Lay Cistercians of Gethsemani Abbey

Skema
2025-12-07
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
2nd Week of Advent

Mass Readings: Sunday (A), Weekdays (II)
December 7 – 13, 2025

Sun
7
Mon
8
Tue
9
Wed
10
Thu
11
Fri
12
Sat
13

Office
2nd Sunday of Advent
Immaculate Conception
Advent Weekday
Advent Weekday
Advent Weekday
Our Lady of Guadalupe
St Lucy

Vigils
Isa 14:1-21
Rom 5:12-21
Isa 29:13-24
Isa 30:15-26
Isa 32:1-20
Prov 8:32-9:11
Isa 35:1-10

Lauds
Isa 4:2-6
Judges 6:34-40
Isa 9:1-6
Isa 12:1-6
Isa 55:6-12
Sir 4:11-18
Isa 11:10-16

Mass
4
689
182
183
184
690A
186

1st
Isa 11:1-10
Gen 3:9-15, 20
Isa 40:1-11
Isa 40:25-31
Isa 41:13-20
Rev 11:19a; 12:1-6a, 10ab
Sir 48:1-4, 9-11

2nd
Rom 15:4-9
Eph 1:3-6, 11-12

Gospel
Matt 3:1-12
Luke 1:26-38
Matt 18:12-14
Matt 11:28-30
Matt 11:11-15
Luke 1:39-47
Matt 17:9a, 10-13

Vespers
Rom 5:1-11
Rom 8:28-39
Rom 8:18-27
Rom 6:16-23
Rom 7:14-25
Gal 3:23-29
Rom 8:9-17

Vigils reading - 2nd Sun of Advent
2025-12-07
THE TIME FOR FAITH
From a commentary by St Augustine
◊◊◊
The gospel tells us that some people were rebuked by the Lord because,
clever as they were at reading the face of the sky, they could not recognize the
time for faith when the kingdom of heaven was at hand. It was the Jews who
received this reprimand, but it has also come down to us. The Lord Jesus began
his preaching of the gospel with the admonition: Repent, for the kingdom of
heaven is at hand. His forerunner, John the Baptist, began in the same way:
Repent, he said, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Today, for those who will
not repent at the approach of the kingdom of heaven, the reproof of the Lord is
the same. As he points out himself, You cannot expect to see the kingdom of
heaven coming. The kingdom of heaven, he says elsewhere, is within you.
Each of us would be wise therefore to take to heart the advice of his
teacher, and not waste this present time. It is now that the Savior offers us his
mercy; now, while he still spares the human race. Understand that it is in hope
of our conversion that he spares us, for he desires no one’s damnation. As for
when the end of the world will be, that is God’s concern.
Now is the time for faith. Whether any of us here present will see the end
of the world I know not; very likely none of us will. Even so, the time is very near
for each of us, for we are mortal. There are hazards all around us. We should be
in less danger from them were we made of glass. What is more fragile than a
vessel of glass? And yet it can be kept safe and last indefinitely. Of course it is
exposed to accident, but it is not liable to old age and the suffering it brings.
We therefore are the more frail and infirm. In our weakness we are
haunted by fears of all the calamities that regularly befall the human race, and if
no such calamity overtakes us, still, time marches on. We may evade the blows
of fortune, but shall we evade death? We may escape perils from without, but
shall we escape what comes from within us? Now, suddenly, we may be attacked
by any malady. And if we are spared? Even so, old age comes at last, and nothing
will delay it.

Vigils reading - Immaculate Conception
2025-12-08
THE FAVORED ONE
From a commentary by Sophronius of Jerusalem
◊◊◊
Hail full of grace, the Lord is with you. Truly blessed are you among
women, for you have changed the curse of Eve into a blessing and caused Adam,
once accursed, to be blessed through you. Truly blessed are you among
women, for it was through you that the Father’s blessing dawned on humankind
and freed it from the ancient curse. Truly blessed are you among women, for
through you your ancestors will be saved, since you are going to bear the Savior
who will gain them God’s salvation. Truly blessed are you among women, for
without seed you produced the fruit that brings blessing to all the earth,
releasing it from the curse that made it bear thorns. Truly blessed are you
among women, for though by nature you are a woman, you will in very truth
become the mother of God: if he who is to be born of you is truly God incarnate,
then, since you will be giving birth to God, you will with perfect justice be called
the mother of God.
Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God that can
never be lost. You have won from God a most glorious favor, a grace long
desired, a grace of great splendor, a saving grace, an unfailing grace, a grace that
will last for ever. Many before you have been holy, but no one has been as
favored as you, no one as blessed as you, no one as perfectly sanctified as you, no
one as highly praised as you. No one else has like you been possessed from the
first by purifying grace, no one else has been enlightened like you, or exalted like
you, for no one has approached so close to God as you, or been enriched with
such divine gifts, or endowed with such heavenly grace.
You surpass all human desire; you surpass all the gifts given by God to the
whole human race, for God’s dwelling within you has made you richer than all
others. No one else has been able to contain God as you do; no one else has been
capable of receiving God as you have; no one else has deserved to be so
enlightened by God. And therefore you have not only received God, the Creator
and Lord of the universe, but He has in an unheard-of way taken flesh from you;
you bear him in your womb, and will later give birth to him who will redeem
humankind from the Father’s sentence, and confer on it eternal salvation.

Vigils reading
2025-12-09
THE ADVENT OF GOD
From “Pathways in Holy Scripture” by Dom Damasus Winzen
◊◊◊
The word Advent had for the people of old a magic sound. It put before
their eyes the glorious scene of the king’s return from a victorious war. Preceded
and followed by the might of his arms, carrying with him the spoils of victory,
the hosts of the captives, the treasures of the enemy, he stands on his chariot,
vested in the purple of triumph, the golden wreath of victory on his head. The
whole city is in a delirium of joy. The festive throngs of the citizens line the
streets. They greet their king with the royal shout, acclaiming him as savior and
kyrios with incense and hymns. In the evening thousands of lights appear on
windows and doorways, on temples, gates and palaces, for the light is come, and
the glory of the king is risen upon the city.
The Advent of our Ecclesiastical Year does not celebrate the triumphant
entry of an earthly king into his capital, but it sees the King of kings whose might
covers the earth like a cloud, returning to the world which He had left because of
its sin, crushing His enemies, extirpating sin and establishing a kingdom of
peace for those who believe in Him. This is the Divine Action of salvation which
constitutes the real meaning of history, although it may take centuries and
centuries to be accomplished. That the birth of Mary’s little babe in the humble
manger of Bethlehem is the beginning of this glorious Advent would be hidden
from the eyes of men, had the glad tiding not been announced from heaven and
had the Holy Spirit not spoken in times past to the fathers by the prophets.
It is really the vision of the prophets which opens the eyes of the faithful to
see beneath the humble form of man the glory of God, and to realize that Christ’s
First Coming in patience and charity is the beginning of the Day of judgment
which will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven to receive the
Eternal Kingdom from the hands of the Father. It is the unique gift of the
prophets to see sign and reality, the human and the divine, the present and the
future in their compenetration. Therefore, they “rendered service not so much
to them selves but to us,” [as it is written in the first letter of Peter, us] who
celebrate the Advent of God in that incomparable compenetration of visible sign
and divine reality which is the liturgy of the Church.

Vigils reading
2025-12-10
SAINT AND MISSION
From “The World of Prayer” by Adrienne von Speyr
◊◊◊
A saint’s standing before God with a community within is no plain and
simple fact. The saints can be in God’s presence in such a personal way that,
involuntarily or even voluntarily, they forget their mission. And between these
two poles there is a whole spectrum. It may happen involuntarily when God
alone wishes it so because he wants to have his saint to himself. It happens
voluntarily when the saint feels it right on this occasion to be alone in God’s
presence, leaving the particular mission out of focus in the background.
There is another extreme in relation to these two forms of prayer, namely,
the prayer of those saints who never appear before God except in the very midst
of their mission, whether because God wills it so or because the saint will not
have it otherwise. Here too there are gradations. One is inclined to a certain
suspicion of those who always do everything completely deliberately and of
their own free will, choosing whether to go before God with or without the
mission entrusted to them, whereas there can be no grounds for suspicion in the
case of the saint who, involuntarily and only as God requires, is always standing
before God in one sense or another. In general, however, there is an alternation:
There are times and moments in which the saint is more important to God than
the individual mission, and others when the mission itself is the most important
thing.
If the saints themselves make no choice, God can work in them or in their
mission or in both, within the relationship he chooses. But if the saint and the
mission constitute a single unity as willed by God, God’s shaping influence on
the one will always benefit the other.
It can happen, then, that when a particular mission begins to make itself
felt it brings difficulties for the saint in standing before God in prayer. But these
difficulties and their mastery contribute to the saint’s fruitfulness. They never
take the form of insuperable obstacles but of a gain at a higher level, be it a
deeper insight or a better adaptation to God’s will or a closer integration of saint
and mission. Mission here always means an embodiment of the community. It is
what, in the saint, is of and for the community: the seed of community, a task
within the community, a fruit entrusted to the community. This fruit is greater
than the I; it is the Thou, in all its manifold forms, which has been entrusted to
the I. Ultimately this multiplicity belongs to the Church and indeed can be the
Church.

Vigils reading
2025-12-11
MY HEART IS READY
From a sermon by Blessed Guerric of Igny
◊◊◊
Do you want to hear more explicitly about the confession you should
make in preparation for the coming of the Lord? “A just man is the first to accuse
himself,” says the Scripture. And what follows? His Friend comes, who before
the accusation was withdrawing farther away, estranged. For when he said: “I
will confess against myself my injustice to the Lord,” the Lord forgave him. “He
comes and shall search him.” Indeed he shall search him like a strong draft
searching the heart and the reins, reaching into the division of the soul and the
spirit, drawing out all impurity from the recesses of the soul and the deep
caverns of the mind, purging love that it may bring forth more fruit. God the
Father, the husbandman, rejoices already over the first-fruits of that confession.
However, he who – after such confession – is present sometimes even
before he is called on, at other times waits for you to invite him. And in order to
increase your merits he often dissimulates for a long time so that by being more
attentive at the psalmody and more instant in prayer you may in your gentle
violence compel him to enter. If you do not, the prophet laments that the cities
of the south are shut up, with none to enter them.
When therefore you can say: “My heart is ready, O God,” because it is
emptied of evil, “my heart is ready,” because it is full of holy desires, then busy
yourself with what follows: “I will sing and recite a psalm.” And whatever may
be your voice, singing or reciting, let this intention be in your mind: “Arise, my
Glory, arise at my coming, for as far as it is in me [to go,] I have gone to meet
you.”
O good Jesus, how swift and prompt, how full of joy and gladness are you
in running to greet such devotion as this. How cheerful do you show yourself in
these ways. As Isaiah says: “You have met him that rejoices and does justice: in
your ways they shall remember you.” For if you sing wisely in the way of
integrity, coming he will come and will bring to light what is hidden from you so
that you may understand the mysteries of the Scriptures you do not at present
know. Then it will be as you say: “I will sing and I will understand in the
unspotted way when you shall come to me.” Stir up, Lord, your power, which at
your coming stirs up our sluggishness, and come to save us, O Savior of the
world, who live and reign, God for ever and ever.

Vigils reading -Our Lady of Guadalupe
2025-12-12
THE APPEARANCE OF THE
BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
AT GUADALUPE
From the first written Aztec account of the apparition6
◊◊◊
Upon his reaching the top of the hillock, Juan Diego catches sight of a
woman, one who has been taking her stand there. She beckons him to come on,
closer up to herself. Upon reaching her presence, he greatly marvels at her
extreme, her surpassing, her perfect wonderfulness.
Her garments are as the sun, gleaming, glittering. Even the boulder, the
crag, on which she takes her stand sparkles in resplendence, like fine emerald
jade or a bangle when it shines, like the swarming glow of a rainbow in the
gloom. Even the soil, the brambles and prickles and the rest of the varied weeds
that struggle to survive there are shining like emerald, like divine turquoise, to
the tip of every leaf; are glittering like the golden scourings of the gods up every
stalk and twig and thorn.
In her presence he prostrates; he listens to her utterance, her declaration.
These are as of one who sets others at ease, one whose manner is to attract, one
whose attitude is to esteem. She addresses him: “Do listen to me, my littlest one,
Juanito!… “Do know this, do be assured of it in your heart, my littlest one, that I
myself, I am the entirely and ever Virgin Saint Mary, Mother of the True
Divinity, God Himself: Because of Him, life goes on, Creation goes on; His are
all things afar, His are all things near at hand, things above in the heavens,
things here below on the earth. How truly I wish it, how greatly I desire it, that
here they should erect me my temple! Here would I show forth, here would I lift
up to view, here would I make a gift of all my fondness for my dear ones, all my
regard for my needy ones, my willingness to aid them, my readiness to protect
them. For truly I myself, I am your compassionate mother, yours, for you
yourself, for everybody here in the land, for each and all together, for all others
too, for all folk of every kind, who do but cherish me, who do but raise their
voices to me, who do but seek me, who do but raise their trust to me.
For here I shall listen to their groanings, to their saddenings; here shall I
make well and heal up their each and every kind of disappointment, of
exhausting pangs, of bitter aching pain… Therefore, to realize all that my
clemency claims, go to the palace of the Bishop of Mexico, and say that I sent you
to make manifest to him my great desire; namely, that here in the valley a temple
should be built to me. Tell him word for word all that you have seen and heard and
admired. Be assured that I shall be grateful and that I will reward you, for I will
make your life happy and cause you to become worthy of the labor you have taken
and the trouble you perform to do what I enjoin you. Now you have heard all my
bidding, least of my sons. Go and do your utmost.’
“At this point he bowed before her and said, ‘Lady, I go to do your bidding.
As your humble servant, I take my leave of you.’ Then he went on to accomplish
her will, taking the causeway that leads directly to Mexico City.”

Vigils reading - St Lucy
2025-12-13
ST LUCY
From Butler’s Lives of the Saints
◊◊◊
St Lucy is said to have been a Sicilian, born in the city of Syracuse of noble
and wealthy parents and brought up a Christian. She wished to devote her life to
God and to give her fortune to the poor, but during the Diocletian persecutions a
man, usually represented as a Roman soldier, tried to rape her, and she resisted.
He denounced her as a Christian, and she was arrested, tortured and killed.
Though these traditions have no ascertainable historical basis, her
connection with Syracuse and the existence of an early cult connected with her
name are well established. A fourth-century inscription mentioning that a girl
called Euskia died on Lucy’s feast-day survives at Syracuse. Lucy was honoured
at Rome in the sixth century as one of the most illustrious virgin martyrs whose
lives the Church celebrates. Her name is included in the Canons of the Roman
and Ambrosian rites and occurs in the oldest Roman sacramentaries, in Greek
liturgical books, and in the marble calendar of Naples.
Churches were dedicated to her in Rome, Naples, and eventually Venice.
In England two ancient churches were dedicated to her, and she has certainly
been known since the end of the seventh century…
Possibly on account of her name, which has connotations of light and
purity (in Latin Lux and Lucia), legends have long gathered around St Lucy.
Some of the legends and many paintings relate to her eyes. One gruesome story
is that she tore her eyes out rather than surrender to her attacker, and she is
sometimes shown offering them to him. Oddly, she is the patron saint of those
with eye trouble, and a gentler interpretation is that this is because the eyes are
the source of our awareness of light. Her feast-day had long been the occasion
for special ceremonies connected with virginity. It occurs near the shortest day
of the year and is especially celebrated in Sweden as a festival of light, with a
procession of young girls dressed in white and crowned with lighted candles.
The song “Santa Lucia” celebrates her memory.

Skema
2025-12-14
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
3rd Week of Advent

Mass Readings: Sunday (A), Weekdays (II)
December 14 – 20, 2025

Sun
14
Mon
15
Tue
16
Wed
17
Thu
18
Fri
19
Sat
20

Office
3rd Sunday of Advent
Advent Weekday
Advent Weekday
Advent Weekday
Advent Weekday
Advent Weekday
Advent Weekday

Vigils
Micah 4:1-14
Micah 5:1-14
Micah 7:7-20
Isa 40:1-11
Isa 40:12-31
Isa 41:8-20
Isa 41:21-29

Lauds
Zech 2:10-17
Isa 24:21-25:5
Isa 52:1-7
Isa 42:1-9
Isa 45:1-8
Isa 45:18-25
Isa 46:5-13

Mass
7
187
188
193
194
195
196

1st
Isa 35:1-6a, 10
Num 24:2-7, 15-17a
Zeph 3:1-2, 9-13
Gen 49:2, 8-10
Jer 23:5-8
Judg 13:2-7, 24-25a
Isa 7:10-14

2nd
Jas 5:7-10

Gospel
Matt 11:2-11
Matt 21:23-27
Matt 21:28-32
Matt 1:1-17
Matt 1:18-24
Luke 1:5-25
Luke 1:26-38

Vespers
Rom 9:1-8
Rom 10:1-13
Rom 11:13-20
1 Thess 5:16-24
Phil 1:3-11
Phil 3:17-21
Phil 4:4-9

Vigils Reading - 3rd Sunday Advent
2025-12-14
THE ONE WHO IS TO COME
From a commentary by Thomas of Villanova
◊◊◊
The gospel narrative tells of a question which John the Baptist, who was
in prison, put to the Lord through his disciples. Are you the one who is to come,
or are we to look for someone else? John himself was in no doubt about the
matter. Even from his mother’s womb he had recognized Jesus, and at the
Jordan he had borne his testimony; but he sent this embassy for two reasons.
In the first place, John wished to instruct his disciples. He knew that his
own death was imminent and, like the good leader and teacher he was, he made
provision for his disciples, to ensure that they would have a teacher and
protector. He wanted to see them safe under Christ’s wing and in his care.
John’s second and paramount motive, however, was to draw attention to
Christ. He knew that he had been sent to bear witness to Christ, and although he
had given his testimony at the Jordan, few had accepted it. Knowing now that
his death was near he devised a profitable and very prudent plan: he would put
this question to Jesus publicly and thus bring him into the limelight, so that in
replying to the question Jesus would at the same time bear witness about
himself, and thereby reveal himself to the people. John knew that the Lord’s
reply was bound to be very fruitful, and events proved him right.
The disciples approached Jesus, and in front of the crowd put to him the
same question which the Jews had put to John. Everyone eagerly awaited his
reply, for there had already been a rumor among the people that he might
indeed be the Messiah. The Lord gave no immediate answer, but delayed a little,
and in their presence worked wonderful, mighty miracles. Then he invited
them, Go and report to John what you have heard. The blind are receiving
their sight, the lame are walking, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead
rise again, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.
He did not give an answer to them in so many words, but pointed to his
deeds, as much as to say, “The works that I am doing are my witness. These are
the works I am performing; judge for yourself whether I am the Messiah.” This
was an admirable reply, for he not only claimed by means of his works that he
was the Messiah; he also proved it.
Isaiah had uttered three prophecies about the Christ. The first was this:
Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unsealed,
and the lame man will leap like a stag. The second was, The Spirit of the Lord is
upon me… he has sent me to announce good tidings to the poor. The third
declared, He shall be a stone for stumbling over, and a rock of scandal as well,
for both houses of Israel. The Lord fulfilled these prophecies before their eyes,
and implicitly quoted them in his reply: the first, by saying, The blind are
receiving their sight, the lame are walking … the deaf hear; the second in his
claim that the good news is proclaimed to the poor; and the third by saying,
Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.

Vigils Reading
2025-12-15
CREATED TO DO HIS WILL
By St John Henry Newman
◊◊◊
God was all-complete, all-blessed in Himself; but it was His almighty will
to create a world for His glory. He is Almighty, and might have done all things
Himself, but it has been His will to bring about His purposes by the beings He
has created. We are all created to His glory – we are created to do His will. I am
created to do something or to be something for which no one else is created; I
have a place in God’s counsels, in God’s world, which no one else has; whether I
be rich or poor, despised or esteemed by man, God knows me and calls me by
my name.
God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed
some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission – I
never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. Somehow I am
necessary for His purposes, as necessary in my place as an Archangel in his – if,
indeed, I fail He can raise another, as He could make stones children of
Abraham. Yet I have a part in this great work: I am a link in a chain, a bond of
connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good,
I shall do His work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own
place, while not intending it, if I but do keep His commandments and serve Him
in my calling.
Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be
thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my
perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My
sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end,
which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life, He
may shorten it; He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends, He
may throw me among strangers, He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits
sink, hide the future from me – still He knows what He is about.

Vigils Reading
2025-12-16
CONFIDENCE IN GOD’S POWER
By Fr Romano Guardini
◊◊◊
Elizabeth calls the Virgin Blessed because she had faith – for everything
would happen as the Lord had told her; through the power of the Holy Spirit she
would become the Mother of the Redeemer, and in this find the fulfillment of
her life and salvation. To be assured of this was not always easy. When the
Gospel speaks of Mary and her son, one perceives a great love, but also a
remoteness.
The answer of the twelve-year-old boy in the temple; the answer Jesus
gave at the wedding feast of Cana; his words to the bystanders, when Mary, at
the door, asks for him; what he said to the woman who exalted his Mother; and
his last testament in which he committed her to the care of the disciple – in each
of these, something is revealed that removes him from her, and we always sense
the possibility that she might have become perplexed about God’s guidance. But
each time her confidence increased and she placed all into his hands. Mary lived
completely through her confidence in God’s power, a power that is capable of
consummating all, even in darkness and opposition.
Hope is confidence in God’s power to accomplish all things. He has
promised that we shall become new persons, and that his creation shall be a
“new heaven and a new earth”. This is gainsaid by the impression made on us by
worldly things; by the course our life is taking; by the opinions of people around
us; by our own daily insufficiency and sin – by everything. Hope is the
“nevertheless” of faith. In spite of all contradiction, the new life is within us, and
God will complete it if we trust in him despite all opposition. But that is difficult,
sometimes impossible. So we must ask again that the Lord “may strengthen our
hope.”

Vigils Reading
2025-12-17
THE HOLINESS OF THE CHURCH
From the Second Vatican Council’s document “Lumen Gentium”
◊◊◊
The Church, whose mystery is set forth by this sacred Council, is held, as a
matter of faith, to be unfailingly holy. This is because Christ, the Son of God,
who with the Father and the Spirit is hailed as “alone holy,” loved the Church as
his Bride, giving himself up for her so as to sanctify her; he joined her to himself
as his body and endowed her with the gift of the Holy Spirit for the glory of God.
Therefore all in the Church, whether they belong to the hierarchy or are
cared for by it, are called to holiness, according to the apostle’s saying: “For this
is the will of God, your sanctification”. This holiness of the Church is constantly
shown forth in the fruits of grace which the Spirit produces in the faithful and so
it must be; it is expressed in many ways by the individuals who, each in his or
her own state of life, tend to the perfection of love, thus sanctifying others; it
appears in a certain way of its own in the practice of the counsels which have
been usually called “evangelical.” This practice of the counsels prompted by the
Holy Spirit, undertaken by many Christians whether privately or in a form or
state sanctioned by the Church, gives and should give a striking witness and
example of that holiness.
The Lord Jesus, divine teacher and model of all perfection, preached
holiness of life (of which he is the author and maker) to each and every one of his
disciples without distinction: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly
Father is perfect”. For he sent the Holy Spirit to all to move them interiorly to
love God with their whole heart, with their whole soul, with their whole
understanding, and with their whole strength, and to love one another as Christ
love them.
The followers of Christ, called by grace, and justified in the Lord Jesus,
have been made sons and daughters of God in the baptism of faith and partakers
of the divine nature, and so are truly sanctified. They must therefore hold on to
and perfect in their lives that sanctification which they have received from God.
They are told by the apostle to live “as is fitting among saints”, and to put on “as
God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness,
meekness, and patience”, to have the fruits of the Spirit for their sanctification.
But since we all offend in many ways, we constantly need God’s mercy and must
pray everyday: “And forgive us our debts.”
It is therefore quite clear that all Christians in any state or walk of life are
called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of love, and by this
holiness a more human manner of life is fostered also in earthly society.

Vigils Reading
2025-12-18
THE GIFT OF FAITH
By Catherine de Hueck Doherty
◊◊◊
What is faith? Some say they have lost it. Some hunger for the first taste.
Some are indifferent to whether they have it or not. Others fight against it, hate
it, and want to destroy it in others. What is faith? A Catholic can easily answer
from early catechetical instructions in childhood. Faith is a free gift from God,
given to a person at Baptism. A Catholic will say too that no one can really
acquire faith by his own efforts. He will repeat over and over again that it is
indeed a free gift from God.
Yes, faith is a free, loving gift of God to us. Faith is the cradle of love and of
hope. But this gift given to us at Baptism can grow, must grow, must be
incarnated into our lives, must become part of us, must become, like breathing,
an utterly integral part of us.
How can it become all these things? By prayer. God never refuses a prayer
for the deepening and growth in faith. Prayer is the food that will make faith
grow, strengthen it, root it with deep and lasting roots into human hearts. Faith
grows by living it out. Faith is a pilgrimage toward the Absolute. Faith gives
every Christian sandals and a pilgrim’s staff and bids him to arise and go in
search of him whom every Christian longs for – God.
Faith appears to be blind sometimes but in reality it sees very deeply. It
alone can walk in utter darkness. It alone can fold the wings of the intellect when
necessary and open them when it needs to. Chasms, abysses, steep mountains
present no problem or difficulty to faith. On the contrary, all of life – pains,
sorrows, joys symbolized by these chasms – becomes its food and its
nourishment. Faith grows until it leaves all darkness behind and walks like a
child bathed in the light of God’s love.
No one can keep or hide faith for himself alone. It will escape and extend
itself to others. Faith never walks alone, but always walks with love and hope.
Faith can be transmitted by words, but it is best communicated by actions. Faith
cries out to be lived, to be incarnated, incarnated in love. For love is a Person,
love is God, and faith is his gift to us. The hands of faith are filled with gifts for
those who embrace her. Gifts of peace, love, joy and strength. Gifts of courage
and laughter. Faith is a child who smiles at theologians and at human wisdom.

THE GOSPEL WITHOUT COMPROMISE , Catherine de Hueck Doherty (Ave Maria Press IN 1976) pp. 127-128.11 invites them to come and play with God.

Vigils Reading
2025-12-19
PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD
From a homily by Origen
◊◊◊
We read in the Old Testament, in the prophet Isaiah: “A voice of one
crying in the wilderness…” For the Lord wishes to find in you a way prepared
before him, where he may enter in, and have there a right-of-way. Prepare for
him this path, of which it is written: “Make straight his path.”
The Voice cries: “Prepare the way of the Lord.” First the voice strikes
upon the year, then after the voice, indeed together with the voice, the word
penetrates the mind. In this way was Christ announced by John. Let us then
hear what the Voice announces concerning the Word. “Prepare,” it says, “the
way of the Lord.” Which way shall we prepare for the Lord? A way on the earth?
Can the Word of God travel such road? Or rather must we not prepare the way
within us, setting up in our hearts a straight and true way?
This is the way through which the Word of God enters, and comes to rest
within the bounds of the human body. And great indeed is the heart of man,
wide and spacious as if it were a world in itself. Do you wish to know how great
and how profound it is? Behold what a sweep of divine knowledge it can
embrace: “For he has given me true knowledge of the things that are: to know
the disposition of the whole world, and the virtues of the elements, the
beginnings and the endings and midst of the times, the alterations of their
courses, and the changes of the seasons, revolutions of the year, and the
dispositions of the stars, the natures of living creatures, and the reasonings of
men.”
See then that the heart of man, which can contain so much, is no small
thing. And see also that its greatness is not in bodily quantity, but in the power
by which it can receive such knowledge of the truth. Let me recall to you a
simple example from our daily life, so that you may see how great is this power.
Let us consider this: through whatever cities we may have passed, we have still
within our minds the style and the shape of their squares and houses and walls
and buildings, stored in our memory. We keep within us, as in the picture, the
roads we have traveled. The sea we have voyaged over we can recall in moments
of quiet recollection. No small thing, as I have said, is the heart of man.
If it then can contain so much, and is not something small and narrow,
then let a way for the Lord be prepared in it, and let his path be made straight, so
that the Word of God and his Wisdom may enter there. Prepare this way by a
worthy manner of living, and with good works make straight the path, so that
without hindrance the word of God may tread this way to you, and give you
understanding, both of his coming and of his mysteries, to whom be glory and
empire forever and ever.

Vigils Reading
2025-12-20
TO SEEK GOD
By Fr Louis Bouyer
◊◊◊
The discovery of grace, the discovery of love which loves us without
looking for any return, which loves us although we are sinners, which loves us in
our sin, but which alone will lead us, by obscure ways known to God alone, from
sin to sanctity, that is, in the last analysis, the great discovery. Then it is that God
reveals Himself to us as One who speaks to us, as One whose Word for the
second time draws us out of nothingness to being, as One whom we have not so
much to seek as to discover seeking us. It is He, the Shepherd who left the
ninety-nine sheep in safety to seek and save that which was lost. It is He, the
Father of the prodigal who goes along the road to welcome his son when he has
scarcely started out to meet his father, and takes him in his arms.
“To seek God”, to seek Him as a person, as the Person par excellence, and
not only as the “Thou” to whom all our love should be addressed, but as the “I”
who has first approached us, whose word of love, addressed to the primeval
chaos, drew us forth from it in the first place, and, spoken to us in our sin, draws
us forth from it again: to be a monk is nothing else than this. To be a monk, then,
is simply to be an integral Christian. And regarded in this light, the Christian is
simply the person restored by the Word of the Gospel to the vocation which the
creative Word destined for each: to respond to the Word of Agape by the word of
faith, in order eventually to meet God face to face.
Commenting on the Canticle of Canticles, Origen tells us that the Church,
under the old dispensation, only heard the Bridegroom’s voice, whereas in the
new, she is offered the sight of his countenance. And he adds that the
development of the Christian life is made up solely of this transition. The monk
is the one who does not limit him or herself to accepting it in some measure
passively, by yielding to grace slothfully and reluctantly. The monk is one who
responds with the whole heart to the call which comes from the very heart of
God.
Monks are of the number of the violent who will not allow the divine
Kingdom to fall upon them as it were unawares, but who take it by storm in
advance. For that the monks have staked their all, they have burned their boats.
To the one who believes that life consists in what is possessed, the monk seems
to be consenting to, even to be deliberately seeking, a fatal renunciation. To the
one who knows that being is of greater value than having, and that being which
is of value is not that which passes but that which endures, the monk will seem
to be the only true humanist. For the human person is born only as subject to the
divine Word and will only be fully that person the day when, freed from the
nothingness which holds one prisoner, fully surrendered to the Word which
calls, the person will at last come to discover the Face which promised us being
in promising us His own image.

Skema
2025-12-21
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
4th Week of Advent

Mass Readings: Sunday (A), Weekdays (II)
December 21 – 27, 2025

Sun
21
Mon
22
Tue
23
Wed
24
Thu
25
Fri
26
Sat
27

Office
4th Sunday of Advent
Advent Weekday
Advent Weekday
Advent Weekday
Nativity of the Lord
St Stephen
St John

Vigils
Isa 42:10-25
Isa 43:1-15
Isa 43:16-28
Isa 44:1-8, 21-23
*vigil and midnight mass
Acts 6:1-15
Wis 7:21-8:1

Lauds
Isa 49:8-13
Isa 49:14-21
Isa 49:22-26
Isa 63:15-19
Baruch 3:36-4:4
2 Chron 24:17-22
Prov 8:22-30

Mass
10
198
199
200
16
696
697

1st
Isa 7:10-14
1 Sam 1:24-28
Mal 3:1-4, 23-24
2 Sam 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16
Isa 52:7-10
Acts 6:8-10; 7:54-59
1 John 1:1-4

2nd
Rom 1:1-7

Heb 1:1-6

Gospel
Matt 1:18-24
Luke 1:46-56
Luke 1:57-66
Luke 1:67-79
John 1:1-18
Matt 10:17-22
John 20:1a, 2-8

Vespers
1 Cor 1:1-9
1 Cor 4:1-5
Jas 5:7-11
2 Pet 3:8-14
1 John 4:7-16
Acts 7:51-8:2
Phil 2:1-11

Vigils Reading - 4th Sunday of Advent
2025-12-21
GOD WITH US
From a commentary by the Venerable Bede
◊◊◊
Matthew the evangelist gives us an account of the way in which the eternal
Son of God, begotten before the world began, appeared in time as the Son of
Man. His description is brief but absolutely true. By tracing the ancestry of our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ through the male line he brings it down from
Abraham to Joseph, the husband of Mary. It is indeed fitting in every respect
that when God decided to become incarnate for the sake of the whole human
race, none but a virgin should be his mother, and that, since a virgin was
privileged to bring him into the world, she should bear no other son but the son
who is God.
Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and he shall be called
Emmanuel, a name which means God with us. The name God-with-us, given to
our Savior by the prophet, signifies that two natures are united in his one
person. Before time began he was God, born of the Father, but in the fullness of
time he became Emmanuel, God with us, in the womb of his mother, because
when the Word was made flesh and lived among us he deigned to unite our frail
human nature to his own person. Without ceasing to be what he had always
been, he began in a wonderful fashion to be what we are, assuming our nature in
such a way that he did not lose his own.
And so Mary gave birth to her firstborn son, the child of her own flesh and
blood. She brought forth the God who had been born of God before creation
began, and who, in his created humanity, rightfully surpassed the whole of
creation. And Scripture says she named him Jesus.
Jesus, then, is the name of the Virgin’s son. According to the angel’s
explanation, it means one who is to save his people from their sins. In doing so
he will also deliver them from any defilement of mind and body they have
incurred on account of their sins.
But the title “Christ” implies a priestly or royal dignity. In the Old
Testament it was given to both priests and kings on account of the anointing
with chrism or holy oil which they received. They prefigured the true king and
high priest who, on coming into this world, was anointed with the oil of gladness
above all his peers. From this anointing or chrismation he received the name of
Christ, and those who share in the anointing which he himself bestows, that is
the grace of the Spirit, are called Christians.
May Jesus Christ fulfill his saving task by saving us from our sins; may he
discharge his priestly office by reconciling us to God the Father, and may he
exercise his royal power by admitting us to his Father’s kingdom, for he is our
Lord and God, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever
and ever.

Vigils Reading
2025-12-22
JUSTICE AND THE WORD
From the treatise “The Educator” by St Clement of Alexandria
◊◊◊
On every occasion we ought to repeat that most excellent of maxims – the
good man by means of his temperateness and justice stores up treasure in
heaven. He who sells his worldly goods and gives to the poor will find the
imperishable treasure, where there is neither moth nor robber. Such a man is
fortunate indeed, though he be insignificant and weak and obscure, and he is
rich with the greatest of all riches.
On the other hand, if a person becomes wealthier than Midas and Cinyra,
but is arrogant and unjust, in the manner of the man who was luxuriously
clothed in purple and fine linen, and despised Lazarus, he is miserable, lives
wretchedly, and will never attain true life.
In fact, wealth seems to me to be like a snake, which will twist round the
hand and bite, unless one knows how to handle it without danger by the tip of
the tail. Likewise, riches whether wriggling in an experienced or inexperienced
grip are dexterous at clinging and biting, unless one rise above them and use
them skillfully – that is, so as to crush the creature by the charm of the Word,
thus remaining unharmed.
However, the one who possesses what is worth most turns out to be the
truly rich person, although perhaps not recognized as such. It is not jewels or
gold or clothing or bodily perfection that is worth much. It is simply virtue. For
it is the word given by the Educator to be put into practice. This is the Word who
adjures luxury but calls for independence in service of self, and praises frugality,
offspring of moderation. “Receive,” he says, “my instruction in preference to
silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold. For Wisdom is better than corals,
and no choice possession can compare with her.” And again: “Acquire me rather
than gold, and precious stones, and silver; for my produce is better than choice
silver…
For “there are those who sow and reap more,” of whom it is written:
“Lavishly he gives to the poor; his generosity shall endure forever.” Hence, it is
not the one who has and keeps who is rich, but the one who has and gives away.
And it is the giving away rather than the possession which makes a person
happy; and the fruit of the Spirit is generosity. Thus, riches lie in the soul…
True riches, therefore, are justice and the Word, which is more valuable
than any treasure; they are not increased by cattle and fields but are given by
God. Such wealth cannot be taken away, for the soul alone is its treasure. It
constitutes the supreme possession for anyone who has it, rendering one truly
blessed. For the one who is able to refrain from desiring what is above one’s
power to obtain but then receives from God those most devout desires – such a
one possesses much, for that person has God as an everlasting treasure!

Vigils Reading
2025-12-23
REPENT WITH YOUR WHOLE HEART
From a homily written in the 2nd Century
◊◊◊
Let us be sure that when the day of judgment comes, our place will be
among those who give thanks to God and have served him, and not with the
ungodly who face condemnation. As for myself, I am only a sinner, not yet
beyond the reach of temptation; but even amidst all the devil’s machinations I
still strive to make progress and hope to attain at least some virtue, for I fear the
judgment that awaits me.
My brothers and sisters, you have heard the word of God who is the very
fountainhead truth. Therefore, I now read you an appeal to heed what is
written, and thereby save both yourselves and your reader. The reward I ask is
that you repent with your whole heart, to save yourselves and find life. if we do
this, we shall set an example for all young people, for whom the glory and
goodness of God is a challenge to be generous in his service.
Let me say also that when we are given warning and corrected for doing
something wrong, we should not be so foolish as to take offense and be angry.
There are times when we are unconscious of the sins we commit because our
hearts are fickle, lacking in faith. Futile desires becloud our minds. We need to
pull ourselves up, therefore, because our very salvation is at stake.
Those who keep God’s commandments will have reason to rejoice. For a
short time in this world they may have to suffer, but they will rise again and their
reward will endure for ever. No one who holds God in reverence should grieve
over the hardships of this present time, for a time of blessedness is waiting. For
we will live again in heaven in the company of all those who have gone before us;
for all eternity we will rejoice, never to know sorrow again.
So do not be disturbed at the sight of the wicked possessing great wealth
while the servants of God suffer want. We…must have faith. Competing as we
are in the arena of the living God, we are receiving the training in this present
life that will make us worthy to be crowned in the life to come. Honest people do
not become rich overnight; they have to wait for the reward of their labors. If
God gave virtue an immediate recompense, we should straightway find
ourselves engaging in commerce, instead of perfecting ourselves in his service.
Although to all outward appearance we might be irreproachable, we should not
be seeking God, but our own advantage, and bringing down on our sinful souls
that divine judgment that would soon make us feel the full weight of our chains.
To the one invisible God, the Father of truth, who sent forth the Savior,
the author of immortality, and through him revealed to us the truth and the
heavenly life – to him be glory throughout all ages, for ever and ever.

Vigils Reading
2025-12-24
GOD’S LOVING PATIENCE
From “The Living God” by Fr Romano Guardini
◊◊◊
God is almighty and infinitely rich. His riches and His omnipotence are
His patience. How good it is that God’s patience is as great as His omnipotence!
That is why He is always able to forgive again, always able to give us a fresh
chance, always able to begin His work again from the chaos of human freedom.
Let us, however, come to the real point. We have been speaking about
“the” world, about men and women in general. But God’s patience is His
patience with me. And I am to some extent able to judge what that means. I can
judge because I know how difficult it is to be patient with myself…
Unless we delude ourselves, or have succeeded in reconciling ourselves to
our own paltry and petty world, we all know this kind of suffering even though it
may not have actually made us ill, and…where is the border line between health
and sickness? We all know the misery, the bitter sterility, when day after day
and year after year passes and things never change. One tries for so long to
overcome this situation but it refuses to yield. One appears to have overcome it
for a time perhaps and then it suddenly returns. And sometimes it seems as
though after wearing oneself out trying to overcome it, seven demons have
taken the place of the original one.
If God’s attitude to us is the same as our own attitude to ourselves, then
the outlook is black indeed. If God takes as poor a view of me as I do myself, if
God does not bear with my bungling, my dishonesty, my constant failures with
greater patience than I do myself, then I am bound to give up in despair. But
God is love. And in Him my nature is truer than in myself. In me it is corrupt; in
Him it is pure. In His most holy patience He holds in His love my nature which I
myself disfigure so terribly and squander so thoughtlessly. From this loving
patience He sees and bears me. He has infinite confidence in me. He believes
that I am capable of making progress.
We sometimes feel that we must get away from ourselves, that we must
escape from the old into the new and the real, that sometime or other there must
come what the Bible calls conversion, a decisive turning to God. But it does not
come, and meanwhile life wastes away. The older we get the faster it goes and
the more difficult we find it to believe that things can ever be any different.
Perhaps the greatest thing about God’s patience is the infinite possibilities of
love and grace which He holds open to life as it hardens in its cowardice and
runs on to its end.
Can you take this in? This unspeakable, impossible possibility of “hoping
against all hope” which, the more body and soul harden as life ebbs away, must
come exclusively from the mind and spirit, from the Holy Spirit of God? This is
the ultimate depth of God’s patience to which we can pray, that He may keep
open for us the possibility of spiritual renewal when all other possibilities have
ceased.

Vigils Reading - Nativity of the Lord
2025-12-25
FROM THE CRIB TO THE CROSS
By St Edith Stein
◊◊◊
God has come to redeem us, to unite us to Himself and to each other, to
conform our will to His. He knows our nature. He reckons with it, and has
therefore given us every help necessary to reach our goal.
The divine Child has become a teacher and has told us what to do. In
order to penetrate a whole human life with the divine life it is not enough to
kneel once a year before the crib and let ourselves be captivated by the charm of
the holy night. To achieve this, we must be in daily contact with God, listening
to the words he has spoken and which have been transmitted to us, and obeying
them. We must, above all, pray as the Savior Himself has taught us so
insistently. “Ask and it shall be given you”. This is the certain promise of being
heard. And if we pray every day with all our heart: “Lord, they will be done” we
may well trust that we shall not fail to do God’s will even when we no longer have
subjective certainty.
More: Christ has not left us orphans. He has sent His Spirit, who teaches
us all truth. He has founded his Church which is guided by His Spirit, and has
ordained in it His representatives by whose mouth His Spirit speaks to us in
human words. In His Church He has united the faithful into one community
and wants them to support each other. Thus we are not alone, and if the
confidence in our own understanding and even in our own prayer fails us, the
power of obedience and intercession will assist us.
“And the word was made flesh”. This became reality in the stable of
Bethlehem. But it has also been fulfilled in another form. “He who eats my flesh
and drinks my blood has eternal life”. The Savior, knowing that we are and
remain men who have daily to struggle with our weaknesses, aids our humanity
in a manner truly divine. Just as our earthly body needs its daily bread, so the
divine life in us must be constantly fed. “This is the living bread that came down
from heaven”. If we make it truly our daily bread, the mystery of Christmas, the
Incarnation of the Word, will daily be re-enacted in us. And this, it seems, is the
surest way to remain in constant union with God, and to grow every day more
securely and more deeply into the mystical Body of Christ.
The Christian mysteries are an indivisible whole. If we become immersed
in one, we are led to all the others. Thus the way from Bethlehem leads
inevitably to Golgotha, from the crib to the Cross. When the blessed Virgin
brought the Child to the temple, Simeon prophesied that her soul would be
pierced by a sword, that this Child was set for the fall and the resurrection of
many, for a sign that would be contradicted. His prophecy announced the
Passion, the fight between light and darkness that already showed itself before
the crib.

Vigils Reading - St Stephen
2025-12-26
THE GIFT OF LOVE
From a sermon by St Fulgentius
◊◊◊
Yesterday we celebrated the birth in time of our eternal king; today we
celebrate the triumphant suffering of a soldier. For yesterday our king, nobly
arrayed in flesh, proceeding from the chaste womb of the Virgin Mary, deigned
to visit this world; today a soldier, leaving the confines of the body, made his
way in triumph to heaven.
Our king, though he is the Most High, for our sake came in humility; yet
he could not come empty-handed. It was indeed a generous gift that he brought
for us, one by which he not only abundantly enriched us but gave us the strength
to do battle and never be vanquished. What he brought was the gift of love,
which was to lead us to become sharers in the godhead. He brought it only to
expend it, without in any way diminishing his own store; while turning the
poverty of his followers into riches he remained himself, as by a miracle, fully
possessed of his own inexhaustible treasury.
Love then, the same love that brought Christ down from heaven to earth,
raised Stephen from earth to heaven; the same love shown first in the king was
reproduced in its splendor in the warrior.
And so Stephen, in order to earn his right to the crown his name signifies,
armed himself with love, and by that same love won every battle. It was love of
God that made him yield not an inch, love of his neighbor that led him to
intercede for those who stoned him. It was through love that he was able to
expose those in error so that they might change their ways; through love that he
prayed for those who stoned him so that they should not be punished. Trusting
only in love, he overcame Saul’s cruel rage, and the very man who had been his
persecutor on earth he won as his companion in heaven. That same holy and
untiring love longed to win over by prayer those whom it could not convert by
persuasion…
Love is therefore the source and origin of every good, an unrivaled
protection, the road that leads to heaven. Those who walk in love can be neither
lost nor afraid; love is the guide and protector, and brings them to the end of
their journey. For this reason, beloved, since Christ has set up a stairway of love
by which every Christian can mount up to heaven, keep a firm hold on love
alone; love one another, and by growing in love climb together up to heaven.

Vigils Reading - St John
2025-12-27
THE ROOT OF CHARITY
From a sermon by St John Henry Newman
◊◊◊
The love of God is not the same thing as the love of our parents, though
parallel to it; but the love of mankind in general should be in the main the same
habit as the love of our friends, only exercised towards different objects… What
is meant by loving all people is, to feel well disposed to all, to be ready to assist
them, and to act towards those who come in our way, as if we loved them. We
cannot love those about whom we know nothing; except indeed we view them in
Christ, as the objects of his Atonement, that is, rather in faith than in love. And
love, besides, is a habit, and cannot be attained without actual practice, which
on so large a scale is impossible.
We see then how absurd it is when writers (as is the manner of some who
slight the Gospel) talk magnificently about loving the whole human race with a
comprehensive affection, of being the friends of all, and the like. Such vaunting
professions, what do they come to? That such men or women have certain
benevolent feelings towards the world, — feelings and nothing more – nothing
more than unstable feelings, the mere offspring of an indulged imagination,
which exist only when their minds are wrought upon, and are sure to fail them
in the hour of need. This is not to love people; it is but to talk about love. The
real love of another must depend on practice, and therefore, must begin by
exercising itself on our friends around us; otherwise it will have no existence.
By trying to love our relations and friends, by submitting to their wishes,
though contrary to our own, by bearing with their infirmities, by overcoming
their occasional waywardness by kindness, by dwelling on their excellences, and
trying to copy them, thus it is that we form in our hearts that root of charity,
which, though small at first, may, like the mustard seed, at last even overshadow
the earth. The vain talkers about philanthropy…usually show the emptiness of
their profession, by being morose and cruel in the private relations of life, which
they seem to account as subjects beneath their notice.
Far different indeed, far different…with the great Apostle, whose memory
we are today celebrating, utterly the reverse of this fictitious benevolence was
his elevated and enlightened sympathy for all men. We know he is celebrated for
his declarations about Christian love. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love
is of God. If we love one another, God dwells in us, and his love is perfected in
us…”
Now did he begin with some vast effort at loving on a large scale? Nay, he
had the unspeakable privilege of being the friend of Christ. Thus he was taught
to love others; first his affection was concentrated then it was expanded. Next he
had the solemn and comfortable charge of tending our Lord’s Mother, the
Blessed Virgin, after his departure. Do we not here discern the secret sources of
his special love of the brethren? Could he, who first was favored with his Savior’s
affection, then trusted with a son’s office towards his Mother, could he be other
than a memorial and pattern (as far as man or woman can be), of love, deep,
contemplative, fervent, unruffled, unbounded?

Skema
2025-12-28
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
Christmas Season

Mass Readings: Sunday (A), Weekdays (II)
December 28 / January 3, 2025/6

Sun
28
Mon
29
Tue
30
Wed
31
Thu
1
Fri
2
Sat
3

Office
Holy Family
5th Day in the Octave
6th Day in the Octave
7th Day in the Octave
Mary, Mother of God
SS Basil & Gregory
Christmas Weekday

Vigils
Prov 31:10-31
Song 1:1-11
Song 1:12-2:7
Song 2:8-3:11
Heb 2:5-18
Song 4:1-5:1
Song 5:2-6:3

Lauds
Sir 26:1-4, 13-16
Isa 51:1-8
Isa 52:8-12
Isa 57:14-19
Ezek 43:27-44:4
Isa 60:1-7
Isa 60:10-14

Mass
17
202
203
204
18
205
206

1st
Sir 3:3-7, 14-17a
1 John 2:3-11
1 John 2:12-17
1 John 2:18-21
Num 6:22-27
1 John 2:22-28
1 John 2:29-3:6

2nd
Col 3:12-21

Gal 4:4-7

Gospel
Matt 2:13-15, 19-23
Luke 2:22-35
Luke 2:36-40
John 1:1-18
Luke 2:16-21
John 1:19-28
John 1:29-34

Vespers
1 Cor 13:1-8a
Col 1:1-8
Col 1:9-14
2 John 4-9
Rev 11:19-12:6
Col 1:15-20
Tim 1:6-14

Vigils Reading - Holy Family
2025-12-28
THE INCARNATE WORD
From a commentary by St John Chrysostom
◊◊◊
Today, as a firstborn son, Christ went down into Egypt to end the
mourning its ancient bereavement had brought upon that land. Instead of
plagues he brought joy, instead of night and darkness he gave the light of
salvation.
Of old the river’s water had been polluted by the untimely deaths of
murdered infants. Therefore he who long ago had stained the waters red went
down into Egypt and purified those waters by the power of the Holy Spirit,
making them the source of salvation. When the Egyptians were afflicted they
raged against God and denied him. Therefore he went down into Egypt, filled
devout souls with the knowledge of God and made the river more productive of
martyrs than it was of ears of grain.
What more shall I say of this mystery? I see a carpenter and a manger, an
infant and swaddling clothes, a virgin giving birth without the necessities of life;
nothing but poverty and complete destitution. Have you ever seen wealth in
such penury? How could he who was rich have become, for our sake, so poor
that he had neither bed nor bedding but was laid in a manger? O immeasurable
wealth concealed in poverty! He lies in a manger, yet he rocks the whole world.
He is bound with swaddling bands, yet he breaks the bonds of sin. Before he
could speak he taught the wise men and converted them. What else can I say?
Here is the newborn babe, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.
With him are Mary, virgin and mother, and Joseph who was called his father.
Joseph was only betrothed to Mary when the Holy Spirit overshadowed
her; so he was at a loss as to what he should call the child. While he was in this
perplexity a message from heaven came to him by the voice of an angel: Do not
be afraid, Joseph. It is by the Holy Spirit that she has conceived this child. In
her virginity the Holy Spirit overshadowed her.
Why was Christ born of a virgin, and her virginity preserved inviolate?
Because of old the devil had deceived the virgin Eve, Gabriel brought the Good
News to the Virgin Mary. Having fallen into the trap, Eve spoke the word that
led to death. Having received the good News, Mary gave birth to the incarnate
Word who has brought us eternal life.

Vigils Reading - 5th day in the Octave
2025-12-29
THE APPLE OF HIS EYE
From a treatise by St John Eudes
◊◊◊
Our loving Savior, in various places in the Scriptures, assures us that he is
ever watchful over us, that we are and always will be in his most compassionate
care. How he carries us in his heart he is not content with telling us once or
twice, but in one place [in Isaiah] he even repeats it five times in succession:
Hearken to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who
have been borne by me from your birth, carried from the womb; even to your
old age I am He, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will
bear; I will carry and will save.
Elsewhere [in Scripture] he tells us the same thing in many ways.
Although, he says, it may sometimes happen that a mother can forget her child,
yet he will never forget us, and he has engraved us on his hands to have us ever
before him. Whoever touches one of us, he says, touches the apple of his eye.
Again, we should not be anxious about how we are going to get enough to eat or
wear, because he well knows our needs and takes care of them. He has even
counted the very hairs of our heads, and not one shall perish. He also tells us
that as he loves his Father so his Father loves us, and that his own love for us is
the same as his Father’s love for him. He wishes us to be where he is — that is, he
wishes us to dwell with him in his Father’s heart…
Let us beware of being dependent on the power or favor of our friends, or
on our own possessions, on our minds, knowledge, strength, good desires and
resolutions, prayers, or even on the faith we believe we have in God, or on
human means of any sort, or on anything in creation, but rely entirely on the
mercy of God… What we have to do is to give up all tendency to rely on our own
means, and put our trust in the absolute goodness of our Lord. Therefore we
must take as much care, and work as hard, as if we expected no help from God,
and at the same time regard this work of ours as nothing, and put all our hope in
God’s mercy.
This is what the Holy Spirit exhorts us to do, speaking through the mouth
of the King and Prophet David: Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and
he will act. And elsewhere: Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain
you. And in the words of Peter, the leader of the Apostles, the Spirit advises us to
cast all our anxieties on God, for he cares about us. Our Lord spoke the same
comfort to Saint Catherine of Siena: “My daughter, forget yourself and think of
me, and I shall never cease to think of you.”

Vigils Reading - 6th Day in the Octave
2025-12-30
THE SANCTIFICATION OF HUMANITY
From “Faith and Theology” by Fr Marie-Dominique Chenu
◊◊◊
I am afraid that sometimes we think of the Gospel as being operative only
on a pious plane far removed from earthly conditions, on the assumption that
the evangelical message would be uncomfortable in the midst of mundane
things. And so we hesitate to use the leaven in life’s ordinary bread lest its purity
be contaminated.
If that is our attitude then we do not really believe in the Gospel at all. We
do not believe that it is for our humanity that God became flesh! We do not
believe that the divine life can be lived by a person of flesh and bone… But this is
a basic misunderstanding of the plan of Christ, for Christ saves humanity, not by
placing us in a heaven apart, but by becoming one of us. In other words,
salvation is not to be found in the denial of human nature, since God himself
took on human nature in order to save humankind.
The plan according to which divine life was given to us through the
incarnation can be stated in this way: God, in becoming a man, submitted to all
the earthly conditions of human existence; if any of those conditions had been
omitted, if any exceptions had been made, God would not have fully assumed
human nature. The sanctification of humanity follows the same law. It is not an
exterior sanctification accomplished by pious intentions; it is a profound
permeation of the depth of our being and of our deepest aspirations by a sap
which flows through the channel of our cares, our labors, our institutions. This
is the incarnation. And if anyone wants an example of grace functioning at the
human level let us consider human love — the encounter of spirit and flesh.
Here, at least, one would expect the divine life to remain reserved and detached
in its own pure isolation. But look what Christ has done! He made marriage a
sacrament, so that its functioning and its needs belong to the divine life.
In divine as in human life we have no use for a love that excludes the
burden of the body and what it involves, for such would be a false love without
roots in earth and consequently without fruit in heaven. When God wills that
fraternal love should find a place in our ordinary daily life he also wills that the
material bases of that life be included in the concerns of love — though, in fact,
we have made these material bases the sources of conflict and war. For even God
must respect the laws of love.

Vigils Reading - 7th Day in the Octave
2025-12-31
O SOUL OF MY SOUL
By St Elizabeth Ann Seton
◊◊◊
How often have I felt my soul awakened by your Light and warmed by the
fire of your Love – then I approach you – I find you – but Alas instantly after, I
lose you; often I think myself received – then fear I am rejected – and in this
continual change of interior dispositions I walk in darkness and often go astray
– I desire and know not how to desire, I love, and know not how to love, nor how
to find what I love.
Thus my soul loses itself without ceasing to hope in you – It knows by its
own experience that it desires much, and is unable to do anything – you see its
trouble O lord – and in that happy moment when fatigued with so many
vicissitudes it falls at last into entire diffidence of itself then you open its eyes
and it sees the true way to Peace and Life – it knows you were nearer than it
imagined – you instruct it all at once without Voice or Words, it thinks only of
what possesses it, abandoning all things else it then possesses you – It sees
without knowing what it sees, it hears, and is ignorant of what it hears, it knows
only Who he is to whom it is attentive, it contents itself with loving HIM, it loves
Him continually more and more – Words cannot express, nor the mind
comprehend what it receives from you O MY GOD even in this place of
Banishment.
How happy is that moment O divine Jesus! How pure is that Light, how
ineffable is that communion of your Blessings! You know O Lord how precious
that gift is, and your Creature that receives it knows also – Ah! if it were faithful,
if it never departed from you – if it knew how to preserve the Grace it had
received, how happy would it be! And yet this is but a drop of that infinite Ocean
of Blessings which you are one day to communicate to it.

O Soul of my Soul – what is my Soul and What Good can it have without
possessing you – Life of my Life! What is my Life when I live not in you – Is it
possible that my Heart is capable of possessing you – of enjoying you all alone –
of extending and dilating itself in you – can your creature thus be elevated above
itself to repose in your Breast, and after that depart from you? Bury itself in the
Earth? Ah Lord I know not what I ought to say to You: but hear the voice of your
love and of my misery; live always in me, and let me live perpetually in You and
for You as I live only by You.
Enlighten me, O Divine Light! Conduct me, O supreme Truth! Raise me
again, O uncreated Life! Separate me from every thing that displeases you.
Suffer me to remain at your Feet!

Vigils Reading - Mary , Mother of God
2026-01-01
THE PERFECT CHRISTIAN
From the book “Mary, Mother of the Lord” by Fr Karl Rahner
◊◊◊
What is perfect Christianity? Perfect Christianity must consist in
receiving this gift of the eternal God, God himself, in grace-given freedom, with
body and soul and all the powers of the whole being, with all one is and has, all
one does and suffers, so that this receiving of God takes up our entire nature and
our whole life-history into the eternal life of God. Perfect Christianity must
mean that our public and our private acts, what appears publicly before the
world in its history, and what takes place in the inner depths of conscience,
perfectly coincide and correspond.
What occurs there in the depths of Christian life becomes visible, and
conversely, what is visible and manifest, truly mirrors what is taking place in the
depths of the soul, in God’s presence. Christianity in its perfection must also
mean that this Christian’s perfect Christianity unconditionally serves the
salvation of others, and is only really perfect if it is actually devoted to all, from
the beginning to the end of time.
If that is what perfect Christianity is, then we can and must say that Mary
is the actual realization of it, the perfect Christian. If Christianity in its perfect
form is the pure acceptance of the salvation of the eternal triune God that has
appeared in Jesus Christ, Mary is the perfect Christian, the Christian human
being exemplified as such, because in the faith of her spirit and in her blessed
womb, with body and soul, then, and all the powers of her being, she received
the eternal Word of the Father. If perfect Christianity is the perfect
correspondence between outward mission in the history of salvation and
personal life, it is perfectly realized in Mary. She received visibly and tangibly
the Incarnate Word of the eternal Father, and so she is the most significant and
representative figure among the merely human beings in the externally visible
history of redemption. And at the same time she accepted fully and realized in
her personal life her unique office in the economy of redemption, with an
absolutely unconditional total consent in faith.
If Christianity is the radiating influence of one’s own grace in unselfish
service for the salvation of others, Mary is the most perfect instance of what it
means to be a Christian, for it was the salvation of us all, Jesus Christ our Lord,
whom she conceived by the consent of her faith and in the physical reality of her
divine motherhood.
