Advent – Page 2 – The Anchorite

November 29, 2016November 29, 2016

Supersize Me!

(or) How Not To Play God!

In yesterday’s post, I picked up on the theme of “searing judgment” found in the reading from Isaiah at yesterday’s Mass. The first readings in today’s Office of Readings (part of the daily Liturgy of the Hours, for those of you who aren’t familiar with it), from Isaiah, places yesterday’s Mass reading in context and includes that reading. Before we get to the promise of “searing judgment”, we see a promise that our God will come to “overawe the earth”. He will lower the arrogant and the proud, humble the mountains and the cedars of Lebanon, and be the only mountain on that day. Then he will grant vindication to His people.

But how does God “overawe the earth” and “lower the arrogant”? Continue reading “Supersize Me!”

November 27, 2016

The Songs of Zion

Psalms in Liturgy and Life

Nestled somewhere after the first reading in every Liturgy of the Word is a humble liturgical feature known to most as the Responsorial Psalm. Even though the Psalms are Scripture, homilists rarely preach on them. Depending on certain factors – the quality of the church’s sound system, the church’s acoustics, the ability of the cantor – it may be hard to make out the words of the Responsorial Psalm as they are sung. It becomes all too easy to treat the Responsorial Psalm as a pleasant musical interlude between the first and second readings.

The Psalms present other challenges to us. If you open a Bible and start reading them, you will find a very wide range of emotions and desires expressed by them. You will even find expressions of anger and vengeance that seem rude at best and scandalous at worst to the contemporary reader. Expressions that you’ll never find in a contemporary hymn, and that you’d likely never use in your personal prayers. Continue reading “The Songs of Zion”

November 25, 2016November 25, 2016

The Lord’s Mountain

First Sunday of Advent (A) – Isaiah 2:1-5

Mountains attract and fascinate us. When I was a child, my parents would sometimes make weekend trips to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I loved going there. Ever since then, I have enjoyed every chance I have ever had to go up to the top of some hill or mountain and witness the views on the way as well as from the top. 100_1358 The mountaintop experience draws us out of ourselves. We see things from (literally) a higher and broader perspective. The town of Bar Harbor looks quite small from the top of Mount Cadillac. Sandia Crest looms a mile above the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico. That city seems to go on, block by block, almost forever when you’re in it. From the Crest, however, it looks like a mere patch of moss on the huge, sandy-colored rock that is New Mexico.

The mountaintop humbles us and our sense of greatness. It reveals to us a greatness beyond ourselves which nonetheless is present to us and exhilarates us. It is no wonder that so many ancient cultures imagined that mountaintops were the homes of their gods. Continue reading “The Lord’s Mountain”