Adoration
of the Shepherds by Charles Le Brun (1689)
MONDAY OF THE THIRD WEEK OF ADVENT
The Liturgical Year
Dom
Guéranger
The Lord is now nigh; come, let us adore.
Isaiah
28:16-18
Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I will lay a stone in
the foundations of Sion, a tried stone, a corner stone, a precious stone,
founded in the foundation. He that believeth, let him not hasten. And I will
set judgment in weight, and justice in measure: and had shall overturn the hope
of falsehood, and waters shall overflow its protection. And your league with
death shall be abolished, and your covenant with hell shall not stand.
Heavenly Father! thou art preparing to set in the
foundations of Sion a corner Stone, that is tried and solid; and this Stone,
which is to give firmness to Sion, which is thy Church, this Stone is thy
Incarnate Son. It was prefigured, as thy Apostle assures us, by that Rock of
the desert, which yielded the abundant and saving stream, that quenched the
thirst of thy people. But now thou art about to give us the reality; it has
already come down from heaven, and the hour is fast approaching when thou wilt
lay it in the foundations. O sacred Stone, which makest all one, and givest
solidity to the whole structure! By thee it will come to pass, that there shall
be no longer Jew nor Gentile, but all nations shall become one family. Men
shall no more build on sand, nor set up houses which floods and storms may
overturn. The Church shall rise up from the Stone which God now sets, and,
secure on the great foundation, her summit shall touch the clouds. With all his
weakness, and all his fickleness, man will partake of thy immutability, O divine Stone, if he will but lean on thee. Woe to him that rejects thee, for
thou hast said, and thou art the eternal Truth: Whosoever shall fall upon that
stone, shall be bruised; and upon whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him
to powder. From this twofold evil, O thou that art chief Corner-stone, deliver
us, and never permit us to be of the number of those blind men who rejected
thee. Give us grace ever to honour and love thee as the cause of our strength,
and the one sole origin of our solidity: and since thou hast communicated this
thy quality of the Rock to one of thine Apostles, and by him to his successors
unto the end of the world, grant us ever to cling to this Rock, the Holy Roman
Church, in union with which all the faithful on the face of the earth are
preparing to celebrate the glorious solemnity of thy Coming, O precious and
tried Stone! Thou art coming that thou mayest destroy the kingdom of falsehood,
and break the league which man-kind had made with death and hell.
HYMN
FOR ADVENT
(From the
Mozarabic Breviary, First Sunday of Advent.)
Let all the assembly of Christ's
faithful ones laud the graces that are nigh, and sing their highest praises to
their Creator.
When his only begotten Son, who created
this world, redeemed us, he fulfilled the promises which the divine 'prophets
spoke in the ages past.
The Word having come down from heaven,
and shown himself to men, he took away the punishment due to their sins; and
assuming our nature, though but dust, he vanquished the prince of death.
Born of a Mother in time, but begotten
eternally from the Father, in the two substances there is but one Person, that
is the Person of the Word.
God has come into this world made Man,
that our old man being changed into the new, we may put on new beauty by being
regenerated in the new-born God.
Let the Gentiles, who have received
this new birth of grace, in gladness and exultation at the trophy, won by the
divine Nativity, keep every year its feast.
Let this Coming of Jesus be celebrated
with devout solemnity by all, who have so just a share in the glory of this
great day.
That so, when the Second Coming shall
burst upon the world and fill it with fear, this most humble expression of our
devout celebration of the first may give us confidence.
To God the Father, and to his only Son,
and to the Holy Spirit, be glory for ever and ever, Amen.
PRAYER FROM THE AMBROSIAN MISSAL
(From the Mass of the Sixth Sunday of
Advent, Preface.)
It is truly meet and just, right and available to
salvation, that in this holy time we should celebrate the memory of the ever
Blessed Virgin Mary, who carried in the narrow enclosure of her womb the Lord
of heaven, and who, according as the Angel had foretold to her, brought forth
the Word become our Saviour in our mortal flesh This is he who is the Redeemer
of the world, conceived in a chaste womb, his Mother both then and at his birth
remaining ineffably the Virgin.
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