30 NOVEMBER – WEDNESDAY OF THE FIRST WEEK OF ADVENT

Lesson at Matins – Isaias iii. 1‒11

For behold the sovereign the Lord of hosts will take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the valiant and the strong, the whole strength of bread, and the whole strength of water; the strong man, and the man of war, the judge and the prophet, and the cunning man, and the ancient, the captain over fifty, and the honourable in countenance, and the counsellor, and the architect, and the skilful in eloquent speech. And I will give children to be their princes, and the effeminate will rule over them. For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen, because their tongue and their devices are against the Lord, to provoke the eyes of his majesty. The show of their countenance has answered them, and they have proclaimed abroad their sin as Sodom, and they have not hid it. Woe to their souls, for evils are rendered to them! Say to the just man that it is well, for he will eat the fruit of his doings. Woe to the wicked to evil, for the reward of his hands will be given him.

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Jerusalem is tending to her destruction. Therefore she is losing all power and, with the rest, the power of understanding. She no longer knows where she is going, and she sees not the abyss into which she is plunging. Such are all those men who never give a thought to the Coming of the Sovereign Judge. They are men of whom Moses said in his Canticle: “They are a nation without counsel and without wisdom: that they would be wise and would understand, and would provide for their last end!” The Son of God comes now in the swaddling-clothes of a weak babe, in the humility of a servant and, to speak with the Prophets as the dew which falls softly drop by drop. But it will not always be so. This Earth also, which now is the scene of our sins and our hard-heartedness, will perish before the face of the angry Judge. And if we have made it the one object of our love, to what will we then cling? “A sudden death which has happened in your presence,” says Saint John Chrysostom, “or an earthquake, or the bare threat of some dire calamity, terrify and prostrate you: what then will it be when the whole earth will sink beneath your feet; when you will see all nature in disorder; when you will hear the sound of the last trumpet; when the Sovereign Master of the universe will appear before you in the fullness of His Majesty? Perchance, you have seen criminals dragged to punishment: did they not seem to die twenty times before they reached the place of execution, and before the executioner could lay his hands on them, fear had crushed out life?” Oh the terror of that Last Day! How is it that men can expose themselves to such misery when, to avoid it, they have but to open their hearts to Him who is now coming to them in gentlest love, asking them to give Him a place in their souls, and promising to shelter them from the wrath to come if they will but receive Him! O Jesus, who can withstand your anger at the Last Day? Now you are our Brother, our Friend, a Little Child who is to be born for us: we will therefore make covenant with you so that, loving you now in your first Coming, we may not fear you in the second. When you come in that second one, bid your Angels approach us, and say to us those thrilling words: “It is well!”

29 NOVEMBER – TUESDAY OF THE FIRST WEEK OF ADVENT

Lesson at Matins – Isaias ii. 1‒3

The word that Isaias the son of Amos saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. And in the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord will be prepared on the top of mountains, and it will be exalted above the hills: and all nations will flow to it. And many people will go, and say: “Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob: and he will teach us his ways: and we will walk in his paths, for the law shall come forth from Sion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

How the Church loves to hear and say these grand words of the Prophet: “Come let us go up to the Mountain of the Lord!” She repeats them in the Lauds of every Feria in Advent, and her children bless the Lord who, that we might have no difficulty in finding Him, has made Himself like a high mountain. High, indeed, yet can we all ascend it. It is true that at first this mountain is, as we learn from another Prophet, a small stone which is scarce perceptible, and this to show the humility of the Messiah at His birth. But it soon becomes great, and all people see it and are invited to dwell on its fertile slopes, yes, to go up to its very summit, bright with the rays of the Sun of Justice. It is thus, Jesus, that you call us all, and that you approach towards all, and the greatness and sublimity of thy mysteries are put within the reach of our littleness. We desire to join, without delay, that happy multitude of people which is journeying on towards you. We are already with them. We are resolved to fix our tent under your shadow, O Mountain ever blessed! There shelter us, and let us be out of reach of the noise of the world beneath us. Suffer us to go so far up that we may lose all sight of that same world’s vanities. May we never forget those paths which lead even to the blissful summit where the mountain, the figure, disappears, and the soul finds herself face to face with Him whose vision eternally keeps the Angels in rapture, and whose delight is to be with the children of men! (Proverbs viii. 31).

28 NOVEMBER – MONDAY OF THE FIRST WEEK OF ADVENT

Lesson at Matins – Isaiah i. 16‒18

“Wash yourselves, be clean, take away the evil of your devices from my eyes: cease to do perversely, learn to do well: seek judgement, relieve the oppressed, judge for the fatherless, defend the widow. And then come, and accuse me,” says the Lord. “If your sins be as scarlet, they will be made as white as snow, and if they be red as crimson, they will be white as wool.”

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

The Saviour who is so soon to be with us and to save us, warns us not only to prepare ourselves to appear before Him, but also to purify our souls. “It is most just,” says Saint Bernard, “that the soul which was the first to fall should be the first to rise. Let us therefore defer caring for the body until the day when Jesus Christ will come and reform it by the Resurrection, for, in the first Coming, the Precursor says to us: ‘Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.’ Observe, he says not the maladies of the body, nor the miseries of the flesh. He says sins, which are the malady of the soul and the corruption of the spirit. Take heed then, you my body, and wait for your turn and time. You can hinder the salvation of the soul, and your own safety is not within your reach. Let the soul labour for herself, and strive you too to help her, for if you share in her sufferings, you will share in her glory. Retard her perfection, and you retard your own. You will not be regenerated until God sees His own image restored in the soul.”

Let us, then, purify our souls. Let us do the works of the spirit, not the deeds of the flesh. Our Saviour’s promise is most clear. He will turn the deep dye of our iniquities into the purest whiteness. He asks but one thing of us: that we sin no more. He says to us: “Cease to do perversely, and then come and accuse me, come and complain against me if I do not cleanse you.” O Jesus, we will not defer a single day of this holy season. We accept, from this moment, the conditions you offer us. We sincerely desire to make our peace with you, to bring the flesh into subjection to our spirit, to make good all the injustice we have committed against our neighbour, and to hush, by the sighs of our heart-felt compunction, that voice of our sins which has so long cried to you for vengeance.