O Root of Jesse
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December 19, 2018O Root of Jesse, standard raised for all people—kings will stand dumb in your presence, the Gentiles will pay you homage: come! Deliver us! No longer delay!
How does the root of Jesse come to us, a title symbolic of the Davidic Messiah? In his first coming Jesus appeared in the humility of David, the suffering Messiah. In the end time the Root of David will shine in the heavens for all to see: “It is I, Jesus…I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.”
And in the middle coming? How does he come then? The middle coming is covered with the humility of the first coming, for God is so drawn to rest in humble hearts: “Thus says the Lord: Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is my resting place? All these things my hand has made, and so all things are mine, says the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look, to the humble and contrite in spirit, who tremble at my word” (Is 66:1-2).
How can we become humble hearts in which he may rest, hearts trembling with joy for the slightest sound of his voice, interior space for his divine indwelling? St Bernard gives us an infallible way. Mary is the royal road by which he came and still comes to us, going forth from her womb like a bridegroom from his wedding chamber. Let us keep to this way, the royal road of Mary, for as the roots of her humility go down into great depths, so the shoot that springs from this root rises all the way up to the One seated on the throne, even to the Lord of majesty. She teaches us that the waiting to which the poor and humble of the earth are so necessarily subjected is a training in one of the most important principles of the interior life: when the Spirit speaks, act; when the Spirit is silent, wait. She teaches us that the whole point of monastic ascesis, of poverty, labor, humbling self-knowledge, is to bring us to a deep heart, a heart not circling around itself in compulsive worries or superficial pleasures, but one inside itself, silent and waiting, hoping and trusting, unwilling to make its own plans, but resting steadily in the conviction that without him she can do nothing, and more, that he will provide the light and the grace she needs at the proper moment, for he wants us to lean on him in everything.
Image: O Root of Jesse, by Sr Ansgar Holmsberg, CSJ
