Lesson for Matins – Isaias lxiv. 1‒11
O that you would rend the heavens, and would come down. The mountains would melt away at your presence. They would melt as at the burning of fire. The waters would burn with fire, that your name might be made known to your enemies: that the nations might tremble at your presence. When you will do wonderful things, we will not bear them: you did come clown, and at your presence the mountains melted away. From the beginning of the world they have not heard, nor perceived with the ears: the eye has not seen, O God, besides you, what things you have prepared for them that wait for you. You have met him that rejoices and does justice: in your ways they will remember you: behold you are angry, and we have sinned. In them we have been always, and we will be saved. And we are all become as one unclean, and all our justices as the rag of a menstruous woman: and we have fallen as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. There is none that calls on your name, that rises up and takes hold of you: you have hid your thy face from us, and have crushed us in the hand of our iniquity. And now, O Lord, you are our Father, and we are clay: and you are our maker, and we all are the works of your hands. Be not very angry, O Lord, and remember no longer our iniquity: behold, see, we are all your people. The city of thy sanctuary is become a desert, Sion is made a desert, Jerusalem is desolate. The house of our holiness, and of our glory, where our fathers praised you, is burnt with fire, and all our lovely things are turned into ruins.
Thanks be to God.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
O God of our Fathers! Delay not, but show yourself to us. The city which you love is desolate. Come and raise up Jerusalem. Avenge the glory of her temple. This was the cry of the Prophet. You have heard it and are come to deliver Sion from her captivity, giving her a new era of glory and holiness. You are come, not to destroy but to fulfil the law and by your visit Sion has been changed into the Church, your Spouse. But why, O you her Beloved Saviour! Why have you turned away your face? Why is this Church of your love left in the wilderness, weeping like Jeremias over the ruins of the Sanctuary, and as Rachel over her children that had been taken from her? Why has her inheritance been delivered to the stranger? By your power she had become the mother of countless children. She had nourished them. She had taught them, in your name, the things that pertain to the present and the future life, and these ungrateful children have turned against her. She has been driven from nation to nation, bearing away with her the heavenly treasure of Faith. Her mysteries have ceased to be celebrated where once they were the glory and happiness of the people, and from your throne above, O divine Word, Creator of the universe, you see everywhere throughout the Earth altars overturned, and temples profaned. Oh! come, then, and rekindle the smouldering fire of Faith.
Remember your Apostles and your Martyrs. Remember your Saints who have founded Churches and honoured them by their virtues and miracles. Remember your Spouse the Church and support her during her earthly pilgrimage until the number of your elect is filled up. She longs to possess you in the eternal light of the vision, but you have given her a heart with such mother’s love that she will not leave her children as long as there be one to save, nor cease to save until that day come when there will no more be a Militant Church, but the one sole Triumphant Church, inebriated with the enjoyment of the sight and embraces of her God. But that last day is not yet come, Jesus! There is yet time for you to descend from Heaven and visit your vineyard. Restore to the branches of the tree the leaves which had fallen in the storm of iniquity. Let this tree of your predilection bud forth new branches, and the old ones which had separated from it, and seemed to force your justice to cast them in the fire, let them be once more grafted to the parent trunk, so torn by their rupture from her. Come, O Jesus, for the sake of your Church. She is dearer to you than was the Jerusalem of old.
