Reflections
PRAYER with Sister Monica Sparks (SGS)
PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD
Advent Musings with Sr Monica
Advent is a very significant season for us who would take care of Mother Earth in this time within our southern hemisphere...our Body/Spirit reality. As mother whales and babies pods head for the rich banquet of southern seas, fruits and grains ripen for harvest and jacarandas rain blossoms on us, we are called to our Liturgical reality. The Call is to build our Spirituality by contemplating the Word of God, first spoken in the creation of matter at the dawn of our Universe, brought into our human flesh by the Incarnation of the Word of God, Jesus, and in Christ the Cosmic Lord bringing the whole of Creation towards the complete fullness of the Reign of God...God's love affair with matter.
Let us be challenged to bring Christ to birth here and now; to make contemplative time and space in our busy pre Christmas preoccupations. With all of Creation we yearn and long for the fullness of life. As Scripture says in Romans 8v 21-24. Creation still retains the hope of being freed from the slavery of decadence, to enjoy the same freedom and glory as the children of God. From the beginning til now, the entire Creation has been groaning in one great act of giving birth, and not only Creation but all of us who possess the first fruits of the Spirit as we groan inwardly waiting for our bodies to be set free.
A response adapted from an Advent Hymn
(Bernadette Farrell)
WORD OF GOD, DWELL WITHIN US, MARANATHA (*Come Lord Jesus)
WORD OF FREEDOM, SAVE ALL CREATION, MARANATHA
WORD WE LONG AND THIRST FOR, MARANATHA
HERE AMONG US, LIVING IN US, MARANATHA
Let us hold in contemplative space and prayer our current groaning world, from desecrated Earth to our present desecrated peoples. Examples abound
O GOD WHO BRINGS ALL LIFE TO BIRTH (adapted Marty Haugen 1987)
O CHRIST WHO WORE LOVE'S HUMAN FACE
O SPIRIT WHO BRINGS LOVE'S GIFTS ANEW
GRANT US FORGIVENESS, WISDOM, LOVE AND GRACE
In the midst of the groaning, there is confident and expectant Hope. Mary is our model. Our God is a birthing God and the inherent pull towards fullness of life always brings new possibilities in the actuality of GOD'S REIGN HERE AND NOW.
Scripture abounds. Isaiah the prophet in particular.
IS 35V 1-4 Let the wilderness and the dry lands exult, let the waste lands rejoice and bloom, let it bring forth flowers like the jonquil, let it rejoice and sing for joy...they shall see the glory of Yahweh, the splendour of our God. Strengthen all weary hands, steady all trembling knees and say to all faint hearts "Courage! Do not be afraid. Look your God is going to meet you. God is coming to save you. Then the eye of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unsealed, the lame shall leap like the deer and the tongues 
of the dumb sing for joy, for water gushes in the desert, streams in the waste land, etc." note also Isaiah 25 and 26. Of course it is understood that we would read the opening verses of the GOSPELS.
So making time, let us WAIT FOR THE LORD AND PREPARE WHATEVER PATHS WE CAN, THEN MAY THE JOYS OF CHRISTMAS FILL YOU AND ALL YOUR FAMILY AND MAY THE EARTH REJOICE.
Sr Monica
