Advent Day 6/December 12

Mercy Is Inclusive

Today’s Reading

Sing and rejoice, O daughter Zion!
See, I am coming to dwell among you, says the LORD.
Many nations shall join themselves to the LORD on that day,
and they shall be his people,
and he will dwell among you,
and you shall know that the LORD of hosts has sent me to you.
The LORD will possess Judah as his portion in the holy land,
and he will again choose Jerusalem.
Silence, all mankind, in the presence of the LORD!
For he stirs forth from his holy dwelling.

(cf. Zechariah 2.14-17)

Today’s Reflection

   I was an American in a French seminary where Father—later Cardinal—Henri de Lubac lived.  He became one of the most influential theologians of the Second Vatican Council, chosen by Pope John XXIII to prepare and contribute to it.  But I knew him as a model of mercy.

   He used to struggle up the stairs (he had been gassed in World War I) to my room to ask an insignificant foreign student to translate letters from English.  If I ever hesitated on a word, he supplied it.  I knew what he was doing: making a “nobody” feel accepted.

   A man with whom I could claim no national identity or intellectual equality reached out to me as a fellow human and brother in Christ.  That taught me more than all his awesome scholarship.  For me, “Henri de Lubac” means “man of mercy.”  He “came down” to me by climbing up stairs in an affirmation of relationship—just as Mary “came down” at Tepeyac in the form and dress of an Aztec to show that she is the one mother of the one family of God.

   The word for this is “mercy”—to reach out to another in recognition of a relationship that is real but perhaps not yet realized.

--Fr. David M. Knight

Response

• Ponder what Fr. Knight means by saying mercy recognizes “a relationship that is real but…not yet realized”…
• Think of a time when someone “came down” in an act of mercy to you…

• Remember a time when you might have “come down” in an act of mercy toward another…

• Resolve to “come down” to someone who is separated from you…

Advent Prayer
Lord, I have let myself be deceived.  In a thousand ways I have shunned your love.  Yet here I am once more, to renew my covenant with you. I need you. Save me once again, Lord; take me once more into your redeeming embrace.  You are the Lord, Emmanuel--God-with-Us.

Today’s reflection is excerpted from “A Season of Mercy—Daily Reflections, Practices and Prayers” by Fr. David M. Knight.  Copyright by Twenty-Third Publications.  Used with permission.