Reversing the Bucket

No, it isn't what you might be thinking and has nothing to do with the stomach flu my family was passing around two weeks ago. At Christmas, which is the BEST TIME EVER to be puking sick. But I digress.

I was scouting around the internets yesterday, catching up on reading at some of my favorite news sites and blogs, and it seems that the latest craze to hit the blogging world - now that the nosy, intrusive and self-indulgent meme seems to finally be over, thanks all the holy saints and angels - is the reverse bucket list, the ten things you NEVER want to do before you die.

Some of the things I read were pretty darned funny. Others weren't so much funny as they were relatable, making me shiver in sympathetic horror. "Live alone in a huge mansion with only my life-sized Victorian doll collection to comfort me," was an item on one person's list, and I can spot a person who read Stephen King's The Tommyknockers twenty-five years ago and never, ever, ever forgot about that room full of dolls: I can spot that person from a thousand yards.

The only stipulation is that the list has to include things you could actually do.

So here's my Reverse Bucket List. Do you have one you'd like to share?

Things I Never Want to Do Before I Die

1. Remove 1970s groovy gold flocked wall paper from a room with ten foot ceilings. Again.

2. Stick my hand into the back of a baby's diaper while thinking, "I wonder if she pooped?" (I found out later that it's much easier to determine this status if you just hold the baby's diapered butt in front of your face and take a deep sniff.)

3. Be on Survivor. Because being hot and being hungry are never a good combination with me, plus I'd have to participate in all of those gym-class-from-hell challenges. It's not for me to be the plucky middle-aged mother figure who bosses everyone around and gets voted out either first or second and no one can even remember her ever being there after episode three.

4. Go to a Mass where all the music is the guitar-strummed kind and where we all stand around the altar holding hands during the consecration. And where there's a liturgical dancer. My experiences with being on the viewing end of liturgical dances? Negative, every last one of them.

5. Be a liturgical dancer. Even though I do fit the demographic, which is middle-aged, lumpy, and not necessarily a great genius in the art of dance.

6. And continuing on with the performing arts thing, EVER EVER AGAIN play the piano for a friend's event, no matter how wheedling her voice, how hopeful her puppy eyes. See Item #4 from this post if you'd like to know why.

7. Eat another raw oyster. Grandad once told me, when I was about ten, that he'd give me five dollars if I'd eat a raw oyster. He spoke to me of the horseradishy deliciousness of cocktail sauce, and how oysters were just fishy enough to lend a piquant air of the seaside to the sauce. He pointed out quite reasonably that he himself was eating an appetizer of a dozen oysters on the half shell, which he considered to be a particularly delightful treat. He would, he pressed, be happy to share one with me.

I should have known that there was something behind all this urgency because he was a prankster, a ruthless cutthroat gin rummy player and a twister of fairy tales, where the witch ended up eating Hansel and signing Gretel on as her apprentice. Anyway, I put the oyster in my mouth, which was not piquant at all, but tasted more like something that had washed up on the shore at high tide last week; it immediately grew to the size of a wadded up gym sock in my mouth, and UGH, so slimy. Grandad was laughing so hard, he couldn't even make noise. I promptly went to the ladies' room and threw up, which made me throw up more, because regurgitated oyster? Looks even worse than it did before, which was pretty bad.

Grandad apologized, tried to reassure me that his motives had been as pure as the water off the beaches in Bermuda, and gave me twenty dollars. I allowed myself to be only slightly mollified.

8. Learn to like football. It would make the previous forty-something years of my life, years I have spent telling people, "Look. SHUT UP," whenever they've tried to explain the game of football to me, such a waste of time. I plan to carry on being massively bored by football - and baseball, basketball, hockey and every other sport you care to name - for the remainder of my life.

9. Become a member of a certain political party, which I won't name because I don't want to hurt any reader's feelings or tick anyone off, but my mind just doesn't work that way and I wouldn't want it to if it could.

10. Go to the Indiana State Fair and leave without visiting the horses, the goats, the pigs, the cows and most of all, the zonkey. I don't care how stinky everyone thinks the animal barns are. I don't care if the whole family heads back home without me. I don't even care, much, if I step in something icky. I don't feel like I've had the whole State Fair experience unless I've gone to see the animals and petted the zonkey and remarked on how big the hooves on the draft horses are and how fat the pigs. Some people go for the food, some people go for the midway, but I like the farm animals and I'm tired of having to apologize for that. So YEE-HAW! Wilbur, here I come!

NUNDAY: Picky, picky, picky

I love this picture of Benedictine nuns picking apples. They all look so happy, and there was probably no complaining about who was going to climb the ladder and no speculation as to whether Sister Scholastica intends to let that branch go on purpose and Sister Mary is not groaning, "Mother Abbess says we have to fill another bushel." We hope.

When they heard about the new Mass translation coming this Advent...

...these sisters went a-frolicking! Seriously, a lot of us are looking forward to the new/old Mass, which is making its debut on November 27, 2011, the first Sunday of Advent. The reason why I call it new/old is because it is a more consistent translation of the Latin Mass, which was used throughout the world until the 1960s, when it became possible for people to pray the Mass in the vernacular: French in France, German in Germany, English in the United States, Spanish in Mexico. However, the general thought has always been that the Novus Ordo (New Order) translation was a bit, well, hippy-dippy.

For instance, during the Mass when the priest would say, "Dominus vobiscum" in Latin, the reply from the congregation was, "Et cum spiritu tuo." That means, "May the Lord be with you," the response being, "And with thy spirit."

In the Novus Ordo Mass, the priest would say in English, "May the Lord be with you," with the congregation responding, "And also with you."

Hmmm...

Mike McLeish, my fellow teacher in our parish's seventh/eighth grade religious education class, told our students one Sunday, "It's as if the phrase was dumbed down a bit, if you see what I mean. 'And also with you' isn't really a good translation of 'And with thy spirit.' It's a bit...." He looked over at me.

"Informal," I supplied.

One of our students, a smart eighth grader with a great sense of humor, spoke up: "It's sort of like the priest saying, 'May the Lord be with you,' and the congregation saying, 'And RIGHT BACK ATCHA.'"

Yes. Just exactly like that. So splash and leap and kick in the waves, Sisters! Rejoice in the coming of a new translation! But seriously, I would draw the line at jet-ski rental.

NUNDAY: It's a grand old flag

This Dominican sister is proud of being an American, waving her flag to welcome Pope Benedict XVI to the United States a few years back. There's just something very nice, I feel, in seeing a sister in a traditional habit seated amongst all the ordinary business suits and dresses. I liked this nun in particular because even clothed in the garb that Dominican religious have worn for hundreds of years, she's still very much the modern woman, so excited to see Il Papa, she's even brought her binoculars.

Family

A picture of the ol' home place, where Papa lives.

NUNDAY: Experiencing the Nun Run

To make you smile this morning, here's a picture of two young Sisters of St. Francis participating the the 2007 Nun Run, sponsored by the Diocese of Milwaukee. From what I have read, while there are actual nuns in the annual Run, there's very little running, unless you count the kind that happens in a 15-passenger van as it shuttles between each of four or five participating abbeys. The Nun Run was put together in order to spark interest in vocations to the religious life, with young women signing up to visit several different congregations on one mad weekend, getting a taste of what each group of sisters is all about.


Biased thought below; you are forewarned:

(As a thought of my own, I'd like to add that, in checking out the pictures of the four participating congregations from 2007, three of them were plain-clothes nuns and in each group, the youngest sister looked to be about a thousand years old and counting. Whereas with the Sisters of St. Francis, who are garbed in the traditional habit to set themselves apart from the world, marked as different and making a silent testimony of their sacrifices for the good of the world, the vocations seem to be coming along a a fine pace, something like the Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who keep frantically adding on buildings to their convent so that postulants will have a place to lay their heads at night.

What I surmise in all of this is that people are tired of seeing nuns in velour track suits at Mass, which is what I saw at the abbey of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Elwood, Indiana a few years back. The chapel was half full before Mass, but there weren't any nuns there and the girls and I were disappointed. "Where are all the sisters?" I whispered to an elderly lady, thus garbed, sitting next to me, who was occupying her time before Mass by crocheting a scarf. She looked at me in surprise. "We ARE the sisters."

Oh. And I just love your tasteful aquamarine blue exercise gear, Sister. J.C. Penney, was it? Big sale at Kohl's? Yeeeeeshhhh.....

So what I'm saying is, if you look at a nun and you can't tell she's a nun, what is the point of being a nun? THERE'S SOMETHING IMPORTANT MISSING THERE.)

NUNDAY: Watch your ankles

Upon first looking at this picture, you may have thought that these Franciscan nuns were participating in some arcane Catholic ritual (with Our Lady of the Greenturf and the Wooden Mallets watching in the background) or maybe doing some kind of exercise to help them gain their strength for rapping the knuckles of naughty little boys in the classroom. Neither is right; these nuns are playing croquet and I'm thinking that there's nothing like a long-skirted habit to allow a person to cleverly conceal an opponent's ball and just....move it a few inches farther away from the wicket, right in the path of Sister Mary Joseph's dead-on swing and....*WHAM*

FISH ON FRIDAY: The Tuna Casserole Project

This tuna casserole recipe makes use of one of my favorite small kitchen appliances: the slow-cooker. I read the recipe, bewildered, wondering what it was about tuna casserole that would need four to six hours to cook. I mean, noodles? Maybe eleven minutes in boiling water. The peas, even frozen ones, cook by themselves while the casserole is in the oven. The tuna itself is already cooked -- I got a sudden mental image of a Midwestern housewife cramming an entire raw tuna, head, fins and all, into her Crock Pot -- and couldn't come up with anything. And then, a moment of revelation: The purpose of cooking a tuna casserole in a slow-cooker is twofold:

1) To make absolutely, positively CERTAIN WITHOUT A SHADOW OF DOUBT that all ingredients have reached their maximum level of gluey gloppiness so that each individual helping separates itself from the serving spoon with a sticky sound and lands with a sound that falls somewhere between a *thwack!* and a *thmp* on the plate, and;

2) To make your house smell, like, REALLY, REALLY GOOD. I mean, awesome, with that canned tuna fishy smell permeating every porous surface. Mmmmm....

NUNDAY: The hour of mercy

With so much crazy going on in the world right now, I wanted to take a moment to thank all the cloistered sisters -- mostly Poor Clares and Carmelites here in the United States, with a few Passionists, Redemptorists, Benedictines and Dominicans gathered into the mix -- for their vocation of prayer for the world. Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline, the good sisters are on their knees in their chapels, praying for us all.

If you want to pray too, check out Breviary.com for the Ordinary of the Divine Office by clicking here.

If you are in need of prayer, you can call the Carmelites in Terre Haute, Indiana and the nuns, who pray a minimum of six hours a day, will put you and your intentions on their prayer list. You can call their prayer line 24/7/365 and the number is 812-299-1410 or you can write to them the old-fashioned way at Carmelite Monastery, 19 Allendale, Terre Haute, Indiana 47802-4751.

NUNDAY: How to have fun during Lent

These sisters chose to work a picture puzzle during their recreation time on Ash Wednesday and it looks like the postulant in the foreground just got caught hiding about five of the thousand pieces up her sleeve.

Skip on over to Etsy

These gorgeous keepsakes are available over at the Etsy page of St. Luke's Brush and have you ever seen such incredible work on humble eggs and wooden pegs? Featured in this picture are the eggs in the forefront of the picture, obviously, with rosary boxes behind them. In the last row are customized saint wooden pegs; any saint you'd choose to name, this gifted artist will paint. What great gifts these would make for Easter, baptism anniversaries, Confirmation....you name it. And I guarantee that they aren't nearly as expensive as you might be thinking they'd be for such amazingly detailed work.

The artist behind St. Luke's Brush is a father of four and "an aspiring commercial and fine artist," as well as being a member of the Catholic Etsy Artist's Guild (search "teamcatholic" to find other artists.) If you'd like to follow St. Luke's Brush on Facebook, copy and paste the following URL into your address bar: http://www.facebook.com/pages/St-Lukes-Brush/116907268367835?v=wall&ref=ts

NUNDAY: Pass the Cheetos!

You might recall that Pope Benedict XVI, who looks a great deal like my Grandad, visited the United States in April 2008 and that lots and lots of people went to see him, including these Domincan Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist from Ann Arbor, Michigan. The sisters had a chartered bus to take them from Michigan to Maryland, and just in case they got hungry on the long trip, they each packed a little red tote bag full of snacks. (Word has it that there was also reading material available to while away the time, as well as puzzle books.) I hope that their beautiful white habits weren't covered with orange Cheeto fingerprints by the time they saw His Holiness.

I would seriously love to travel with these sisters. Not only are they smiling and happy, they are serious snackers. My kind of people.

It's official!! (Meditation on Lent at 12:24 a.m.)

I am sitting here in front of the computer when I should be sleeping. It's a perfect night for sleep -- chilly and rainy, with a chance of smooth, clean sheets on the bed -- and why I'm wide awake is something I wish I could change, especially since all this awakeness is only going to lead to Ash Wednesday being one REALLY LONG DAY.

Here's the thing: On the home schooling e-list I'm a member of and amongst my friends on Facebook, there's been an article circulating about, an article with an idea that many of my friends have said is "the perfect thing for Lent," as if we're talking about a really great necklace to accessorize a party dress. So I, being the nosey kind of person I am, and also piously hoping to have the Best Lent Ever! went like an idiot and looked at this article and immediately wanted to go off into a corner and, I don't know, maybe just DIE a little bit, not much, but reviving enough to go to 6:00 Mass today and get my ashes.

Here's the article. Read it at your peril, if you're some kind of person who is crazed with self-loathing or maybe just a grouchy old bat like me. I mean, I'm sure Mrs. Wittman is a lovely person, but oh my holy saints and angels, what kind of mind can come up with this sort of torture and even type Sunday is a Day Off! in bold type with an exclamation point? I would certainly think that Sunday would be a day off: you're going to need at least 24 hours to drag yourself to the hospital so that they can give you some glucose and some penicillin and some drug with plenty of codeine in it. All so that you can go back home on Monday morning and start the whole dreary business again.

All in twenty minutes, twice a day.

During that forty minutes, you have to do things like deep clean the kitchen, wipe down all light fixtures, clean out closets, organize the Tupperware, built a storage shed out back, hand polish each blade of grass in the front yard, clear the trash off at least three major thoroughfares in your city and climb to the roof of your church to personally inspect and repair each individual slate shingle.

Well, okay, some of the things on that list might have been slight exaggerations. But I'm not joking about the Tupperware! And I am also not joking that, down at the bottom of that list, there is an entry for Day 39 (Good Friday) that instructs me to "Prepare kitchen for Easter baking." Are you KIDDING me??!! All forty days of work and I still have to do something called "Easter baking"? At that point, I'm sure that all I would be baking is my own head, placed in the oven with a note pinned to my back that would read: "I JUST CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE. ALL THIS AND NO SWEETS - TOO MUCH!"

I do hope that my friends who have decided to undertake this challenge will meet with success, and although I insist on a clean and tidy house myself, I found as I read that list that I really don't care quite THAT much. I am okay with Fly Lady and her much more relaxed manner of dealing with dirt and clutter; I don't get that stressed-out feeling that I have now, the one that has totally wiped the sleep from my eyes as I contemplate Garage Week, Day 31 -- Throw out all unnecessary junk. I am completely unwound by that thought, and I don't even have a garage.

Not just for your dryer anymore

Oh, I know they're spelled differently -- lint, Lent -- one is a common noun that describes all that fuzzy stuff that comes off your clothes as they're being tumble dried. I have a very artistic friend who created gorgeous handmade writing paper out of dryer lint once. Lent, the proper noun, is that forty day period of fasting and abstinence before Easter, when Catholic and (some) Protestant Christians alike walk with Jesus, uniting with Him in His Passion and celebrating His resurrection while anticipating His second coming.

Lent is a time of year that I always look forward to, although upon reflection I'm not sure why: I'm not all that good at it. There was, for instance, that year I gave up Diet Coke as a personal sacrifice and by the third of the six weeks, my family members were all going around with big, frightened eyes and white faces. Then there was the time I gave up sweets and berated myself loudly one morning for having jelly on my toast. ("Don't you think you're taking this to a ridiculous extreme?" my husband asked warily. "No," I replied. "I'm just sad because, if I had to goof up on my no-sweets fast, why did it have to be with TOAST and why couldn't it have been NUTELLA?!?")

I also start out with great spiritual plans: I will read a chapter of the Bible per day, pray a rosary, go to weekday Mass on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, plus go to the Stations of the Cross at least three times. I'll do both the morning and evening prayers! I'll read at least two books on the lives of the saints (making sure to choose people who were not gruesomely martyred, because eww.) That's always the plan on Ash Wednesday, anyway. By the first Sunday, I've already managed to crumble, substituting one decade for an entire rosary and looking at my Bible and feeling guilty instead of actually opening it.

Considering all this, is it any wonder that a non-Catholic, non-Lent-participating Protestant friend asked me, "If Lent is so hard, why do it?"

Ah, there's the rub. Why do it? Why go through six weeks of self-denial and abortive attempts to attain spiritual growth?

Because it's good for the soul, that's why. Jesus taught us to fast; he fasted forty days in the desert. Jesus taught us about self-denial; he went to the cross for us. Jesus taught us about prayer; at times, he took himself apart from the disciples to spent time in communion with his Father. At other times, he prayed with them.

Any time we work to be more like him, Jesus meets us more than halfway. And then there's that spiritual harvest thing: the more you give Jesus -- your love of desserts, your willingness to meditate on his life while praying the rosary, your trip into the confessional, and the money you'd usually spend on buying a fancy coffee dropped quietly into the poor box -- the more he gives you back. Seriously, even when my grandiose plans for spiritual advancement fall through and I end up doing only about a quarter of what I originally intended, I always feel like the measure that has been pressed down, shaken together and running over by Good Friday. I feel close to Jesus (I can hear him saying quite clearly, "Okay. STOP IT" when I'm thinking about doing something that would not make him proud, one of the less agreeable parts of that Lenten Closeness.)

I feel good.

And when the Easter Vigil is over and we're driving home in the darkness with the sounds of the bells and the Gloria still ringing in our ears, that's when I feel the best. Exultant, as sweet and full as the Communion cup I've sipped from, glowing in the true presence of the Savior.

So let's just say that I've experienced Easter Sundays without the trials of Lent beforehand and with those trials set constantly before me, and I would never, ever go back to the first way. You can only have a true Easter, a real shiny-happy glorious Easter if you've humbled yourself to suffer with Jesus in the desert.

Ten years ago, I would have never thought that could possibly be true. I would have said, quite wrongly, that God has no need of our silly sacrifices. The pastor of the Protestant church I was attending back then even said it during one of his sermons: "I can't understand why those Catholics think that their 'giving up' something matters to God." How could it possibly matter to God, who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, if I stop eating candy for six weeks? Does it really matter if I give up Facebook or watching HGTV? Doesn't that seem a little weird, to think that God cares about such trivial things?

If you believe that, then let me ask you this: If your ten year old mowed the neighbor's lawn for week after sweaty week and then used some of the money he earned to buy you a birthday present, would you find that trivial? Would you say, "Aww, that's sweet, son, but listen, this is just a Penguin paperback you bought with the money you earned from cutting Mrs. Franklin's grass. It's not like this is a real gift, but thanks for trying."

OF COURSE YOU WOULDN'T. If your kid did that for you, you would fall to the ground and drown in a puddle of happy tears and have to be revived by the emergency medical technicians who came on the ambulance and the first thing you'd say when you came back to your senses would be, "Look. Look at this beautiful, lovely Penguin paperback my darling child bought for me." You'd probably sleep with that book under your pillow for the next million nights, and long after it had crumbled into cheapo paperback dust, you'd remember that sacrifice, that unselfishness, that desire to do something to make you happy, that honor given to you that was so much more than a trivial gift that cost $9.98 at Wal-Mart.

And do you think God, the omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being who told us to call him "Daddy," do you really think that he thinks anything less than that?

Try it and see.



A great article titled "What Can I Do Before Lent Begins" can be found here.

Catholic Culture.org has an entire area of their website devoted to the hows and whys of Lent; you can check that excellent resource out by clicking here

NUNDAY: Bump, set, spike!

Because even though you are called to a religious vocation, you can't spend all your time praying.

Reflections on different directions

Aisling went to the annual youth retreat for the Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana, Destination Jesus. We dropped her off at St. Theodore Guerin High School late on Friday afternoon and picked her up today at one o'clock, which was a very long time to live in an Aisling-free household, the rest of us agreed. When she climbed into the van, she began to talk in her exuberant way about the fun -- the skits, the conferences, the small-group discussions, the Eucharistic adoration, the music (so loud it made the chairs vibrate, she assured us), sleeping on the floor of the gym and even the long, long lines for the showers -- with the air of a person who has been transported by shining delight.

"It was so fun," she said, "doing hand motions to all the songs! And all the singing! And sitting in the bleachers with all my friends! And hanging out and talking before we fell asleep!I loved it! I loved every minute of it!"

"Aisling," my husband said solemnly. "I'm a bit unclear on this. Do you want to go back next year?"

She paused for a moment, obviously struggling with the truth, couched in diplomatic terms. "I'd like to go back right now."

I compared this joie de vivre with my own personality, which is not nearly so fun. My idea of a really inspirational spiritual retreat is to go to something like this, announced by the Our Lady of Fatima Retreat Center in Indianapolis:

“Come Away and Rest Awhile: Silent Reflection Day”

Join us for another opportunity for a silent non-guided reflection day. Relax in your own private room, read a book, walk the grounds, pray the labyrinth or the stations of the cross. The day is yours for reflection and time with God.

The cost is $25 per person and includes continental breakfast from 8:00-9:00 am, lunch at 12:00 noon, and a room to use for the day. The day concludes at 4:00 pm.

Now that's my kind of retreat. Quiet. Restful. No loud music. And definitely no hand motions.

The O Antiphons - O Clavis David

The O Antiphon for today, December 20, is O Clavis David (Key of David)

Come, and bring forth the captive from his prison.

O Key of David, and Scepter of the House of Israel, who opens and no man shuts, who shuts and no man opens; Come and bring forth the captive from his prison, he who sits in darkness and in the shadow of death.

O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israël, qui aperis, et nemo claudit, claudis, et nemo aperuit: veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris, sedentem in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

The key is the emblem of authority and power. Christ is the Key of the House of David who opens to us the full meaning of the scriptural prophecies, and reopens for all mankind the gate of Heaven.

The O Antiphons - O Radix Jesse

Today is the third day of the O Antiphons of Advent, O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse).

"Come to deliver us and tarry not." The world cries out for Christ its King, who shall cast out the prince of this world (John 12:31). The prince of this world established his power over men as a result of original sin. Even after we had been delivered from the servitude of Satan through the death of Christ on the cross, the prince of this world attempts to exercise his power over us. "The devil, as a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour" (I Peter 5:8). In these trying times, when faith in Christ and in God has largely disappeared, when the propaganda of a pagan culture is broadcast everywhere, and the forces of evil and falsehood rise up to cast God from His throne, who does not feel the power of the devil? Does it not appear that we are approaching that time when Satan will be released from the depths of hell to work his wonders and mislead, if possible, even the elect? (Revelation 20:2; Matthew 24:24.)

"Come, tarry not." Observe how thoroughly the world of today has submitted to the reign of Satan. Mankind has abandoned the search for what is good and holy. Loyalty, justice, freedom, love, and mutual trust are no longer highly regarded. Establish, O God, Thy kingdom among us, a kingdom established upon truth, justice, and peace. "Come, tarry not." "Thy kingdom come."

~Excerpted from The Light of the World by Benedict Baur, O.S.B.

Source: Catholic Culture.org

The O Antiphons -- O Adonai

Today is the second of the O Antiphons, O Adonai (O Almighty God). As Moses approached the burning bush, so we approach the divine Savior in the form of a child in the crib, or in the form of the consecrated host, and falling down we adore Him. "Put off the shoes from thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground . . . I am who am." "Come with an outstretched arm to redeem us." This is the cry of the Church for the second coming of Christ on the last day. The return of the Savior brings us plentiful redemption.

Come and redeem us with outstretched arm.

O Lord and Ruler of the House of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the flame of the burning bush and gave him the law on Sinai: Come and redeem us with outstretched arm.

Source: Catholic Culture.org

"The O Antiphons of Advent" Copyright (c) 2010 Catholic Culture.org

The O Antiphons -- O Sapienta

December 17 marks the beginning of the O Antiphons of Advent, so called because they all begin with the proclamaion "O." The O Antiphons continue on for the next seven days until Christmas Eve and they are exhortations as we continue to wait for Our Lord, celebrating His first coming and anticipating His second.

O Sapientia -- O Wisdom (Ecclesiates 24: 5), you came forth from the mouth of the Most High (Sirach 24: 30), and reaching from beginning to end, you ordered all things mightily and sweetly (Wisdom 8: 1). Come, and teach us the way of prudence (Isaiah 40: 14).


Source: Catholic Culture.org