From the Epistle to William Simpson by Robert Burns
Ev'n winter bleak has charms to me,
When winds rave thro' the naked tree;
Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree
Are hoary gray;
Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee,
Dark'ning the day!
O Nature! a' thy shews an' forms
To feeling, pensive hearts hae charms!
Whether the summer kindly warms,
Wi' life an' light;
Or winter howls, in gusty storms,
The lang, dark night!
The Muse, nae poet ever fand her,
Till by himsel he learn'd to wander,
Adown some trottin burn's meander,
An' no think lang:
O, sweet to stray, an' pensive ponder
A heart-felt sang.
Three wintry verses from Robert Burns. Silence and solitude seem to be his prerequisites for hearing the heart-felt song forming in his mind. The Scots dialect is not too difficult here, but just a couple of translations from our third verse.
Fand: found.
Burn: brook; it crops up in English place-names, Saltburn, Blackburn, etc..
Mrs Turnstone, whose birthday this is, loves the fact that on 13 January the sun is visible in Greenland for the first time since the winter’s darkness took over. Let’s pray that we might be ready to observe the light we are given and to rejoice this day and every day.
Fr Tom Herbst OFM, an early supporter and contributor to this blog, died on 8 November. Here is one of his Advent reflections, well worth reading again and appropriate for the Solstice. RIP, Fr Tom, and thank you!
Here, well up there in the Northern Hemisphere, the approach of the Church’s great winter feasts is met by ever shortening days, grayish sunsets subtly shaded with pastel colour, and the gathering shadows of storm-rattled darkness. Even now, as I look out from the giant bay window in my flat toward a slate gray sea, it feels like a slow motion dawn rather than what the clock prosaically states is high noon. And the Church, in her time-tested wisdom, has properly situated the purple cloaked season of waiting and hoping within a test mirrored by nature herself- will the Son of Man ever return; will I ever witness the eastern blaze of a 5:00 AM springtime dawn seen through the very same bay window now shrouded in a feeble mist? One can hope, but for now all I can do is walk my two bemused dogs in the bookended darkness of a seven o’clock dawn and four thirty afternoon sunset.
I have had critics of the Church, harboring grave suspicions of pagan flashbacks, point out the total lack of biblical witness for the date of Christ’s birth, the unlikely probability of shepherds out in the fields in the dead of winter and, far worse, the close congruence of the decadent Roman Saturnalia with the newly minted Feast of the Nativity. Shopping frenzy beginning at mid-November and a near-universal expansion of waistlines don’t help- as a kindly Jehovah’s Witness picture framer said once, utterly confident that I would agree. It seems, though, as if the whole point has been missed. It is the ritual celebration of Christ’s birth and the expectation of God’s promise fulfilled – born of an indestructible hope- that are being celebrated and the vast stage of nature herself hosts the drama. Yes, the shortening days followed by the magic threshold of the Solstice, when that longed for flicker of light begins to wax stronger, formed the reason for the Saturnalia but this has been embodied by the small child laid in a manger; the hope for Emmanuel realized at last.
O key of David – how often do we think of the freedom our house keys give us?
Here are the ‘O Antiphons’ shared by Fr Valentine Erhanon, and below, his homily for the 4th Sunday of Advent. Fr Valentine is the parish priest of Saints Simon and Jude, Streatham Hill, London.
Saturday December 17 O Sapientia [O Wisdom] O Wisdom of our God Most High, guiding creation with power and love: come to teach us the path of knowledge!
Sunday December 18 O Adonai [O Lord and Ruler] O Leader of the House of Israel, giver of the Law to Moses on Sinai: come to rescue us with your mighty power!
Monday December 19 O Radix Jesse [O Root of Jesse] O Root of Jesse’s stem, sign of God’s love for all his people: come to save us without delay!
Tuesday December 20 O Clavis David [O Key of David] O Key of David, opening the gates of God’s eternal Kingdom: come and free the prisoners of darkness!
Wednesday December 21 O Oriens [O Rising Dawn or Morning Star] O Radiant Dawn, splendour of eternal light, sun of justice: come and shine on those who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death.
Thursday December 22 O Rex Gentium [O King of the Nations] O King of all nations and keystone of the Church: come and save man, whom you formed from the dust!
Friday December 23 – Mass at 9am O Emmanuel O Emmanuel, our King and Giver of Law: come to save us, Lord our God!
Homily for the Third Week of Advent,
17/18 December 2022 by Father Valentine Erhahon
First Reading: Isaiah 7:10-14; Psalm 23 (24); Second Reading: Romans: 1:1-7; Gospel: Matthew 1:18-24
Finally, what is going to happen …
For the past four weeks, we have starved ourselves from saying/singing the Gloria at Mass. Over two billion Catholics have deliberately deprived themselves of singing those words of the Angels that we hear at Mass every time and have gotten so used to. The intensity of this abstinence is growing in our hearts. We are longing, yearning and waiting to sing the Gloria for the very first time on Christmas Eve, on the 24th of December, first at the Children’s Mass at 5.30 pm and then at the Solemn Mass at 10 pm.
We will join millions of other Catholic Churches from Shanghai to Abu Dhabi from Panama to Benin City; from Kansas to Kerala, from every part of the continent right to London, to Streatham Hill, anywhere the Catholic Church is: in chapels in villages, in palaces, and cities, in small towns, in grand cathedrals or humble churches, on this most solemn of nights, the Gloria, the Glory to God in the Highest will resound – in our Churches. What great joy! As tradition demands, all the Altar Servers will ring all our bells, as we cry out joyfully to God in the Gloria. One by one, our Altar Servers will light the six ancient candles you have been looking at in the sanctuary wondering when they would be lit. Read Revelation 1:12ff to discover the significance of these candles. You will notice in the book of Revelation there are Seven candlesticks – look out of the last one on the sanctuary: He is the word of God and the light that shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” (John 1:5.)
Our two parish Angels: Cherubim and Seraphim, have now left their station where you normally see them guarding the Holy of Holies in our Tabernacle. They too have come down to welcome the arrival of the Godchild and keep guard next to Him. You will also notice that in our lectern the four creatures in Revelation 4: 6-8 are now displayed: each representing the four gospels: Matthew: the winged man; Mark: the Lion; Luke: the Ox; John: the Eagle.
You will also notice that we have brought out the Joseph’s baby wooden chair, made for the Word of God; and on it: our newborn King – the Word of God – will seat on it – in his manger on Christmas Eve: O Come, Let us Adore Him Christ the Lord. The Book of the Gospel is already opened in Joseph’s baby wooden chair to the very page of the Gospel of the night. Before then, of course, we have the first of the three Great Processions of the night, with the ancient chant that recounts the history of our salvation – informing us of how in the fullness of time, God himself decided to intervene in human history by bringing forth his son, born of a woman to save us. Next will be the second Great Procession where the infant King will come into his Church. I will not put into words what this would feel like because it will lose the value of its significance and meaning. It is meant to be experienced. The Third procession of course will be at the end of Mass when with lit candles we will make our procession to the Nativity Grotto. Arriving at His Grotto on this most Solemn and Holy night, which many on Streatham Hill have been visiting each day, I will bless the Grotto – the Stable – the Manger and our Lord and God will spend the night in his stable in the cold. On Christmas Day, He will return to the Church – where we will adore Him and celebrate His CHRIST – MAS.
Every day from Christmas Eve until the end of Christmastide, our Lord will stay in His Grotto facing the streets of Hillside road, giving hope to all. During Mass, He will return to His Church to bless us. We remember though: that while our Grotto may look nice and pretty, Jesus will be sleeping in the cold like many homeless people. Instead of being in a hospital bed or a nice room, he will smell animals, straws and hay on his first night in this world as a baby. There is no warmth in the manger, no proper safety from harm or infection. We remember when they arrived in Bethlehem for the census, Mary and Joseph could not find a home to rent. No one could let them into their home. We remember, in pain, hardship and poverty, our God came into the world to save us, but no one opened their door to the Holy Family. Would we have let Mary and Jesus into our homes that night for Jesus to be born in our home? Do we let him into our hearts today? Do we have time for Jesus? Do we allow Jesus into our thinking process and our decision-making in our personal and daily lives? Or like he first experienced on the night of his birth, we have closed the door and have no space in our lives to accommodate him, so we send him away out, back into the cold because our lives are full of ourselves; we are distracted; conflicted; unable to commit. I will come back to this discussion in my homily on Christmas Eve when we will see all those who make up Jesus’s ancestry.
For now, we begin our last countdown to Christmas with the 0 Antiphons. To prepare for Christmas in a few day’s time: today – one by one, the Altar Servers, and then the children will place their Roses of Thanksgiving in the manger to thank Saint Joseph for doing the will of God, by taking Mary into his homes. Today our Mother Mary is heavily pregnant, she is on a donkey with Joseph who is protecting and looking after her; it is cold and windy outside. Today they are approaching Bethlehem. Join them on this procession of doing God’s will, and go behind them to offer them support. Walk with them. Together as a parish community, we are going to Bethlehem to adore the Infant King on Christmas Eve and to present our very self as a present to him for his birthday so that he can transform us to become truly like him in the Great exchange of Gifts on Christmas Day – between God and humans, between Love and love.
They like bikes in Belgium! Not that they are always the most appropriate means of transport. This is the story of an overloaded bike in Canterbury and what happened next.
We begin with Will parking his bike against a rack where there was already a red lady’s Dutch style bike, not unlike the one outside the shop above. When Will had finished his shopping, the Dutch bike had gone, but there was a red purse on the ground. It had an address in it, a few minutes’ ride away, so off he went. It was shortly before Christmas.
The door was opened by an older lady, dressed in red, pleased to have her purse back: ‘My basket was too full, I am silly!’ now she was ready to press me to take tea in her winter-wonderland front room. A red settee and armchair, flashing lights and a glorious fake tree, a few copies of the Watchtower. The Watchtower magazine of Jehovah’s Witnesses? The same.
Yes, Mrs S was a Witness. Will had always believed that Jehovah’s Witnesses stood at a distance from Christmas and all things Yule. There had been the time when our regular witness missioner, Joe, had knocked on our door at 1.00 p.m. on December 25th with a personal delivery of the magazine. Obviously Christmas day was nothing to him. There had been more than one year when Witnesses expected a Christmas tree, given by a family, to be removed from a shared bay of the hospice where Mrs Turnstone worked. No surrender to other people’s sensibilities there, even when the other people were dying.
‘I came late to the Witnesses through my late husband,’ she explained. ‘But I like to put up something for Christmas to welcome my friends and neighbours. And the lights are a lovely, comforting sight at this time.’
‘What does Joe have to say about it?’ I asked. ‘He knows I take round my share of leaflets. He doesn’t have to know that I have a Christmas tree!’
And perhaps her Christmas tree and hospitality were as powerful a witness as her magazine.
Francis gets under way again, accompanied by Brother Leo. Once Francis would have walked but his condition, after a rigorous life and the suffering he was now enduring from the stigmata, meant that he had to ride on a donkey, and the donkey’s owner came to look after man and beast.
Jesus had walked through Palestine for three years before he took to riding on a donkey as he came to Jerusalem for the last time. I am sure we are meant to see the parallel with Francis’ last journey to Assisi. He, too, knew that he was riding to his death.
Image from Strasbourg Cathedral.
Saint Francis departed Città di Castello, to go unto Santa Maria degli Angeli with Friar Leo, and with a good man, who lent him his little ass, whereupon Saint Francis rode.
Now, it came to pass that, by reason of the bad roads and the great cold, they journeyed all day without being able to reach any place where they might lodge; so being constrained by the darkness and by the bad weather, they took shelter beneath the brow of a hollow rock, to avoid the snow and the night which was coming on. And, being in this evil case and also badly clad, the good man, to whom the ass belonged, could not sleep by reason of the cold; wherefore he began to murmur gently within himself and to weep; and almost did he blame Saint Francis, who had brought him into such a place. Then Saint Francis, perceiving this, had compassion upon him, and, in fervour of spirit, stretched out his hand and touched him.
O marvellous thing! as soon as he had touched him with that hand of his, enkindled and pierced by the fire of the Seraph, all the cold left him; and so much heat entered into him, both within and without, that he seemed to be hard by the mouth of a burning furnace; whence being presently comforted in soul and body he fell asleep; and, according to that which he said, he slept more sweetly that night, among rocks and snow until morning, than he had ever slept in his own bed.
The other day when I walked into the greenhouse it was the first time this year that it felt appreciably warmer than outdoors. A spring moment even in February and worthy of a mention in the blog.
When I was looking for a picture to mark the moment I came across this snap from exactly a year before. The snow was such a blessing to all who like snowmen and sledges. There was not enough for cross country skiing, and the sledgers were spattered with as much mud as snow. But that was a moment of pure joy for many people who had been locked down by the corona virus. A heartfelt Deo Gratias!
A jolly, hopeful poem from Christina Rossetti. Laudato Si’.
Every valley drinks,
Every dell and hollow:
Where the kind rain sinks and sinks,
Green of Spring will follow.
Yet a lapse of weeks
Buds will burst their edges,
Strip their wool-coats, glue-coats, streaks,
In the woods and hedges;
Weave a bower of love
For birds to meet each other,
Weave a canopy above
Nest and egg and mother.
But for fattening rain
We should have no flowers,
Never a bud or leaf again
But for soaking showers;
Never a mated bird
In the rocking tree-tops,
Never indeed a flock or herd
To graze upon the lea-crops.
Lambs so woolly white,
Sheep the sun-bright leas on,
They could have no grass to bite
But for rain in season.
We should find no moss
In the shadiest places,
Find no waving meadow-grass
Pied with broad-eyed daisies;
But miles of barren sand,
With never a son or daughter,
Not a lily on the land,
Or lily on the water.
(from "Poems" by Christina Georgina Rossetti)
A festive fire at the Turnstones’ a few years ago.
Festive fires are few and far between these days, but ‘Rouse, rouse the fire, and pile it high, Light up a constellation here’, as Samuel Johnson says. It will soon be Christmas. We have our constellation of fairy lights, now what would he have made of that?
Well, we nor more than Johnson, should not submit to a dreary winter’s tale: it will soon be Christmas! Let’s use each transient hour to restore the spring in our own – or other people’s hearts. It is the time of Joy.
But many are in danger of death in regions where conflict has led to famine, cold, sickness and separation from family and friends. Let us not bar the door of our hearts to them!
Winter
Haste, close the window, bar the doors, Fate leaves me Stella, and a friend.
In nature’s aid, let art supply With light and heat my little sphere; Rouse, rouse the fire, and pile it high, Light up a constellation here.
Let musick sound the voice of joy, Or mirth repeat the jocund tale; Let love his wanton wiles employ, And o’er the season wine prevail.
Yet time life’s dreary winter brings, When mirth’s gay tale shall please no more Nor musick charm—though Stella sings; Nor love, nor wine, the spring restore.
Catch, then, Oh! catch the transient hour, Improve each moment as it flies; Life’s a short summer—man a flow’r: He dies—alas! how soon he dies!”
(from The Works of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., in Nine Volumes.
Let’s turn to Christina Rossetti, another of our favourite poets, singing of winter rain. I like her ‘rocking tree-tops’.
A creation hymn indeed, and looking forward to Spring and renewal, new life. And if we do not care better for our Earth, we can look forward to something like ‘Miles of barren sand, With never a son or daughter, Not a lily on the land, Or lily on the water.’
Time to prepare the way of the Lord.
Every valley drinks,
Every dell and hollow:
Where the kind rain sinks and sinks,
Green of Spring will follow.
Yet a lapse of weeks
Buds will burst their edges,
Strip their wool-coats, glue-coats, streaks,
In the woods and hedges;
Weave a bower of love
For birds to meet each other,
Weave a canopy above
Nest and egg and mother.
But for fattening rain
We should have no flowers,
Never a bud or leaf again
But for soaking showers;
Never a mated bird
In the rocking tree-tops,
Never indeed a flock or herd
To graze upon the lea-crops.
Lambs so woolly white,
Sheep the sun-bright leas on,
They could have no grass to bite
But for rain in season.
We should find no moss
In the shadiest places,
Find no waving meadow-grass
Pied with broad-eyed daisies;
But miles of barren sand,
With never a son or daughter,
Not a lily on the land,
Or lily on the water.
Christina Rossetti
agnellusmirror 