O Day-Spring, Brightness of light eternal, and Sun of Justice, come and enlighten them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.
St. Thomas, Apostle (II Class)
St. Thomas doubted the Lord's Resurrection... but invited by our Lord to place his fingers into the Holy Wounds he passed suddenly from incredulity to ardent faith, exclaiming: "My Lord and my God!" He became one of the greatest Apostolic missionaries and died in India in the first century.
For some reason the Divine Liturgy was cancelled this morning, which meant that we went to the Roman Rite Mass in the main Kartause chapel. Although I could have done without the guitars (see Tra le Sollecitudini), it was nice to hear the Gospel of the Annunciation at Mass. In the Tridentine Rite it would have been read last Wednesday for the Golden Mass, while today's would be John the Baptist preaching repentance. Anyways, though, the point is that there is a beautiful connection between Christmas and the Annunciation as the two feast days that highlight above all the Incarnation of our Lord.
At the end of his homily, the priest read an excerpt from St. Bernard of Clairvaux's In laudibus Virginis Matris, homily 4, 8:
The angel awaits your answer, for it is time for him to return to the one who sent him. ... O Lady, answer with the word that earth and hell and, yes, even heaven are waiting for. Just as the Lord and King yearned for your beauty, so equally now he longs for you to respond with your agreement.... Why are you hesitating? Why are you fearful? ... Behold, the one for whom all peoples are longing stands without and knocks on the door. Ah, what if he were to pass on because you hesitated.... Stand up, hasten, open up! Stand up in faith, hasten in your devotion, open up by your assent!
Text copied from God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life by Joseph Ratzinger, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2003), p. 19.
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