O King whom all the peoples desire,
you are the cornerstone which makes all one.

Our 'O' Antiphon tonight is about a King who became an infant - not an infant who became a King. Here we hear echoes already of the Beatitudes - Blessed are the poor in spirit. As usual Jesus turns things upside down. He exposes the stupidity of pride and proves the wisdom of humility.

He could have assumed our nature in adult form and proceeded swiftly to His task, but He chose not to.

O Rising Sun
You are the Splendour of Eternal Light
and the Sun of Justice
come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and
in the shadow of death.

A few day ago one of our Sisters showed me a photo of some Canadian square with a Christmas tree. We were shocked by the thousand of electrical lamps in that square, shining all around. I ponder if people seeking for light, does this light help them to find a real happiness? Today there is less faith in the world but more people seeking to switch-on lights.

O Root of Jesse set up as a sign to the peoples, come to save us and delay no more.

Yes, today we call upon God to save us and delay no more, this theme is prominent in all the Liturgy of this season. People through the ages right up to the present day either explicitly or implicitly have called upon God to save them – but the marvellous truth is that our loving Father in heaven wants it infinitely more than we could ever conceive in our finite minds and hearts. So much does He thirst for all peoples to be with Him for all eternity that He sent His only begotten Son into the world to be our Saviour and Redeemer.

Was is St Thomas Aquinas who observed that the Law and the commandments laid down for the people of Israel, and even the new law of the Gospel, would kill, if it had not been for the grace and the mercy of God, revealed in and by Jesus?

The Gospel passage we heard this morning at Mass, of Joseph’s intention to quietly divorce Mary so as not to draw down scandal – and even death – upon her, seems to make this observation a startlingly real fact – it seems to manifest the logical consequence of transgressing the law, or of rigidly observing it.

O Wisdom, you come forth from the mouth of the Most High. You fill the universe and hold all things together in a strong yet gentle manner. O come to teach us the way of truth.

The Genealogy of St Matthew’s Gospel, which we read this morning at Mass, always evokes St Paul’s exclamation in his letter to the Romans: “O the depths of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments, how inscrutable his ways! To Him be glory for ever, Amen.” (Rom 11:33). Which one of us would have chosen a harlot, a prostitute, a murderer and adulterer as fitting ancestors of the Eternal Son of God?

The third Sunday of Advent is traditionally known as Gaudate Sunday – Gaudate means Rejoice – taken from the entrance antiphon “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice. The Lord is near!”

One may ask if we can really rejoice this Advent/Christmas when our brothers and sisters all over the world are suffering so much as a result of the Pandemic which has left no one untouched. These words “rejoice in the Lord always” are taken from St Paul’s letter to the Philippines which he wrote while in prison.

During Advent the Church brings us back in time to the centuries before the coming of Christ – the readings allow us to identify with the sentiments, longings and hopes of the people of the Old Testament who awaited the Messiah. We see how God was at work in their lives, leading them to the truth about their relationship with Him and each other. Last Sunday the Prophet Isaiah presented us with the image of God as Father and the Potter who formed His people. In today’s first reading God is the Shepherd who gently leads His flock, feeding them and gathering the lambs in His arms, holding them against His breast.

Advent does not mean ‘expectation’ as some may think. It is a translation of the Greek word ‘parousia’ which means ’presence’, or more accurately, ‘arrival’, the beginning of a presence.

His presence has already begun, and we, faithful, are the ones through whom He wishes to be present in the world.
‘The Christ child comes’ in a real sense whenever human beings act out of authentic love for the Lord.

In 1925:
Albania became a republic.
Paul von Hindenburg became the first elected head of state of the Weimar Republic.
Hitler published ‘Mein Kampf.’
John Logie Baird performed the first test of a working television.
‘The Great Gatsby’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald; ‘Mrs Dalloway’ by Virginia Woolf; ‘The Everlasting Man’ by G. K. Chesterton; and ‘The ABC of Relativity’ by Bertrand Russell, were among many books to be published.
Marion Harris was singing ‘Tea for two’; and Gene Austin sang, ‘Yes, sir, that’s my baby.’
‘Ben Hur’ was released in cinemas.

And ... In an Encyclical Letter entitled, ‘Quas Primas,’ Pope Pius XI inserted into the Sacred Liturgy, the feast of the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Pope St Paul VI would, during his pontificate, re-name the celebration and raise it to a Solemnity, but as another year draws to a close and as we have celebrated again this great feast, we offer some wisdom from Pope Pius XI’s encyclical – which seem to be as relevant today as they were at the time of his writing them.

One of our sisters received the following quote which from a friend some time ago regarding the temptation to respond to the needs of our world during this Pandemic of Covid 19 – yes there is a great need for nurses, doctors, social workers, carers of every kind. So why do you, Dominican Nuns, continue to be heedless to the cry of broken humankind at this time? Why are you not out doing something useful?

Edith Stein (now St Benedicta of the Cross) was faced with the same dilemma at the beginning of World War II – she had been a Red Cross nurse in World War 1 and so was obviously recalling that time. Now a Carmelite Nun, here is how she responds and encourages her sisters:

With St. John Paul II, on his 100 Birthday we look at Mary, through his eyes …

Mary is a “woman of the Eucharist” in her whole life.

If we wish to rediscover in all its richness the profound relationship between the Church and the Eucharist, we cannot neglect Mary, Mother and model of the Church.

How does one enter into the Event that we call Holy Week single-mindedly and prayerfully?

With JESUS of course – but then again, so much is happening to Him that it is hard to hold to any one moment intensely, if you want to live all of them. It seems too much like floating on the surface without being immersed in the mystery.

This year, maybe a good word to sit with and to carry through the week might be: Truth.

Do you believe this?

The Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you
Rom 8.11

We see in today’s Gospel reading, the friends of Jesus dealing with anxiety, sickness and death, part of life’s experience for each and every person in our day.

Aren’t we all Lazarus?

Are there not parts in each one of us, in me, that are dead, infected by the viruses of sins?

We are now in our final stretch of Lent which is a relief because, personally, I find Lent difficult. I find the fasting hard, but I came across a quotation from the ‘Magnificat’ which I found encouraging.

Fasting is a form of self deprivation of and a longing for the food we really need. We fast in order to seek Him day after day, the better to know His ways. We fast to make space for Christ, so that He may fill our emptiness with His redeeming presence.

This Sunday’s Gospel, John 4:5-42, is about Jesus who made a journey to a Samaritan town (it is always He who makes first move toward us) and was waiting at the well for the arrival of the Samaritan woman. Her thirst and longing bring her towards Him, though she wasn’t aware of it.

Recently my friend, was encouraging me with these words:

Always watch the mind, what it is thinking about, and always bring it back to Him from wherever it wanders off.

We are now in the middle of the second week of Lent and I’m sure some of us have already broken our Lenten Resolutions (repeatedly!!) and are feeling very discouraged about it all and tempted to just give up the attempt and pick something easier.

But maybe we should view these not as failures but as something that can be beneficial. It’s a bit like distractions during prayer. You might feel, ‘oh, I didn’t pray at all, I had so many distractions,’ but each time you realised that you had been distracted and turned back to God that was something good; that was prayer. It can be the same with our Lenten Resolutions.

God made the sinless one into sin, our sin, my sin, that in him we might become the goodness of God. And yet since the beginning of creation we have been denying our sin, that sin for which He emptied himself of his divinity, became man and endured His passion and death. We have been covering our nakedness up, hiding our reality from God, from ourselves and from one another.

While praying my Lectio Divina for the 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time the words that struck me were ‘Your light will shine like the dawn and your wound quickly healed over’.

The word ‘Light’ is repeated in the first reading, the psalm and the Gospel. Elsewhere, in St John’s Gospel, Jesus tells us ‘I am the light of the world.’ Turning to us, his disciples, He reminds us in today’s Gospel we too are the ‘light of the world.’

This icon, created by one of our sisters for St Peter's parish in Drogheda, is not a work of the imagination in which the artist tries to drag the onlooker inside an ideal family, but a theological teaching that exposes something of the Truth revealed in Jesus Christ. We do not enter into the icon, it is a sacred space delimitated by a red line all around it. It is the people, represented inside that space, that come to us. “The Kingdom of God is at hand!"

Disposed from childhood to praying the Rosary, it has grown with me over the years or perhaps it would be more true to say I’ve grown with it. A prayer for all seasons of life, it has been my mainstay. I think of the structure of the rosary, the saying of the beads as a kind of enclosure, creating and protecting a sacred space, a shelter, within which Mary and I meet with Jesus on a daily basis and she shows unto me the blessed fruit of her womb, JESUS.

Pope St John Paul II called the rosary his favourite prayer. While the Mass is my favourite prayer, the rosary is not far behind in my preference. If for any reason on a rare occasion I fail to say the rosary, then I cannot sleep until I say it in full.

The rosary is mostly centred on Jesus and Mary so for that reason, it is very precious to me: Jesus who is Alpha and Omega, and Mary who is His Mother. In the company of these two very important people, I am always happy.

Unlike most people of my generation, as a child the Rosary was still part of our family life. We knelt at our chairs in the kitchen each night and recited it together. By the early seventies, as we grew older, activities at night demanded our time and attention and the family Rosary gradually faded into oblivion. But the example of my parents and grandparents who always prayed the Rosary daily remained. My dad always had his beads in his pocket and prayed the rosary on the bus each morning as he travelled to work.

WE ARE ALL FAMILIAR WITH THE PASSAGE of the Passion Narrative in St. Mathew’s Gospel in which Jesus is brought before Pilate by the chief priests and elders to condemn Him to death. Pilate is convinced of his innocence but weak in his resolve to free him. He washes his hands and declares “I am innocent of this man’s blood. It is your concern! The rabble respond “His blood be upon us and upon our children.”

Think deeply for a moment—–‘Jesus loves us and washes away our sins in his own blood.’

With the fourth Sunday of Advent, the Lord’s Birth is at hand. With the words of the prophet Micah, the Liturgy invites us to look at Bethlehem, the little town in Judea that witnessed the great event. Unfortunately, in our day, it does not represent an attained and stable peace, but rather a peace sought with effort and hope.