Advent: To Seek and to Save the Lost (virtual)

Car McGinley Leave a Comment

The Advent season returns us to the incarnation of the Christ-spirit and its power to restore us in hope and renew us in purpose. This series takes its starting point from the Gospel of Luke where Jesus says he has come “to seek and to save the lost.” Sometimes the language of saving doesn’t always set easily with us. Nor does the suggestion that we are somehow lost! Yet, in setting aside time to listen with the ear of our hearts to Jesus, to Luke, to each other and to our own inner longings – we may find ourselves newly …

Advent: To Seek and to Save the Lost (in-person)

Car McGinley Leave a Comment

The Advent season returns us to the incarnation of the Christ-spirit and its power to restore us in hope and renew us in purpose. This series takes its starting point from the Gospel of Luke where Jesus says he has come “to seek and to save the lost.” Sometimes the language of saving doesn’t always set easily with us. Nor does the suggestion that we are somehow lost! Yet, in setting aside time to listen with the ear of our hearts to Jesus, to Luke, to each other and to our own inner longings – we may find ourselves newly …

Advent Series: The Word Dwells In Us

Car McGinley Leave a Comment

In Advent we anticipate – with hope, ache and longing – some refreshed or renewed experience of divine presence in our hearts, in our lives. It is a time when we return to scripture’s birth stories of Jesus because they have a ‘thin place’ quality to them. We return to the beginning when the promise of divine presence seems strongest, brightest, purest. We start at the beginning so that we might also begin again. This season we turn to the beginning verses of John’s Gospel – a ‘birth narrative’ of a very different sort. We find neither Mary nor Joseph, …

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‘Advent & The O Antiphons,’ The Holy Wisdom Podcast

Holy Wisdom MonasteryLiving in Community, Podcast, Prayer & Worship 3 Comments

Want to be the first to hear every new episode? Click here to sign up for email notifications! December summons feelings of tradition and familiarity for many of us. In some faiths, this includes the preparation for Christmas known as Advent, and the singing of the O Antiphons. In this episode, we have Sister Lynne Smith and Holy Wisdom Monastery’s own Director of Worship and Music, Lynn Lemberger. Join us to learn about these traditions and how we might be able to honor their meanings in our own lives. Where to Listen? You can listen to The Holy Wisdom Podcast at any …

Sojourner diary—hopeful expectations

Holy Wisdom MonasteryLiving in Community, Sojourner diary 2 Comments

Advent is a season of hopeful expectation. Nowhere is that more clearly illustrated for us than in the Gospel stories of mother-to-be Mary as she surrenders herself to God and then patiently waits for the Divine plan and purpose for her life to develop and emerge within her. I’m guessing from my own childbearing experiences that it wasn’t always easy or comfortable. For Mary, saying yes to the Spirit was risk. It was a guarantee that her life would change and that some of that change would bring pain. But, say yes to God also meant that she would be …

Learning to hope

Lynne Smith, OSBLiving in Community Leave a Comment

In the sisters’ chapter meeting last week we began reading an article entitled “Advent Currents,” by Sr. Bede Luetkemeyer, OSB, from a 2004 issue of the magazine Spirit and Life. In the article Sr. Bede reflects on the advent themes of hope, patience and desire. In the section on hope, she quotes Lutheran theologian Jürgen Moltmann. “True hope—which means the hope that endures and sustains us—is based on God’s call and command. We are called to hope. It is a command: a command to resist death. It is a call: the call to divine life. Enduring hope is not something …

Mexican celebrations during Advent

Holy Wisdom MonasteryLiving in Community Leave a Comment

Growing up in Mexico, every year around this time everyone looks forward to major festivities. The Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe is celebrated on December 12. It’s a huge celebration throughout the whole country which commemorates the appearances of the Virgin Mary to an Aztec man in the 16th century. The story is that Mary appeared to Juan Diego and sent him on a mission to have a shrine built in her honor. He hardly felt capable of achieving this task since he was an indigenous man and spoke Nahuatl, not the Spanish of the Bishop. At first the …

Celebrating Advent, Christmas and Epiphany at Holy Wisdom Monastery

Holy Wisdom MonasteryPrayer & Worship, Spirituality Articles Leave a Comment

(Selections from the Liturgy of the Hours used by Benedictine Women of Madison, Holy Wisdom Monastery, Middleton, WI) Anticipating Christmas with the O Antiphons During the last week before Christmas, we begin the daily singing of the   O Antiphons, an ancient practice that embraces the sense of longing and anticipation for Christmas which swells with each day.  These antiphons are sung prior to the Magnificat, the Song of Mary from Luke 1:46-55, in our evening prayers throughout this week.  Each antiphon begins by addressing God with a name that expresses God’s loving design for people of all times and places.  Each …

Script lettering: O Antiphons

O Antiphons

Holy Wisdom MonasteryHomepage, Monastic Life, Prayer & Worship 2 Comments

In the monastic Liturgy of the Hours (morning, midday and evening prayers of the community), antiphons are sung as an introduction and a response to readings of the psalms, the heart of our liturgy, and before and after the Benedictus at the end of morning prayer and the Magnificat at the end of evening prayer. During the last days of Advent we change to special antiphons, the O Antiphons, to accompany the Magnificat, Mary’s song of joy and humility. Sung each evening at the end of evening prayer, they provide an additional layer of hope and expectation. The origin of the O Antiphons …

Sisters and sojourners gathered around the Advent wreath for evening prayer

Presence

Lynne Smith, OSBBuilding Community, Living in Community 2 Comments

I’ve been reflecting on “presence” since Advent began. Paul Knitter’s homily of December 6, 2015 brought my musings into focus. Here is a line that caught my attention. “That Jesus will ‘come again’ in the future is not out there, on a horizontal line: rather, the future is vertically the depth of the present, that which is already here but has to be discovered, trusted, and realized.” Benedictine spirituality calls me to see Christ in every person I encounter. I’m better at being present to that reality on some days than on others. Recent weeks have been full of opportunities …