O Emmanuel

O EMMANUEL, our King and law-giver, hope of the nations and their Savior, come!  Save us, O Lord our God!
 
 
O Wisdom, O Pietas, O Adonai, O Root, O Flower and Fruit, O Key, O Sun, O King, O Cornerstone unifying us, O Living Bread---all of these great mysteries to ponder in lectio, to lose oneself in in silent prayer and liturgical prayer---and more, to simply hold and delight in as one holds a baby.  No more words.  This is the moment of the Word made flesh, the moment of Emmanuel, God with us, held in the depths of our quiet hearts.

Let’s listen to St. Gertrude as she describes one of her Christmas experiences:  “It was on that most sacred night in which the sweet dew of divine grace fell on all the world, and the heavens dropped sweetness, that my soul, exposed like a mystic fleece in the court of the monastery, having received in meditation this celestial rain, was prepared to assist at this divine birth in which a Virgin brought forth a son, true God and Man, even as a star produces its ray.  As in a moment of revelation my soul realized that it had been offered, and had received, in place of its heart so to speak, a tender little boy in whom were concealed the greatest gifts of perfection.  When my soul cradled him within itself it suddenly seemed to me that I was changed into the color of this divine infant, if we may call that color which cannot be compared to anything visible.  Then I understood the meaning contained in those sweet and ineffable words:  ‘God will be all in all’; and my soul, which was enriched by the presence of my Beloved, soon knew, by its transports of joy, that it possessed the presence of its Spouse.”

Let us trust with St. Gertrude that God will bless us with himself as Emmanuel; that he will be not only with us by our side but within us in our deepest heart; that he will be not only within us but more and more all in us; and that someday we too will experience the ineffable mystery hidden in those words of fullest presence: God will be all in all.