Friday 18 December

Reveal among us the light of your presence, that we may behold your power and glory.

Antiphon
O Adonai

O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush
and gave him the law on Sinai:
Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.
(cf Exodus 3.2, 24.12)

Readings (Click the links to see the readings)

Jeremiah 23.5-8 | Ps 72.15-19 | Matthew 1.18-24

Joseph

"An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit'." (Matthew 1.20).

Glass from the C19th Church of St Mary the Virgin, Freeland, near Oxford.

Healey Willian. O Adonai. Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver, dir, Rupert Lang, 2002.

Gabriel's Annunciation
—Jan Richardson.

For a moment
I hesitated
on the threshold.
For the space
of a breath
I paused,
unwilling to disturb
her last ordinary moment,
knowing that the next step
would cleave her life:
that this day
would slice her story
in two,
dividing all the days before
from all the ones
to come.

The artists would later
depict the scene:
Mary dazzled
by the archangel,
her head bowed
in humble assent,
awed by the messenger
who condescended
to leave paradise
to bestow such an honor
upon a woman, and mortal.

Yet I tell you
it was I who was dazzled,
I who found myself agape
when I came upon her—
reading, at the loom, in the kitchen,
I cannot now recall;
only that the woman before me—
blessed and full of grace
long before I called her so—
shimmered with how completely
she inhabited herself,
inhabited the space around her,
inhabited the moment
that hung between us.

I wanted to save her
from what I had been sent
to say.

Yet when the time came,
when I had stammered
the invitation
(history would not record
the sweat on my brow,
the pounding of my heart;
would not note
that I said
Do not be afraid
to myself as much as
to her)
it was she
who saved me—
her first deliverance—
her Let it be
not just declaration
to the Divine
but a word of solace,
of soothing,
of benediction

for the angel
in the doorway
who would hesitate
one last time—
just for the space
of a breath
torn from his chest—
before wrenching himself away
from her radiant consent,
her beautiful and
awful yes.

Prayer

Jesus,
how clearly we see you at Christmas-time,
cradled by Mary,
protected by Joseph,
worshipped by shepherds,
honoured by kings,
enshrined on the altar,
and loved by the world.

But, oh Lord,
help us look for you, too,
among the taxes of life,
and the wanderings of rootless travellers.
In the world's smelly stables,
and in makeshift mangers.
In sweat-like drops of blood
and rough-hewn crosses, humanly fashioned.
Help us look, Lord—
and help us find!

Not only at Christmas,
but throughout a new year that it might become indeed
'the year of our Lord'.
— Mary Sue H Rosenberger, Sacraments in a refrigerator, Brethren Press, 1979.


May the Lord, when he comes, find us watching and waiting. Amen.