“Waiting on God is a bore; but what fun to argue, to score off opponents, to lose one’s temper and call it ‘righteous indignation,’ and at last to pass
from controversy to blows, from words to what St. Augustine so deliciously described as the ‘beningnant asperity’ of persecution and punishment.”
- Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy -
(Waiting on God . . . how are you practicing this discipline these days?) |
Is 41:13-20; Ps 145:1 and 9, 10-11, 12-13ab
Mt 11:11-15
Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. 12 From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven
has suffered violence, and men of violence take it by force. 13 For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John; 14 and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come.15 He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Reflection on the
Scriptures |
“I, the Lord, will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake
them.”
We all have prayed for patience and have become frustrated when neither patience nor that which tests our patience arrives immediately. We wish away the minutes in secret fear that what we long for will never come. As if our patience is not already rare, Advent by its very nature
intensifies our longings. There’s grace in our anticipation, an opportunity to grow in faith and trust. The Lord will answer. Rest assured the Holy One of Israel approaches. At long last, our Redeemer comes.
“That all may see and know, observe and understand,” we pray.
- from preacherexchange.com
Revelations of Divine
Love - by Julian of Norwich
Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 31
“The Spiritual Thirst (which was in Him from
without beginning) is desire in Him as long as we be in need, drawing us up to His Bliss” For anent that Christ is our Head, He is glorified and impassible; and anent His Body in which all His members are knit, He is not yet fully glorified nor all impassible. Therefore the same desire and thirst that He had
upon the Cross (which desire, longing, and thirst, as to my sight, was in Him from without beginning) the same hath He yet, and shall [have] unto the time that the last soul that shall be saved is come up to His bliss.
For as verily as there is a property in God of ruth and pity, so verily there is a property in God of
thirst and longing. (And of the virtue of this longing in Christ, we have to long again to Him: without which no soul cometh to Heaven.) And this property of longing and thirst cometh of the endless Goodness of God, even as the property of pity cometh of His endless Goodness. And though longing and pity are two sundry properties, as to my sight, in this standeth the point of the Spiritual Thirst: which is desire in Him as long as we be in need, drawing us up to His bliss. And all this was seen
in the Shewing of Compassion: for that shall cease on Doomsday.
Thus He hath ruth and compassion on us, and He hath longing to have us; but His wisdom and His love suffereth not the end to come till the best time. |
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