The 'O' Antiphons, December 17-23

For the text and music of the O Antiphons, sung at Vespers from today until December 23rd, see the posts gathered here.

A cosmic 'O', the work of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179)

Third Week of Advent – Friday – Living the faith that we preach

Readings: Isaiah 56:1-3a.6-8; Psalm 67 (66):2-3.5.7-8; John 5:33-36

Today’s Gospel enlightens us on two major points: all our efforts in preaching God’s message should lead to Christ and the best way of conveying that message is by example.

It is a common thing today - as it was in the past - that some people are highly gifted in preaching the Good News of the Kingdom of God. Through different gifts and talents, they become famous preachers and illustrious public speakers. John the Baptist was a good preacher. Jesus himself talks of him as “a burning and shining light [and people] were willing for a reason to rejoice in his light.” (Jn 5:35).

Today's gospel reminds us that it is always good to look beyond the shining stars and recognize the work of God in them. Otherwise we focus on those stars and we are blinded by their light. It is like looking at the finger that is trying to show us great mysteries.

The second point is that as much as we might be brilliant, unrivalled preachers, if that is not translated in our lives, it is empty. John the Baptist himself knew that. He wanted people's conversion to be translated into actions. God's words are sweet. And we might even pretend to make them sweeter to people’s ears when we use more sophisticated and highly intellectual terms. But they need to be accompanied by deeds that prove that we live what we preach. How could we convince people of things we do not live out? Jesus said: "The works that the Father gave me to accomplish, these works that I perform testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me." (Jn 5:36). We know that most of the disciples who followed Christ did not grasp fully his message but were amazed by his deeds: his compassion towards the excluded and those who were rejected by his religion, his compassion towards the hungry and the sinners. Most of the time his message appeared clearly to contradict his religion's laws. But his deeds were obviously divine to his followers that they could not see them otherwise.

Concluding I would say that today's gospel also invites us to recognise the work of God in those other people we seldom consider as messengers of God: those who do not share our way of thinking, those who do not share our religious beliefs and those who do sometimes even oppose our faith. God's ways being mysterious, God can use anyone, any time, anywhere to make the Good news reach our hearts. We only need to open our eyes and our hearts.

May this Advent help us to focus more on our Lord and Saviour and less on ourselves and our successes. May it help us to recognise God's hand in other people's words and deeds.

By Br Gustave Ineza OP

Third Week of Advent - Thursday - Accept the Fullness of God's Plan

Readings: Isaiah 54: 1-10; Psalm 30; Luke 7: 24-30

John the Baptist holds a distinct honor in the Gospels in that he inaugurates Jesus’ public ministry. He foresees Jesus’ coming long before anyone else recognizes him. John’s prophetic witness is unmatched. His convictions are more genuine and faith more steadfast than anyone else in the Gospel aside from Christ himself. “Yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he” (Lk 7:28).

Jesus’ statement about John does not reveal a low opinion of the Messiah’s forerunner. Quite the opposite is true. Jesus’ declaration raises God’s expectations of how we understand and accept our own Christian vocations.

Those who approached John in faith knew his baptism made them whole again. His baptism removed their sins. Their hope was to restore their relationship with God. They wanted to be as God created them and originally intended them to be: His holy and faithful people. Jesus takes their expectations and elevates them to a divine level.

Herein lies the great scandal of the Pharisees’ rejection of John’s baptism. Not only have they rejected God’s pardon (if they even recognize a need for pardon). They also fail to receive the ultimate gift of Christ: deification. These faithful people, however great their sins, come seeking reconciliation. They find God’s saving power in John’s baptism. And beyond that monumental conversion, God also makes them like Him.
He restores them and elevates them to a share in His life.

As we move closer to the Christmas Season, let us spend this remaining time contemplating what it means for Christ to take on our flesh. In doing so, he takes away our sins. Yet, Jesus’ act of removing sin from our human nature is only a footnote compared to what he adds to it: God’s very self.

14th December – St John of the Cross

Readings: Isaiah 45: 6c-8, 18, 21c-25; Ps 85; Luke 7: 18b-23

It is fitting that we celebrate St John of the Cross during Advent, as we hear anew the call of John the Baptiser. For these two Johns have much in common. John the Baptiser inaugurated a great religious awakening, but was thwarted and imprisoned by Herod Antipas, and later executed. His disciples wondered, would God fulfil his promises and save them yet?

St John of the Cross, Carmelite friar and priest, religious founder and reformer, mystic and Doctor of the Church, was similarly at the heart of great religious upheavals, this time in the sixteenth century. This John was also incarcerated, after he founded, along with St Teresa of Avila, the ‘Discalced’ (shoeless) Carmelites, to the chagrin of his lax superiors. First he was persecuted by his superiors, then later by the opposite ‘extremist’ camp of his own Discalced order. Reform is a thankless task.

But his reforms did last, thanks to his wisdom and sanctity. He called his brothers and sisters in religion to a simpler lifestyle, to prepare their hearts to receive the poor and humble Jesus. Like the Baptiser, John of the Cross was a fearless preacher of God’s word, and a mystic whose writings show an affinity with the desert mentality, especially his poems written from his prison cell: for God causes the whole earth to bud forth, ‘not creating it to be a waste, but designing it to be lived in’ (Is. 45:8, 18).

'Justice shall look down from heaven'
(Christ of St John of the Cross, by Salvador Dali)

Both Johns understood that the path to God is through self-emptying love, because God himself is self-emptying love. In his kenotic sacrifice on the Cross, Jesus uttered the Psalmist’s cry of abandonment (Ps. 22:2-3). We too must seek no support but the Cross, as we enter the ‘dark night of the soul’, and abandon ourselves to God’s mercy and will, trusting that he will fulfil his promises.

‘There is no just and saving God but me.’ (Is. 45:21) And what does the justice and salvation of God look like on earth? We only have to look at Jesus, who cures all our ills. ‘The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.’ (Lk. 7:21-2)

Jesus is Lord! ‘In the Lord shall be the vindication and the glory of all the descendants of Israel.’ (Is. 45:25) We know that Jesus Christ is our vindication and glory, through his Cross and glorious Resurrection (cf. Acts 2:24). So, trusting that God will vindicate us too, let us join Jesus on the Cross, give ourselves up lovingly in the service of God’s kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven. Let truth spring out of the earth, and justice look down from heaven!

Rorate caeli desuper et nubes pluant iustum! (Is. 45:8)

13th December - St Lucy

Readings: Zep 3:1-2, 9-13; Ps 34:2-3, 6-7, 17-18, 19 And 23; Mt 21:28-32

The Church has a long tradition of absorbing what start as pagan traditions, but by being Christianised become Christian traditions after a while. We see this today as we celebrate the feast of Saint Lucy. She was a young girl who suffered martyrdom under the Roman Emperor Diocletian in the year 303. The date of her death, the 13th of December, was considered the longest night of winter according to the old calendar. This night was not only the longest, but also the night when Lucifer and all his evil demons went about, threatening both man and beast. If we look even further back in history, we see how this belief is connected to the pagan traditions, where mid-winter sacrifice was performed to appease the gods. The name ‘Lucy,’ which is etymologically connected to the Latin word for light, and so is also connected to the name ‘Lucifer’, thus reminds us of the forces of good and evil that we face in our lives.

If we turn to Saint Lucy, the tradition tells us that she was given the grace of great lucidity and clarity of vision, which made her a powerful instrument in God’s hands. Her first miracle was performed as she went on a pilgrimage to Catania in Sicily, to the grave of Saint Agnes, to pray for her mother who was seriously ill. On her way there, Saint Agnes appeared to her and said: 'Sister, why come to me to ask for something that you yourself easily can give your mother? Your faith has healed her!'

This was the beginning of the cult of Saint Lucy, and soon many miraculous stories came about. One of them talks of a young man who fell in love with her because of her exceptionally beautiful eyes. Without further ado, Saint Lucy, it is said, tore out her eyes and sent them to him on a plate. This led to an immediate conversion of the young man, and Lucy herself was blessed with a new and even more beautiful pair of eyes, and this is why saint Lucy is also the patron saint of eye sight and of blindness. I think we should add here that this kind of manoeuvre requires exceptional blessings and divine intervention, so don't try this at home!

But what we may try at home is to let our sight be purified and filled with light. Jesus says that 'Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are bad, your body also is full of darkness. See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness.' (Luke 11: 34-35)

Through an inner transformation we may be able to better discern between good and evil, and to choose the will of God in our lives. As we proceed in this period of Advent, let us then strive to change our vision, so that our self-centred 'No' may be transformed to a deepened and whole-hearted 'Yes' to Christ our Lord.

Third Week of Advent - Monday - Discernment

Readings: Numbers 24:2-7,15-17; Matthew 21:23-27.

Balaam, whom we encounter in today’s first reading from the Book of Numbers, is a curious character: on one hand, he’s reviled as a “wicked man” who tries (and fails) to curse the nation of Israel (2 Peter 2:15), and on the other hand he’s revered as a gentile prophet, being given in the Midrashic interpretations of early Rabinnic Jews an exalted status amongst the gentiles equivalent to the status of Moses amongst the Jews. In today’s excerpt, he prophetically recognises Israel’s exalted calling in God’s plan of salvation (24:3-9) and foresees the coming of a Messianic Davidic King who will conquer and liberate (24:14-19). Baalam, it seems, was a man not born of the chosen people, who lived amongst Pagan idolators and worked as a sorcerer, yet whose eyes and ears God opened to realise the truth (24:4).

In a world saturated with competing truth claims, it is often difficult to discern what comes from God and what comes from man, and many people seem – like Balaam – to be deeply ambivalent, capable of spreading both profound truth and weaving confusion. It is this question of discerning the veracity of the claims implied by the actions of Christ that vexes the chief priests and elders in today’s gospel, who treat the Lord with deep suspicion, asking Him under whose authority He acts. Although we often associated ‘authority’ with ‘power’, ‘jurisdiction’, and ‘control’, the Latin auctoris closely associated with ‘authorship’ and ‘origination’. The task of discerning under what authority somebody acts is not merely about determining the mandate for their action, but also about determining which ‘story’ they are part of: are they part of the narrative written by God, or are they trying to write their own story, dissenting from God’s plan of salvation?

In our Dominican tradition, study serves an integral role in this task of discernment, helping us to seek truth amidst falsehood. As Christians, we find the fullness of truth about ourselves and our world in the Scriptures, and in the Tradition of the Church, but we can claim no 'monopoly' over truths, and so, looking at the world around us through the eyes of faith, we hope our study will enable us to find reflections of truth there: in the sciences, in the arts, and in our friendships with other people. Our study, however, is necessarily animated by our lives of prayer, through which we encounter Truth Himself - the incarnate Word of God -  who will open our eyes and our ears, like the prophet Balaam’s, to receive His saving message. 

Carmelite First Professions

Congratulations to Brother Ian Elias Ward of the Trinity and Father Stephen Michael Quinn of Jesus, two of our fellow students in the Blackfriars Studium, who yesterday made their First Profession in the Order of the Discalced Friars of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel!

fr. Augustine and fr. Matthew attended the Mass and lunch at the Carmelite Priory on Boars Hill, just outside Oxford, a peaceful place with great views over the city. The Mass readings of the day aptly spoke of the miracles and prophecies of Elijah, whom the Carmelites consider their traditional founder.

We pray for God's blessings on Br Ian and Fr Stephen, that they may follow Christ more closely as they embark on their new life of joyful service in the Carmelite family.

L-R: fr. Augustine DeArmond OP, fr. Ian Ward ODC, fr. Stephen Quinn ODC, fr. Matthew Jarvis OP

The colour of the cappas (cloaks) gives us our distinctive nicknames: Whitefriars and Blackfriars!

fr. Padraic Cassidy ODC (right) is also studying at the Blackfriars Studium