OPreach
Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
Sometimes Poetry is Preaching
I read this poem the other day in an email from Panhala.net. They always share wonderful poetry.
I should be content
to look at a mountain
for what it is
and not a commentary on my life.
– David Ignatow.
Forever We Will Sing the Goodness of God
Today our responsorial psalm is Psalm 89, and we read:
Blessed are the people who know the joyful shout;
in the light of your countenance, O Lord, they walk.
At your name they rejoice all the day
and through your justice they are exalted.
Forever I will sing the goodness of the Lord.
Let Us Awaken the Dawn
It’s back again to an early morning thought . . . let us awaken the dawn. One of our psalms in morning prayer is Psalm 57, and our antiphon says it all.
Awake, lyre and harp: I will awaken the dawn.
Here I Am, Your Servant Is Listening
Our Scripture readings continue with the theme of call. Yesterday’s was the calling of Jesus’ disciples, and today, in the First Book of Samuel, we read about the calling of the prophet Samuel.
Then Eli [the prophet] understood that God was calling the youth. So Eli said to Samuel, “Go to sleep, and if you are called, reply, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” When Samuel went to sleep in his place, the Lord came and revealed his presence, calling out as before, “Samuel, Samuel!” Samuel answered, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”
And in today’s response from Psalm 40 we read:
Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.
Those Who Fish, Rise Early
It is a New Year . . . has been for ten days now. Our Christmas Season ended on Sunday, the Feast of the Epiphany . . . yesterday we celebrated the Baptism of the Lord . . . and today Jesus calls his followers and invites them to go fishing.
Jesus said to them,
“Come after me, and I will make you fishers of people.”
Then they left their nets and followed him.
This shot of a boat going out to fish was taken in the early morning, just as the sun was rising. Those who fish, must start early. Photographers rise early for the good shots. So must we who are are also called to fish. My friends who are not early risers would argue with me about the rising early. And they are right . . . they see an earlier morning than I do, for they stay up sometimes till the morning. Reminds me of a Rumi poem, “Sometime, stay up all night.”
Late or early, let us find our God in the silence of that time, and may it speed us on our way to where each one of us is called to “fish.”
Blessed Christmas
Why Is It So Difficult for Us to Believe?
Today’s reading in the 3rd Thursday of Advent is from Isaiah 54
So God has sworn not to be angry with you,
or to rebuke you.
Though the mountains leave their place
and the hills be shaken,
My love shall never leave you
nor my covenant of peace be shaken,
says our God, who has mercy on you.
We can believe that the mountains can’t be moved, but we have difficulty believing that God’s love would never leave us.
Let our Advent task be to find our hope in the love of God toward us, stronger and more faithful than anything we know.
The Feast of Saint John of the Cross
Today is the Feast of Saint John of the Cross, a Spanish Carmelite saint and mystic from the 16th century. One of his most famous (and moving) poems is entitled, “The Dark Night.” Below are a few stanzas.
1. One dark night,
fired with love’s urgent longings
– ah, the sheer grace! –
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.
2. In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
– ah, the sheer grace! –
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.
3. On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.
4. This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
– him I knew so well –
there in a place where no one appeared.
5. O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.
Feast of Saint Lucy – Feast of Light
On this Feast of Saint Lucy (whose name means light), I share a poem by Thomas Merton.
Lucy, whose day is in our darkest season,
(Although your name is full of light,)
We walkers in the murk and rain of flesh and sense,
Lost in the midnight of our dead world’s solstice
Look for the fogs to open on your friendly star.
We have long since cut down the summer of history;
Our cheerful towns have all gone out like fireflies in October.
The fields are dry and the vine is bare:
How have our long days dwindled, now that the world is frozen!
Locked in the cold jails of our stubborn will,
Oh hear the shovels growling in the gravel.
This is the way they’ll make our beds for ever,
Ours, whose Decembers have put out the sun:
Doors of whos souls are shut against the summertime!
Martyr, whose short day sees our winter and our Calvary,
show us some light, show seem forsaken by the sky:
We have so dwelt in darkness that our eyes are screened and dim,
And all but blinded by the weakest ray.
Hallow the vespers and December of our life,
O martyred Lucy:
Console our solstice wit your friendly day.
-Thomas Merton, The Collected Poems
Third Sunday of Advent
Would that all of us could receive the Christ whom we meet each day with the grace and humility of John the Baptizer.
John answered them, “I baptize with water; but there is one among you whom you do not recognize, the one who is coming after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.” This happened in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
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