Morning
We are not all of us going to be a “morning person”. Some people do seem to be able to jump out of bed bright and cheery and full of beans; I remember being told that it was because of such people that breakfast was eaten in silence in religious houses. The fact is that for some of us it takes us rather longer to begin the day and start functioning as a human being. And yet there is something so glorious about the morning, with its silence and its sunrise. Even during those awful times when waking from sleep comes with dread — even then there is a great promise which dawns with the rising sun, when as the darkness gives way so gently and so quietly to light, God says to us all again, “Behold, I am making all things new.”
And for the Church her day begins anew too. By the time this reflection goes out to the world from the gates of 25 Woodstock Road, the Mystical Body of Christ has been long awake and doing Her Master’s work. In this city the religious brothers and sisters of various flavours have already taken our prayers and praise, and that of the whole Church, and sung them in the offices of Matins and Lauds. The houses of God will have opened their doors and gates so all who pass near can “come and see” and begin the day with God. In our own Oratory church the Fathers and Brothers will have made their meditation as Fr Manni tells us:
Each of the brethren, as best he can, pours out his soul to God, and with silent lips but clamorous heart pleads the cause of his salvation with God, with all the piety of a devout soul, by means of prayer, supplication, asking for the bestowal of gifts and praising the bounty of the divine spirit with all his heart.
Meanwhile souls in need of the mercy of God have been into the confessional and out again, having sought the mercy of God and found it again. The altar is set and Christ comes down to this Bethlehem, this House of Bread, to feed his people once more with food for the journey — with his grace and his charity — that this day, which could be the last for any of us, may be lived with him in whom all find life.
Whatever or whomsoever the Lord may send us this day, we begin with him anew, offering to him all that is and has been and ever shall be, begging him the grace that this day, please God this day, his brilliant light may dawn upon us, upon those whose names he has written on our hearts, and on all his children, that all might walk in his grace. It is only his light, his dawn, that can bid the clouds and pangs of dread or fear to depart and give way at last to his day, his morning both excellent and fair.
Monsignor Benson writes so wonderfully of the Church’s ceaseless action in the service of her Lord:
For I see through her eyes, the Eyes of God to shine, and through her lips I hear his words. In each of her hands as she raises them to bless, I see the wounds that dripped on Calvary, and her feet upon her Altar stairs are signed with the same marks as those which the Magdalene kissed. As she comforts me in the confessional I hear the voice that bade the sinner go and sin no more; and as she rebukes or pierces me with blame I shrink aside trembling with those who went out one by one, beginning with the eldest, till Jesus and the penitent were left alone. As she cries her invitation through the world I hear the same ringing claim as that which called, “Come unto me and find rest to your souls”; as she drives those who profess to serve her from her service I see the same flame of wrath that scourged the changers of money from the temple courts.
As I watch her in the midst of her people, applauded by the mob shouting always for the rising sun, I see the palm branches about her head, and the City and Kingdom of God, it would seem, scarcely a stone’s throw away, yet across the valley of the Kedron and the garden of Gethsemane; and as I watch her pelted with mud, spurned, spat at and disgraced, I read in her eyes the message that we should weep not for her but for ourselves and for our children, since she is immortal and we but mortal after all. As I look on her white body, dead and drained of blood, I smell once more the odour of the ointments and the trampled grass of that garden near to the place where he was crucified, and hear the tramp of the soldiers who came to seal the stone and set the watch. And, at last, as I see her moving once more in the dawn light of each new day, or in the revelation of evening, as the sun of this or that dynasty rises and sets, I understand that he who was dead has come forth once more with healing in his wings, to comfort those that mourn and to bind up the broken-hearted; and that his coming is not with observation, but in the depth of night as his enemies slept and his lovers woke for sorrow. Yet even as I see this I understand that Easter is but Bethlehem once again; that the cycle runs round again to its beginning and that the conflict is all to fight again; for they will not be persuaded, though One rises daily from the dead.”
(From ‘Christ in the Church’)
It is morning. We begin again. Behold, he is making all things new.