Posts tagged ‘morning prayer’
God Fills the Earth with Joy
The third psalm in our morning prayer today is Psalm 65
You still the tumult of the seas
(the roaring of their waves)
and the tumult of the people.
The ends of the earth stand in awe
at the sight of your wonders.
the lands of sunrise and sunset
You fill with Your joy.
As the Deer Longs for Springs of Water . . . .
The first psalm for our morning prayer today is Psalm 42.
Like a deer that longs for springs of water,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirst for God, the living God:
when shall I come and stand before the face of God?
One of our San Rafael deer
The O Antiphons are Coming
If you have ever sung the Advent hymn, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” you have sung the O Antiphons. And while this song has been sung, in recent years, throughout the Advent and Christmas season. Traditionally, these antiphons are chanted before the Magnificat during evening prayer – from December 17th thru the 23rd (a different antiphon each day). These “O” antiphons address the Christ who is coming to us with a different biblical title. Originally these were chanted in Latin, and the first letters of the titles, read in reverse order, form the acrostic (also in Latin) “Ero cras”, which means “I will be with you tomorrow”, in answer to our prayer for Christ to come to us.
This week, as we anticipate the coming of Christ . . . the dawning of the light . . . in our lives, OPreach will celebrate these O Antiphons each day.
May the Blessings of Emmanuel – God with us – rest upon each of us as we approach Christmas Day.
We wait, in hope, for the coming of New Life.
Say Thank You Until You Mean It
I love this piece by Melody Beattie, and read it often, so as to remind me to the wisdom of Gratitude. We used it as part of our morning prayer yesterday, Thanksgiving Day, at St. Margaret Convent before going to the Ultimate Celebration of Gratitude: Eucharist. For the word Eucharist means Gratitude.
Say thank you till you mean it!
Say thank you, until you mean it.
Thank God, life, and the universe for everyone and everything sent your way.
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. It turns problems into gifts, failures into successes, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. It can turn an existence into a real life, and disconnected situations into important and beneficial lessons. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
Gratitude makes things right.
Gratitude turns negative energy into positive energy. There is no situation or circumstance so small or large that it is not susceptible to gratitude’s power. We can start with who we are and what we have today, apply gratitude, then let it work its magic.
Say thank you, until you mean it. If you say it long enough, you will believe it.
Melody Beattie in The Language of Letting Go
Let God’s Glory Be over all the Earth
From today’s Morning Prayer:
Be exalted, O God, above the heavens!
Psalm 108
Be exalted, O God, above the heavens!
Let your glory be over all the earth!
For the Beauty of the Earth
Our hymn at morning prayer today was “For the Beauty of the Earth.”
Half Dome at Sunset
For the beauty of the earth,
For the glory of the skies;
For the love which from our birth,
Over and around us lies;
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This, our hymn of grateful praise.
For the wonder of each hour,
Of the day and of the night;
Hill and vale and tree and flow’r,
Sun and moon, and stars of light;
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This, our hymn of grateful praise.
For the joy of ear and eye,
For the heart and mind’s delight;
For the mystic harmony,
Linking sense to sound and sight;
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This, our hymn of grateful praise.
by Folliott S. Pierpoint, 1864
The Gift of Community Prayer
The time we have to pray together in the morning as sisters truly is a gift. It’s one of those regular things about religious life that is there for us day in and day out. (Though we do take a break from it on the weekends here at St. Rose Convent.) Its consistency is a gift. Knowing that my sisters are praying for me when I am not there (out of town, at a meeting, etc.) is a gift. And sometimes the sisters’reflections on the day’s Scripture reading is also a gift.
Take today for example. Today’s reading was from Mark 7:24-30, and it’s about the Greek (Syrophoenician) woman who came to Jesus looking for healing for her daughter. Jesus was rather gruff with her. Since she was not Hebrew, and Jesus saw his mission as being to his people, the Hebrews, he said to her, “Let the children be fed first. For it is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” Sounds a little off-putting, doesn’t it?
Because this Syrophoenician woman persisted and said, “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps,” Jesus healed her daughter, and told the woman that when she went home she would find that her daughter would be just fine, and that the demon that tormented her would be gone.
Talk about good news for that family!
I wonder if over these 2000 plus years that Christians have been reading this passage, we’ve tried to sanitize it, by saying that Jesus was only trying to test her faith, and prove a point about faith to his disciples. Otherwise, how could Jesus possibly have acted so abruptly? Some might even suggest that he sounded rude. To top it off, the version of the Gospel that was read from the missal this morning said that Jesus dismissed her with the words, “Be off!”
Sister Cathryn’s brief reflection and prayer grasped all of the incongruity of the situation. Noting that Jesus sometimes got frustrated with his disciples and their obtuseness, she wondered whether or not he might be having an off day. Yet, in the midst of his frustration, and in spite of his sharp words to a woman desperate for her daughter’s well-being, Jesus mission of release to the captives and healing to the broken-hearted still was fulfilled. The demons were cast out of the woman’s daughter.
That can give all of us hope, can’t it? Even when we’re not having the best day . . . . even if we don’t choose the best words . . . . even when someone is standing on our last nerve . . . . God’s liberating and healing power can work through us. It never has been and never will be about us. It’s about GOD working through us, just the way we are.
Now that’s Good News!
