ADVENT

Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!
Help us to be ready for you...to see you and love you in the circumstances of our lives, in the people who surround us. Help us to be ready to give you whatever You ask, whatever you need of our poor treasures to enrich the poor....whatever you need of our lives and energies to bring hope to the hopeless.
Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!


Lord our God,
we praise you for your Son, Jesus Christ: he is Emmanuel,
 God with us, the hope of the peoples
he is the wisdom that teaches and guides us,
he is the Saviour of every nation.
Lord God, let your blessing come upon us
as we light the candles of this wreath.
May the wreath and its light be a sign of Christ's promise to bring us salvation.
May he come quickly and not delay.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. AMEN.

 

Preparing for Advent V

Prayer in the Days Before Advent

My brother, Jesus. It happens every year. I think that this will be the year that I have a reflective Advent. I look forward to Sunday and this new season, Jesus. But all around me are the signs rushing me to Christmas and some kind of celebration that equates spending with love.
I need your help. I want to slow my world down. This year, more than ever, I need Advent, these weeks of reflection and longing for hope in the darkness.
Jesus, this year, help me to have that longing. Help me to feel it in my heart and be aware of the hunger and thirst in my own soul. Deep down, I know there is something missing in my life, but I can’t quite reach for it. I can’t get what is missing.
I know it is about you, Jesus. You are not missing from my life, but I might be missing the awareness of all of the places you are present there.

Be with me, my dear friend. Guide me in these weeks to what you want to show me this Advent. Help me to be vulnerable enough to ask you to lead me to the place of my own weakness, the very place where I will find you the most deeply embedded in my heart, loving me without limits.

Source: Daily Reflection Calender

Preparing for Advent IV

How sour sweet time is
when time is broke and no proportion kept!
So it is in the music of men's lives.
And here have I the daintiness of ear
to check time broke in a disorder'd string:
But, for the concord of my state and time,
had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
I wasted time, and now time doth waste me.

William Shakespeare.

Preparing for Advent III

Come and make all things new,
build up this ruined earth;
restore our faded paradise,
Careation's second birth

Horatius Bonar, Nineteenth century

Preparing for Advent II

"Our time is a time of waiting; waiting is its special destiny. And every time is a time of waiting, waiting for the breaking in of eternity. All time runs forward. All time, both history and in personal life, is expectation. Time itself is waiting, waiting not for another time, but for that which is eternal.

Paul Tilliich

Preparing for Advent

Looking out from the Prior's Hall

Concerning times and seasons, brothers, you have no need for anything to be written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief at night. When people are saying, "Peace and security," then sudden disaster comes upon them, like labour pains upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you, brothers, are not in darkness, for that day to overtake you like a thief. For all of you are children of the light  and children of the day. We are not of the night or of darkness. Therefore, let us not sleep as the rest do, but let us stay alert and sober. Those who sleep go to sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. But since we are of the day, let us be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet that is hope for salvation. For God did not destine us for wrath, but to gain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live together with him. Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, as indeed you do.

1Thessalonians 5:1-11

November ~ A month of memory.

November always begins with an attitude of remembering. St Augustine of Hippo says that when we remember we make present the past. So remembering is a good and holy thing. The feast of All Saints reminds us of our heavenly home. The place that has been prepared for us is brought into our present as we remember those who have gone before us in faith and are with God. The commemoration of All Souls is the day we remember those who have died and are in that final time of being made ready to be with God for ever. We remember them in prayer and hope that our prayers and care, assist them as they let go off all those attachments and attitudes that prevent them from seeing the full beauty of God and of themselves.

On the 14th and 15th of November, the Carmelite family bring these feasts into a more local and personal context as we remember those of our Order who have died. To the left of the Relic Chapel at Aylesford is the Chapel of the Carmelite Saints. If you look carefully at the ceramics that decorate that chapel you will see in the midst of those Carmelites recognised ny the Church as saints, a nun without a halo. She represents all those faithful members of our family who are with God.

The Solemn Blessing for the Feast of All Carmelite Saints, reminds us that this is a feast of our future

May God, who set apart the Carmelite Order

for the honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary,

clothe you with her virtues

and make you worthy of her service. Amen.

May he who endowed Carmel

with the spirit of the prophet Elijah

make you fervent in prayer

and zealous for his honour. Amen.

May he who has blessed Carmel

with a host of saintly sons and daughters

make you their worthy brothers and sisters on earth

and partakers of their everlasting fellowship in heaven. Amen.

On the 15th of November we remember All Carmlite Souls. I always find the feast of All Souls and All Carmelite Souls, quite beautiful. I find these words of the Dominican friar Bede Jarret a great comfort.

We seem to give them back to you

O God, who gave them first to us.

Yet as you did not lose them in giving

So we do not lose them by their return.

Not as the world gives, do you give, O lover of souls.

What you give, you do not take away

For what is yours is ours if we are yours.

And life is eternal and love is immortal

And death is only a horizon

And a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.

Lift us up, Strong Son of God, that we may see further.

Cleanse our eyes that we may see more clearly,

draw us closer to yourself that we may know ourselves

 to be nearer to our loved ones who are with you.

And while you prepare a place for us

Prepare us also for that happy place

That where you are we may be also, for evermore.

The names of those of our province now buried in our provincial graveyard at Aylesford

May the souls of all the faithful departed,

through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, pray for us.

Saints of Carmel, pray for us.

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