Lesson at Matins – Isaias xxv. 1‒9
O Lord, you are my God, I will exalt you, and give glory to your name: for you have done wonderful things, your designs of old faithful. Amen. For you have reduced the city to a heap, the strong city to ruin, the house of strangers to be no city, and to be no more built up forever. Therefore will a strong people praise you, the city of mighty nations will fear you... Because you have been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress: a refuge from the whirlwind, a shadow from the heat. And the Lord of hosts will make to all people, in this mountain, a feast of fat things, a feast of wine, of fat things full of marrow, of wine purified from the lees. And He will destroy in this mountain the face of the bond with which all people are tied, and the web that He began over all nations. He will cast death down headlong forever: and the Lord God will wipe away tears from every face, and the reproach of his people he will take away from off the whole Earth: for the Lord has spoken it. And they will say in that day: “Lo, this is our God, we have waited for Him, and He will save us: this is the Lord, we have patiently waited for Him, and we will rejoice and be joyful in His salvation.
Thanks be to God.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
Yet a little while, and the conqueror of death will appear, and then, in the joy of our hearts, we will say: “Lo, this is our God: we have waited for Him, and He will save us. We have patiently waited for Him. This is He, and we will rejoice and be joyful in His salvation.” Let us, therefore, prepare the way of the Lord, that we may receive Him worthily, and in this work of our preparation, let us have recourse to Mary. Saturday is the day which is sacred to her. She will the more readily grant the prayers said to her upon it. Let us consider her in her grand privilege of being full of grace, carrying in her womb Him whom we so long to possess. If we ask her by what means she rendered herself worthy of such an immense favour, she will tell us that in her was simply fulfilled the prophecy which the Church so continually repeats during these days of Advent: “Every valley will be filled up.” The humble Mary was the valley blessed of the Lord, a valley beautiful and fertile in which God sowed the Divine Wheat, our Saviour, Jesus: for it is written in the Psalm that “the valleys will abound with corn” (Psalm lxiv. 14).
O Mary, it was your humility that drew down upon you the admiration of your Creator. If, from the high Heaven where He dwells, He had perceived a Virgin more humble in her love, He would have chosen her in preference to you: but no, it was you that won His predilection, O mystic valley, ever verdant and lovely in your flowers of grace. We that, like high hills, are so proud and such sinners, what shall we do? We must look on this God of ours who comes to us in infinite humility and then humble ourselves out of love and gratitude. O Blessed Mother! Obtain this grace for us. Pray for us that henceforth we may submit ourselves to the will of our Lord as you did when you spoke those admirable words: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord : may it be done to me according to thy word!”
