So then, after the assent of the Holy Virgin, the Holy Spirit descended on her . . . purifying her, and granting her power to receive the divinity of the Word, and likewise power to bring forth. And then was she overshadowed by enhypostatic Wisdom and the Power of the most high God, the Son of God Who is of like essence with the Father as of Divine seed,
There is perhaps nothing we modern people need more than to be genuinely shaken up. Where life is firm we need to sense its firmness; and where it is unstable and uncertain and has no basis, no foundation, we need to know this too and endure it.
Advent offers all of us a chance to be born again. We might well ask with Nicodemus, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”
One common element in the gospel narratives is the story of Jesus’ call of the disciples. By the sea of Galilee he meets and calls brothers Simon Peter and Andrew, fishermen who are invited to ply their skills in new ways and new “waters.”
Next to the calling of the disciples, I expect that Matthew’s story about their sending forth is one of the most confrontational stories in all the Bible. Can you imagine? There you are, perfectly content to be a follower, when Jesus comes home all worn out one day with his hair handing in his face and his clothes ringed with sweat and dirt.
If we are Christians according to the teaching of the Holy Scriptures, we cannot withhold our belief in the Holy Catholic Church established on earth by Jesus Christ our Lord. There are branches of this church in every land.
In the world of his day, Benedict’s monks would go to bed at 6:00 p.m., so that after eight full hours of sleep they would awaken at 2:00 a.m. They would thus start the day in the dark, and the slow coming of the dawn would be a symbolic daily reminder of the movement from dark to light,
Mindfulness and awareness, though the essential foundation of a life of prayer, are not in themselves sufficient. There must be some structure and framework, regular times for prayer, particularly shared prayer, and it is these that Benedict is establishing here [in Chapter 8 of the Rule]. Prayer
O Lord; O King, resplendent on the citadel of heaven,
all hail continually;
and of your clemency
upon your people still have mercy.
Lord, whom the hosts of cherubim in songs and hymns
with praise continually proclaim,
upon us eternally have mercy.
There must be no time lost in putting an end to this state of affairs. We must fall on our knees before the Master and implore Him with tears graciously to pardon us, and bring us back again into the honourable and virtuous way of brothers who love one another. For that is the gateway of righteousness, the open gate to life.