Daily Prayer: a resource of Forward Movement

The Forward Day by Day Meditation for December 23, 2012

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SUNDAY, December 23 Advent 4

Luke 1:39-45(46-55). My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed.

She was a woman-child, gathering herbs and drying them in the open-air kitchen of her small stone house. “Mary was the first disciple and the first Christian,” writes Vincenzina Krymow in Mary’s Flowers: Gardens, Legends, and Meditations. “At one time all flowers and plants honored Mary in legend or name.…The angel Gabriel is said to have held a [Madonna] lily in his hand.…The columbine (Our Lady’s Shoes) sprang from the earth where Mary’s foot stepped when she was on her way to visit Elizabeth.”

It seems strange, in sparse December, to think of flowers. But I can imagine a gardener, a lover of Mary, standing over the area where seeds were planted back when the weather was warm. When roses scented the air. Now the gardener watches over the bare earth. Alone, except for a curious dove on an evergreen tree, the gardener knows this is a holy moment. God was in the pious mother. God is in the seed. God is in the waiting. Our salvation draws near.

PRAY for the Diocese of Koforidua (Ghana, West Africa)

Canticle 3 or 15 (Luke 1:46-55) or Ps 80:1-7; Micah 5:2-5a; Hebrews 10:5-10