Novena... Day 4... O Root of Jesse...

19th December: O Root of Jesse

O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples; 

before you kings will shut their mouths,

to you the nations will make their prayer:

Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.

Based on  Isaiah 11:1, Isaiah 11:10, the title Root of Jesse, refers to the promise of the Lord to raise the Messiah from the line of David (the son of Jesse). It is a promise of deliverance that the Lord gives the people of Israel, and to everyone who believes in the Lord.

The Symbol is that of the shoot flowering... signalling the hope that the Lord offers in times when everything seems dark and dead. 

The prayer too is to reinforce that hope...that we may always look forward to the deliverance that the Lord can offer! Note that the readings of the liturgy too relate to the same sense of hope in the Lord who accomplishes marvels for us!

WORD 2day: 19th December, 2013

Danger of missing the Lord who comes # 4:

Two women, considered and categorised as 'barren', miraculously bear their firstborns, dedicate them to the Lord! The two newborns even before they were conceived were meant to be God's messengers! What the world considers impossible, the Lord proves possible; what the world cannot even think of, the Lord has planned from eternity and executes in God's own time. When moments seem troublesome and weary, dark and dreary, confusing and out of control... we tend to give up hope, become desperate and fall into the danger of hopelessness! With the sense of desperation, one can miss the most obvious and grand signs of the magnificence of God that appears on a daily basis!

The readings today indicate to us the fourth danger of missing the Lord who comes: a sense of desperation, the tendency to Hopelessness!