Psallam​​ TIBI​

 

BEATA ES

 

BLESSED ARE YOU for your faith has transformed you into vessels of the Most High overflowing with His Spirit. You are called, you are chosen, you have been blessed with the vision of His face; His advent in your own life before the day of His coming in glory. Rejoice, then, and be glad, for just as He came once for you, so too does He come to you today, and so also shall He come at the completion of all things to gather unto eternity the communion you posses through faith in His abiding love.

 

Today we are reminded of the beatific vision that will one day be ours; the eyes of faith perceiving but dimly now the fullness of the glory of God. So are we charged to live by faith and not sight, for it is faith that directs the eyes beyond the human field of vision to the immortal, invisible God who took flesh and was born of the Virgin. We are charged to direct our eyes into our hearts where dwells His Holy Spirit, to witness the transformation of our lives in the love of His coming; from there to see the world through the eyes of Him who came and to live rejoicing in the good news of His salvation.

 

This rejoicing, which is the call of Gaudete Sunday, is no jaunty exuberance but an interior joy that celebrates the intimacy of our encounter with the living God; the response to the call that each one has received and which we must discern and cultivate with docility. For as with the Angel’s message to the Virgin, it is not the performance of her will that is the source of blessing but the performance of all that her Lord had promised her. So before we arise and shout, let us kneel in His presence and ponder, in the silence of our communion with the Saviour, to what tidings of great joy, to what promise of blessings do we give our humble fiat. For all is grace and His grace is all gift, which makes us call out, “Rejoice in the Lord always.” For His promise to which I willingly accede my whole being is the cause of all joy, the cause of every blessing. So shall we be called blessed, for with the Virgin, the Almighty has done great things for me.

 

Pray then, for a docile heart that freely embraces the joy of the Lord's coming. For it is a joy that we, as members of the Body of Christ, His Church, experience at once as past, present and future, for He that is eternal took our flesh in the fullness of time, and never forsaking it, clothed us in immortality, turning the mourning of our earthly sojourn into the eternal joy of His heavenly repast.

 

 

Beata es Maria, quae credidisti Domino: perficientur in te, quae dicta sunt tibi a Domino, alleluia.

Antiphona Magnificat, ad Vesperas Dominica III Adventus

Blessed art thou, O Mary, that hast believed the Lord

for there shall be a performance of those things which were told thee from the Lord. Alleluia.