A JOURNEY TO INTEGRITY - ADVENT 2017 - DAY 20

Integrity... to grow in gratitude

22nd December
1 Sam 1: 24-28: Lk 1: 46-56

We are presented with two grateful hearts and that one saintly song! It is indeed a saintly song to sing in exultation for the great things that God does to us. Today we have Hannah and Mary singing to their hearts' content. Only a grateful heart will have reasons to exult and only a heart that finds reasons to exult is truly saintly. There can be no sorry saints; even the worst affected of all exults in the great things that the Lord has done for her or for him. Mary is an epitome of such a saintliness and Hannah is her foreshadow!

Mary and Hannah have a lot in common: they bore their child in strange circumstances, both ran the risk of being misjudged, both realised that the Lord had seen with pity on their lowliness and both offered their child to God without reserve. Hannah sang the song of exultation and Mary adapted it! The most important of all similarities is their grateful breaking forth into a song of exultation.

As we near the Christmas day, and the culmination of this journey to integrity that we began, the Word today invites us to count our blessings and name them one by one. We will be surprised to see, how long and how many of them escaped our attention! Let us sing from the depths of our hearts a song that is new and glorious: My soul magnifies the Lord! That is a sure way to integrity, growing in gratitude!

CHRISTMAS NOVENA - Day 7 - 22nd December

O King of Nations - O Rex Gentium

O King of the nations, and their desire,

the cornerstone making both one:

Come and save the human race,

which you fashioned from clay.

Based on Isaiah 9:6, 2:4 and 28:16, the King of the nations is a yearning of the people of Israel. They wanted Yahweh to be their king always, even when they had a human king ruling them. That is why they did not give in to the Emperor worship that was so widespread in the dominant cultures of their times. God is the king, forever and over all!

The Symbol is the crown, and some times even the sceptre, that signifies the central place that God has in our personal and universal history; and the authority that rests solely with God.

The prayer is for SALVATION, to save the human kind, from slaveries of sin and death to the freedom of the children of God, for that is what we are, children created in the image and likeness of God. It is to grow in this identity and dignity that the coming of the Lord invites us.