Monday 31/05/2021 Luke 1,39-56
In Advent, we remember the waiting of the generations before us who searched and longed for the Messiah. We are the generation blessed to live in the time after the waiting.
And here I am a woman of my time. Can you touch my wounds, my soiled soul, my shattered sureness, my faltering faith and scaffold me round with an endless dispensation of grace enough to shore me up from the ground to glory? Yes, I know you can, you do, you will. And in this, I trust and wait like those before me.
Is it any small gift to offer you all that I have: my small life, my raw spirit, my words that pour from the overflow of a heart inhabited by You as You make it new?
Jesus, there is no God like you. You surround us with a planet that testifies to your existence, your attendance, your intelligence, your humour, and your great adventurous heart.
You are so secure in Your power and might. You arrived naked and squalling from Mary’s womb in a time before vaccinations and mass media, proving that although vulnerable and isolated you could walk among us and change the world. Your deity broke out of death, purchasing our freedom and blazing the trail for our own path to eternal life. You, Jesus, alive now forever, brokering mercy for us daily before the Father’s throne, pleading peace for those who devised your destruction because your love and truth showed us our need for you.
You are a God steadfast in love and faithful in purpose. You are a God present. You are a God magnificent. I am a woman of my time and I see us on a fearful path, my children and their children will bear these days on their backs like stinging cords, on their shoulders like heavy burdens, and on their hearts that they must guard lest their love grow cold before we all arrive at your door. Remind us that you are truth and you will protect us from deception. You are love and you will fill us when we are empty. You are life and you will revive us when we faint along the way. And the government shall be upon your shoulders.
You are God and there is no other. You are the long-awaited Messiah. May Your kingdom come, Lord Jesus, now and forevermore. Amen.
by Fr Thomas O'BRIEN a.a