Advent has flown by and this fourth week is short since Christmas is Thursday! The O Antiphon for today is: "O King of all nations and keystone of the Church: come and save us, whom you formed from the dust!" The office translation has the wonderful phrase, "O King of all the nations, the only joy of every human heart;"
Do you not find this more personal to think of the Son of God as the joy of our hearts?
The Gospel is the Magnificat of Mary beginning, "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my savior, for he has looked upon his lowly servant..."
May our souls proclaim the greatness of the Lord, the King of nations, who desired to come as an infant and experience life as we do to enable us to share in his divinity, he who shared in our humanity.
Since we have been reading about Samuel, I thought I would share these thoughts from the Little Blue Book for the Advent and Christmas Seasons 2008-2009. These are six minute reflections on the First Reading for daily Mass during the Advent/Christmas season. On December 19 the left side of the page tells us that the Old Testament has numerous stories of women who were unable to bear children at first:
Sarah, wife of Abraham, who gave birth to Isaac at an older age; Rebekah, wife of Jacob; Samson's mother (who is not named); Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel. The main purpose of these stories of barren women who later gave birth to a child was to underline the specialness of that child.
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