welcome him. He wants the
race of Adam to give the Word its nature freely, with a bridal love. At the
Annunciation, Our Lady gives her consent on behalf of us all. “To show there is
a kind of spiritual marriage between the Son of God and human nature,” says St.
Thomas, “the Virgin’s consent was sought at the Annunciation in place of all
human nature.” Our Lady says “I will” to the marriage as representative of
mankind, indeed of all creation, and as such she is Bride. She is all at once,
as St. Ephrem says, Christ’s Mother, Daughter, Sister, Handmaid, and Bride.
The Ark’s Final Transfer
When the Church begins to celebrate the falling asleep of the Mother of
God, the Fathers make a direct connection between the womb that housed God and
the tomb that could not hold his Mother. The reason for the bodily Assumption
of Our Lady is her divine motherhood. “It is in recognizing this Virgin as
Mother of God that we celebrate her Dormition.” For St. John Damascene (c.
675–749), there is a certain necessity about the glorification of the body that
once contained God. It was necessary (edei) that she who had given hospitality
to the divine Word in her womb should come to dwell in the tabernacles of her
Son.
. . . It was necessary that she who carried her Creator as an unborn
child (hôs brephos) in her womb should live in the divine tabernacles.
…As Ever-Virgin Mother, Mary reveals that with God all things are
possible. The world is not a closed system of corruption. When he is born of a
Virgin and rises from the dead in the flesh, the divine Word breaks the cycle
of Adam’s decay. He comes to make all things new, to halt the decline into
dust.
Ten Long Lunar Months
These texts show quite a departure from the pagan world in how Mary and
her pregnancy are treated. They show reverence of the unborn child, womanhood,
and the human body.
O noble Virgin, do you see,
As weary months of waiting end,
that your unblemished purity
Shines more lovely in motherhood?
O what great joys for the world,
Your chaste womb within it holds,
Whence comes forth the golden age
Whose light renews the face of the earth.
My Comment:
This chapter takes up meditative perspectives of Christ in Mary’s womb
from the Church Fathers.
I don’t know who St. Anastasius of Sinai was but I have heard of his
point that God did not have to incarnate as a baby but could have gone straight
to a man.
St. Anastasius of Sinai (d. c. 700), who succeeded Sophronius and
Maximus in the struggle against Christological heresy, observes that the
omnipotent Word could have bypassed human infancy altogether and created for
himself an adult human nature.
For he who had made Adam and brought him into being from non-being,
without woman, womb, or birth, could have constructed an adult human nature for
himself and dwelt in it and lived in this way in the world.
But he did not. The Son of God emptied himself and accepted the whole
slow development of human life from conception to the last breath. He
condescended to be conceived and carried in the womb, to take flesh from, to be
“made from” (Gal. 4:4), a woman. A Victorian woman poet intuited the truth as
swiftly as the Fathers:
No sudden thing of glory and fear
Was the Lord’s coming; but the dear
Slow Nature’s days followed each other
To form the Saviour from his Mother.
My thought here is that if we only had the Gospel of Mark, we might come
to believe it to be so.To my count
there are only two references to Mary in Mark.The first is when His mother and kindred show up while He is preaching:
Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent
to him and called him.A crowd was
sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are
outside, asking for you“. Jesus replied, “Who are my mother and my
brothers”?And looking at those who sat
around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will
of God is my brother and sister and mother”. (Mk 3: 31-35).
And the second is a response from the crowd also in response to His
preaching.
“Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and
Joses and Judas and Simon?And are not
his sisters here with us”? And they took offense of him” (Mk 6:3)
Mark doesn’t even have the Blessed Mother at the foot of the cross or at
the tomb.So what do we make of Mark not
having an infancy narrative?Does he not
know of those events?He does identify a
mother, but a mother is essentially by-passed.Thank God for the other Gospels,So much would have been lost if we only had Mark.
###
Michael’s Reply to My Comment:
In theory, Mark was a child at the time of the crucifixion, some say he
was the child who appears in the Garden of Olives when they arrest Christ, a
child mentioned only in his Gospel. After, Mark was with Peter when Christians
were being persecuted in Rome. So, his gospel is very much about martyrdom as a
Christian vocation; more about the "Church" and the way a Christian
should act, typical themes of the apostles' preaching in Rome. I think I read
something about this in a book by Pope Benedict XVI, but I am not sure. Perhaps
Michelle remembers it better than I do.
My Reply to Michael:
This is true. Mark is regarded as that child, but since he was Peter's
secretary, it has been speculated that Mark got most of his Gospel from Peter.
It is quite possible that Peter never knew the infancy stories, or if he did he
may not have thought them as pertinent. I believe it has been speculated that
Luke actually interviewed the Blessed Mother. How Matthew knew of the infancy
story is more uncertain. But if you look at his version, it is much more
surface historical facts than interior thought of the participants. He probably
pieced that together. The only interior thought Matthew gives us is the angel
who assures Joseph in a dream.
###
My Comment:
I found this lovely.
According to the Fathers, God the Word treats Mary’s womb with infinite
courtesy and gentleness: he leaves it, as he enters it, without breaking its
maidenly seal. It is God’s inviolable sanctuary, and, like the temple in
Jerusalem, says St. Ambrose, its gate remains shut.
What is this “gate of the sanctuary,” this “outer gate towards the East”
that remains closed, and “no one shall pass through it, except the God of
Israel”? Is this gate not Mary, through whom the Redeemer entered into this
world? This is the gate of justice. . . . This gate is
Blessed Mary, of whom it is written that “the Lord will pass through it, and it
shall be shut” after birth, because she conceived and gave birth as a virgin.
As the most perfect sanctuary in revelation, the Immaculate Virgin’s
womb, like her heart, is consecrated forever to God, and to him alone. She
conceives as a virgin, she gives birth as a virgin, and remains forever a
virgin. St. Ambrose speaks for all Christendom when he asks: Would the
Lord Jesus have chosen for his Mother a woman who would defile the heavenly
chamber with the seed of a man, that is to say, someone incapable of preserving
her virginal chastity intact?
How wonderful to call Mary’s womb “the most perfect sanctuary.”Her womb carrying Christ is a sanctuary, a
sanctuary being a consecrated place and a most holy place.
The reference to God treating Mary’s womb “with infinite
courtesy…without breaking its maidenly seal” is a reference to conceiving
without the sexual act and birthing without breaking the hymen.For those that don’t know, the Catholic
Church teaches that Mary did not birth Jesus through the vaginal canal but that
He passed through her body in the way that the resurrected Jesus passes through
walls.Remember in Genesis after the
eating of the fruit, God says to Eve, “I will intensify your toil in childbearing;
in pain* you shall bring forth children” (Gen 3:16).But Mary delivers Jesus, the
“uncorrupted-by-sin” man and woman God originally intended to bear children in
the way it was originally intended before the Fall.
###
Michelle’s Comment:
I found this short
passage but profound:
". . . hail, thou who hast contained in thy holy virginal womb him who
cannot be contained." (St. Cyril)
And a few pages later, the link between our Blessed Mother's womb and her
assumption:
"When the Church begins to celebrate the falling asleep of the Mother
of God, the Fathers make a direct connection between the womb that housed God
and the tomb that could not hold his Mother. The reason for the bodily
Assumption of Our Lady is her divine motherhood."
"Through his Virginal Conception, God the Son becomes “one body”
(syssômos) with his Mother; indeed, for nine months, like every other baby, his
body is literally within hers. It is only right, therefore, that she should be
“one body” with him in glory."
St. John Damascene agrees with the above, writing:
“It was necessary [says Damascene] that she who in giving birth had
preserved her virginity intact should keep her body without corruption, even
after death.”
"He did not spurn the virgin's womb" -From Te Deum.
In the Fourth and final Sunday of Advent in
Year A, we meet a man who can only be characterized as upright and
righteous.We meet Joseph, the husband
of Mary, who had every justification to leave his betrothed from what appeared
as infidelity but didn’t.He didn’t
because first and foremost he did the will of God who provided what had to be
an outlandish explanation for her pregnancy but second because Joseph was made
of good wood.He had been formed to always
do the right and unselfish thing.Matthew
would later write in Chapter 6:
43 “For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear
good fruit. 44 For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather
figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. 45 A good man
out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of
the evil [a]treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance
of the heart his mouth speaks.
Actually Joseph never speaks but out of
Joseph’s heart compassion and goodness leads him to accept the will of
God.I have a personal prayer to St.
Joseph that begins with;
“O good St, Joseph, father, husband, protector, provider, show me the
way to goodness, prudence, and faith.Show me the way to virtuous manhood so I can lead my family for the
glory of God.”
It’s a prayer I wrote myself and I’m very
proud of it.He is a model for my life.
Here is the Gospel passage.
This is how the birth
of Jesus Christ came about.
When his mother Mary
was betrothed to Joseph,
but before they lived
together,
she was found with
child through the Holy Spirit.
Joseph her husband,
since he was a righteous man,
yet unwilling to
expose her to shame,
decided to divorce her
quietly.
Such was his intention
when, behold,
the angel of the Lord
appeared to him in a dream and said,
"Joseph, son of
David,
do not be afraid to
take Mary your wife into your home.
For it is through the
Holy Spirit
that this child has
been conceived in her.
She will bear a son
and you are to name him Jesus,
because he will save
his people from their sins."
All this took place to fulfill what
the Lord had said through the prophet:
Behold, the virgin shall conceive
and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,
which means "God is with
us."
When Joseph awoke,
he did as the angel of
the Lord had commanded him
and took his wife into
his home.
~Mt 11:2-11
Archbishop Wiesenberger
gives another superb homily explaining the context and significance of the
passage.
“So am I Ahaz or am I
Joseph?”But the truth is that’s too
simple.The truth is messier.I suspect the truth there’s a little of Joseph
and Ahaz in each of us.”May the Lord
show us the way for us to be “trust in the power of God’s love over the power
of this world.”May the Lord show us to
be Joseph!
The pastoral homily will
not actually be a homily but a reflection on St. Joseph the foster father of
Jesus from MyCatholic Life!
Gee, I thought that
was excellent. My Catholic Life!also
has a website providing
a resource into Catholic devotions and daily reflections.Today is a perfect day to meditate on the
role St. Joseph plays not just in the life of the Church but in our individual
lives.How does St. Joseph shape your
life?
Sunday Meditation: "When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the
Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home.”
For today’s hymn I
think the Hillbilly Thomists’ “Good Tree” makes for a great reflection on St.
Joseph.
“From a tiny seed grows a good tree.” I love the Hillbilly Thomists!
Kerstin’s Introduction to Chapter 2: How Can
the Ark of the Lord Come to Me? The Gospels:
Seward:
“He is not only the inhabitant of the womb; he is also its “fruit” (Luke
1:42). His body does not come down from heaven; it is fashioned out of his
Virgin Mother’s flesh and blood. Indeed, since she is made fruitful by the Holy
Spirit, not by male seed (see Matt. 1:20), he is physically more indebted to
her than any other child could be to his mother.”
My Comment:
The second chapter meditates on what the Gospels say of Mary’s carrying
of Jesus in her pregnancy.
The key Biblical event of Mary’s pregnancy is the Visitation, her travel
to assist her cousin Elizabeth in her pregnancy.Much of the chapter is taken up with
meditations on the Visitation.
Apart from the journey to Bethlehem, St. Luke records only one
event during Our Lady’s pregnancy: the Visitation. “In those days,” after the
departure of Gabriel, Mary hastened to visit her cousin Elizabeth in the hill
country of Judaea (Luke 1:39–56), probably in the neighborhood of Ain-Karim,
six kilometers to the west of Jerusalem. The Evangelist says that, in going
south, Mary “arose” (anastasa), the verb used to designate the Resurrection.
This strong and suggestive word, one of Luke’s favorites, heightens the drama
of the Blessed Virgin’s journey: it is an ascent, a climb into the high
country. Similar language is used to report the three other southward
expeditions of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph (Luke 2:4, 22, and 42).2 It is as if
Luke wants Theophilus to lift up his eyes to the mountains (see Ps. 120:1), to
the heights of Mount Zion. Later, he will show how, in his public ministry,
Jesus kept his sights on Jerusalem: “When the days drew near for him to be
received up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). The message of
Luke 1:39 is that the first time the Savior ventured south, presaging his later
journey, was as an unborn child. Mary carries Jesus on the road that later he
will purposefully tread.
Saward quite rightly points out that as one travels southward from
Israel’s north country (Nazareth and the towns about the Sea of Galilee) toward
Jerusalem, one is traversing uphill, and in some places very steeply up
hill.I have never been there, but I
have seen topographic representations of the geography.Quite nice how the word “arose” is used here
and tied to the Resurrection.Mary’s
life is frequently portrayed as in communion with Christ’s life.
###
Kerstin’s Comment:
When Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist,
she walks the same path as Jesus would later leading up to the
crucifixion. Even unborn, John is Christ’s herald; by his infant joy,
he is prophet. As St. Ambrose says, “Before his father or mother had done
anything wonderful, he leapt in his mother’s womb and preached the good news of
the advent of the Lord.”
Even before his birth, the Child Jesus is at his saving, sanctifying
work. While still in the womb, the Savior consecrates the forerunner for his
mission. What is more, grace comes to John from Jesus through Mary, who, in
Gerard Manley Hopkins’ words, “this one work has to do—Let all God’s glory
through.”10 Already, at Ain-Karim, Our Lady is at her handmaidenly, motherly
work of mediating the grace of her Son.
Mary is the New Ark of the Covenant. Just like the Ark of old had been
carried up the hills toward Jerusalem, so Mary carries Jesus. The Baby in the womb is God, and so the expectant Mother is the definitive
Ark, and hereby God is made present in a very tangible way. Before God has
shown Himself in a cloud, an entity that eludes physical grasp. Now, in a very
real way, God makes Himself known in person without losing his transcendent
reality.
This New Testament revelation of Jesus in Mary presupposes the Old
Testament belief that the womb of woman is the stage on which the first scenes
of the human drama are played out. The Lord forms, “knits together,” every man
from the womb (see 2 Macc. 7:22–23; Ps. 139:13–16; Is. 44:2, 24). Indeed,
“He-who-fashions-you-in-the-womb” is one of the divine names in Deutero-Isaiah
(Isa. 49:5). The nakedness of the human person as he comes from the womb
foreshadows the nakedness with which he goes into the tomb: both signal his
utter dependence upon his Creator (see Job 1:21) … Thus in Mary, who conceives
her Son by the Holy Spirit, not by human seed, two major themes of the Old
Testament converge and are surpassed: the hidden presence of God and the secret
beginnings of man.
Mary speaks her sublime Magnificat. A
hymn of praise to God. Unfortunately modern scholars do not think the lowly and
uneducated Mary to be capable of uttering such beautiful poetry spontaneously.
What they do not acknowledge is that she has been immersed into Scriptures her
whole life, probably knowing much of it by heart, as many did at the time. From
this perspective her composing the Magnificat
is entirely plausible.
If the Annunciation narrative reveals the faith and love with which the
Holy Virgin welcomed God’s Son into her flesh, the Magnificat expresses the joy and gratitude with which she sheltered
him. These religious acts are more than simply individual. Mary of the Magnificat is Israel in person. Her ‘I’
recapitulates the ‘we’ of her people. What God has done for her, he has done
for all Israel (see Luke 1:54). The grace poured out on the lowly Handmaid is a
blessing for all the poor of the Lord (vv. 48 and 53). In the Child in Mary’s
womb, every promise made to Abraham is fulfilled (v. 55).
There is a long tradition wherein Joseph already knew of the Virginal
Conception before the angel appeared to him in a dream. The angel’s message
told him not to leave her but to protect her. We’ve all heard the translated
words of Joseph wanting to “divorce her quietly” which is, when one thinks
about it, nonsensical. All divorces are public then as now. A better
translation would be that he decided to leave her quietly. Joseph is in awe and
fear of the holy occurrence happening in front of his eyes, and like we see in
the Bible so often, he is afraid and wants to withdraw. The angel tells him not
to withdraw but to protect the Holy Child concealed in the Virgin’s womb.
###
Michelle’s Comment:
What stood out to me the most in this chapter was the comparison of the
Ark of the Covenant to Mary as the new Ark. She traveled to the hill country of
Judea where David was with the OT ark. And Elizabeth and David both basically
said the same thing regarding their respective encounters with the ark:
Elizabeth: And why is this granted me, that the Mother of my Lord should
come to me? (Luke 1:43)
David: How can the Ark of the Lord come to me? (2 Sam. 6:9)
###
My Comment:
It is so fitting that today, the fourth Sunday of Advent of Year C we
are in this chapter.Today’s Gospel
reading was the Visitation scene where Mary after the Annunciation and “in
haste” travels to visit Elizabeth who is pregnant with John the Baptist.Saward does a nice job of explaining the
Marian theology connecting her to the Ark of the Covenant.
The chief actors in the drama of the Visitation are two babies in the
womb—Jesus in Mary and John in Elizabeth, the Prince and the Prophet, the Word
and the Voice. Luke says that the unborn Baptist “skipped” (eskirtêsen) in his
mother’s womb when she heard the greeting of the Christ-carrying Virgin (Luke
1:41). Elizabeth is overwhelmed. Her baby’s inward dance—he jumps “for joy,”
says Elizabeth, en agalliasei (v. 44)—fills her with the Holy Spirit. She
recognizes her cousin’s unborn baby, the blessed fruit of her womb, as God, “my
Lord” (v. 43),3 and declares Mary to be “blessed among women,” blessed in body
and in soul, blessed because of the One she carries, blessed because she
believed (v. 45).
Saward goes on to point out the Old Testament connections to the Ark,
King David’s moving of the Ark, and David’s jumping for joy.Every word used in the Visitation narrative
has allusions to the Old Testament, which provides the significance of the
Blessed Virgin.
But I’m not sure I quite agree with Saward that the “chief actors in the
drama of the Visitation are two babies in the womb.”On the one hand, I could see that Jesus is
always the central character, but Mary is also quite central to this
scene.Can one minimize the Blessed
Virgin here as a supporting character?I
wouldn’t.
Saward quotes Origen who make this remarkable connection of the
Visitation as foreshadowing Pentecost.
The God-man sanctified his forerunner while they were both being carried
by their mothers. At the Visitation, the promise made to Zechariah comes true:
“[John] will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb” (Luke
1:15). The grace of the Holy Spirit flows from Jesus through Mary to John and
from John to Elizabeth. Origen (c. 185–c. 254) describes this cascade of the
Spirit, this proto-Pentecost,
I would never had made that connection but it is apropos.Saward then quotes Gerard Manly Hopkins how
Christ’s graces flow through Mary.
Even before his birth, the Child Jesus is at his saving, sanctifying
work. While still in the womb, the Savior consecrates the forerunner for his
mission. What is more, grace comes to John from Jesus through Mary, who, in
Gerard Manley Hopkins’ words, “this one work has to do—Let all God’s glory
through.”10 Already, at Ain-Karim, Our Lady is at her handmaidenly, motherly
work of mediating the grace of her Son.
Make sure you point that out to your Protestant friends!
But Saward doesn’t go far enough.In listening to a bunch of homilies on the internet (I do this every
Sunday) for today’s Gospel reading, a certain Fr. Anthony Craig (no one famous
that you would know) pointed out that Christ’s first action incarnate in the
world while still in the womb is an act propelling the bearer to service and
charity.I don’t know if Fr. Anthony
came up with that himself (probably not) but I had never heard it before.I found that really worth contemplating.You can read my blog post on understanding
today’s Gospel reading of the Visitation here:
The Visitation is one of my favorite scenes in the New Testament.There is so much one can meditate upon.
Kerstin Reply:
Manny wrote: "The Visitation is one of my favorite scenes in the
New Testament. There is so much one can meditate upon."
Very much so. Our priest had a beautiful homily today with the theme of letting
Christ in, letting Him dwell within us just like Mary.
