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4th Week of Advent

Our 4th Week of Advent this year is incredibly brief! Just today, because tomorrow, December 24, is Christmas Eve and has its own special liturgy.

If you pray the Angelus (an ancient prayer recalling the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, prayed 3 times a day), you will recognize the Collect or organizing, focusing, prayer for today\’s Mass…

Pour forth, we beseech you, O Lord, your grace into our hearts,
that we, to whom the Incarnation of Christ your Son was made known
by the message of an Angel, may by his Passion and Cross
be brought to the glory of his Resurrection.
“Seeing is believing”, they say, but believing makes us want to see. “Crede ut intellegas! Believe that you may understand!” is a common theme for St. Augustine of Hippo (+430). Today many people pit faith against reason, authority against intellect, as if they were mutually exclusive.
Faith and authority are indispensable for a fuller rational, intellectual apprehension of anything. In all the deeper questions of human existence, we need the illumination that comes from grace and; revelation. We must receive and believe. Faith is the foundation of our hope, which leads to love and communion with God, as Augustine would say. When we hear about something or learn a new thing we often rush to know more, to have personal experience, to see. This is a paradigm for our life of faith. There is an interlocking cycle of hearing a proclamation (such as the Gospel at Mass, a homily, or a teaching of the Church) or observing the living testimony of a holy person’s life (such as Teresa of Calcutta). Because of an experience of reception, and subsequent pondering, we come to love the content of that which we received.
The content of the prayers which Holy Church gives us is the Man God Jesus Christ.
By hearing and pondering & using well these prayers, we come all the better to know Christ and to love Him. In loving Him we desire all the more to know Him. Acceptance of the authority of the content of our orations at Mass opens previously unknown treasuries which would otherwise be locked. Some of them are ancient. Indeed, today\’s prayer is from at least the 8th century. They are like treasure boxes which, with the right keys, we can open to find irreplaceable riches.
Our Blessed Mother, so closely associated with today’s Collect, first received the message of the Angel. She accepted and believed the message, and made it her own. She pondered it in her heart. She pronounced her Magnificat. She brought our Savior into the light of the world.

H/T: Fr. Z

Two of Our Dominican Friars

During these past two weeks of Advent we have had the joy of welcoming two of our Brothers in the Dominican Family.

The first one was Father Art Kirwin, a former chaplain of ours for a year in 2013. He is currently assigned to the Dominican Priory in Atlanta, GA. He ministers with various groups, including at one of the Homes of the Hawthorne Dominican Sisters. They care for poor cancer patients without asking for any payment. This congregation was founded by Rose Hawthorne, the daughter of the American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne. Her cause for canonization has been introduced.

The second Dominican Friar to be with us is Father Armando Ibañez, OP, originally of San Diego, TX, near Corpus Christi. We first met him when he was just a novice, but haven\’t seen him for many years. Father spent 11 years in the Los Angeles, CA area studying and working on films. Now he is currently teaching, … and still working on films, in south Texas. He has a profound and gentle contemplative spirit and ministers in multiple ways: professor, poet, but most of all as a film maker. Father Armando showed us some of his documentaries, as well as giving some poetry readings of his own compositions.

We are expecting two more Dominican Friars to come celebrate the liturgy for us before the New Year. So, stay tuned.

The 3rd Week of Advent

 

The 3rd Sunday of Advent is nicknamed “Gaudete … Rejoice!”, from the first word of the first chant, the Introit. Today we relax slightly our penitential focus during Advent. Some say Advent is not a penitential time, even though it has always been considered such in centuries past. … We fast before our feasts. Our vestments are violet or purple, as in Lent, though some like to use a bluish rather than reddish purple to differentiate Advent as less somber, somewhat less focused on the penitential aspect.

In the 1st week of Advent we begged God for the grace of a proper approach and a strong will for our journey. In the 2nd week, we asked God for help and protection in facing the obstacles we encounter in the world. Today we glimpse the joy that will soon be ours at Christmas.  Liturgically this has been symbolized, though the use–just today–of the rose-colored (rosacea) vestments. Gaudete is the counterpart of “Laetare … Rejoice!” Sunday during Lent. [It\’s easy to remember by the fact that both words start with an \”L\” = Laetare, Lent.]

Our Collect, [or Prayer, Collect, [meaning “gathering” all our prayers, thoughts], is … as pristine as the 5th century (probably earlier).

O God, who see how your people faithfully await the feast of the Lord’s Nativity, enable us, we pray, to attain the joys of so great a salvation and to celebrate them always with solemn worship and glad rejoicing.

Let us give a strong & joyful “Amen” when we hear this Collect pronounced or sung in our churches.
In the Collects of the last 2 Sundays we have been “rushing” and doing good works, striving and being careful not to get tangled in worldly things. This Sunday we have an image of unrestrained joy, an almost childlike dash towards a long-desired thing. Our heavenly Father watches over us as we run down the path toward our Savior even as we make sure our paths are straight. Have earthly fathers not watched this scene on Christmas mornings?  Do children go to their gifts by zigzags or by running out of the house & away from them?  They always go straight at them. Parents watch over their little ones so that, in their intensity, they don’t hurt themselves.
Our heavenly Father leaves us free, but His protecting and guiding hand and eye is upon us. We should feel an eager joy for the Lord’s Coming under the gaze and guidance of our generous and loving God. He’s is our Father and He has a plan for us.
We have to make the path straight for the Lord. He is coming. When he comes, he will come by the straightest path, straightening them Himself if we have not straightened them first. That straightening will not be so easy for us if we are twisty. The eschatological/end times content of the message of Advent truly is “good news”. God hasn’t left us in doubt about how to treat our neighbor. That is “good news”. That helps us to be more responsible about our souls and those of our neighbor.
God hasn’t left us in doubt that he will come as Judge. He has not left us in doubt that rewards come to His friends and “unquenchable fire” of separation comes to those who are not His friends.  Dire sounding?  No. If we are Christians that is “good news”. It prompts us to be responsible about our souls and leaves us comforted with the knowledge that we can in fact attain the Kingdom Christ helps us to by His grace. We cannot save ourselves. We depend on grace.  We even depend on God to help us help ourselves.  But our salvation is worked out through grace and elbow-grease. We are responsible for our souls. We can choose to accept or to reject the Lord, in Himself and in our neighbor. We can refuse to straighten out.
Make straight the path … NOW. If you have something to straighten out with yourself and your God, with yourself and your neighbor… straighten it out NOW.

COME, LORD JESUS, COME!

H/T: Fr. Z

The 2nd Week of Advent

We are now in the Second Week of Advent and it is becoming something very palpable. The Scripture Readings, the music and the advent wreath, all pull us deeper into the mystery of the Incarnation. Scripture, music, wreath and candles speak to us in a different language than words. Even though the Scriptures are composed of words, there is something more profound – divine – that comes through and touches our soul. Scripture is the Very Word of God in written form! Scripture, music, wreath and candles speak to our hearts in symbols beyond words. Let them touch you and change you this Advent.This year when we entered the Chapel last Saturday evening to begin our Advent journey we were confronted with a very different kind of Advent Wreath. Our creative Sister-Sacristan was inspired by a classic passage from Isaiah 11:1–

A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse,
and from his roots a bud shall blossom.

Our wreath images this new shoot. The stump that has grown up represents the hand of God. The wreath is on the thumb, while the other four fingers become flames of fire as the weeks progress.

Sister spent many hours walking through our woods to find the exact tree to represent this unique sprout from the lineage of Jesse. It is one of our many crepe myrtle trees. In Trinidad, people call this tree, “the Queen of trees”. It loves hot weather, and in our Texas summers it is one of the few plants that puts forth blossoms.

Our Current Chaplain Substitute

Our current visiting priest at the Monastery for the weekend is Father Carmen Mele, OP, of our Southern Province. The last and only other time he came to visit was about 20 years ago. So it’s really wonderful to have him with us.

Father is originally from Chicago IL and met the Dominicans when he went to study at Providence College in Providence RI. After graduating, he joined the Eastern Province of Dominicans. When our Southern Province in 1979 was founded he took the plunge and joined us. He has ministered in Texas for many years, and is currently teaching Moral Theology at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis MO.

Thank you Father Carmen for volunteering to be with us.
We love your homilies.

Feast Day of St. Andrew the Apostle

Just a reminder that the St. Andrew Christmas Novena begins today on his feast day. It is a beautiful way for families to bring in the Peace and Joy of Christmas and the great Hope it offers throughout the Season of Advent.

It is piously believed that whoever recites the St. Andrew Christmas Novena prayer 15 times each day from the feast of St. Andrew (November 30) until Christmas Eve will obtain the favor requested.

Hail and Blessed be the hour and moment in which
the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary,
at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold.
In that hour, vouchsafe, O my God,
to grant my prayer and grant my desires,
through the merits of Our Savior, Jesus Christ,
and of His Blessed Mother.
Amen.


St. Andrew’s Gala

Our Master Cake Baker-Nun has outdone herself this time!  She was asked to contribute one of her cakes to St. Andrew Parish here in Lufkin. November 30 is their Patronal Feast Day and they will be having a special Gala in the evening to raise money for the Church.

Texas Chocolate Peppermint Cake

Her cake will be raffled off tomorrow– November 30, Friday night. So you might want to get over there for some Texas fun.