Humble Origins
March 29, 2014
This week has focused primarily on themes that might seem foreign to the penitential season of Lent, for the meditations and passages for prayer have centered around the events of Christmas and the days and weeks following the Lord’s Nativity. However, these humble beginnings of a King who comes to dwell in our midst as a helpless infant help us to see our own humble state in a new way. The lowly and the poor have no need to be ashamed of their mean state. Instead, the Lord comes to those lowly ones in a special way to show that He is in their midst. What’s more, the Lord even calls those who are not lowly to join him in his great—even scandalous—act of condescension. We are all called to embrace our humanity in its most humble form in order that we, too, might come to know the God who loves us as we are.
- Monday: The Nativity: The First Appearance of the Divine King
- Lord, your nativity is both Christmas and Good Friday, for you come into the world as a defenseless child who is always at the mercy of the ways of the world. And yet, in the midst of this, you show us the victory of weakness over strength, of poverty over riches, and of humility over honors. Help us to imitate you in the way in which you came into the world, that we might also follow you to the Cross and Easter Morning.
- Tuesday: Let Us Make Ourselves Little
- Lord, you love the lowliness of humanity so much that you chose to participate in it most fully through your Incarnation. Help us to imitate the model of Mary our Mother in submitting to others and to you, that we might also come to know the blessed fruitfulness that she enjoyed throughout her life.
- Wednesday: Out of Egypt I Have Called My Son
- Lord, I often wander through deserts in my own life and allow myself to feel far from you. Help me to see these arid times as an opportunity for you to lead me out of myself, that these times of difficulty might ultimately help me to love only you for your own sake.
- Thursday: Finding Ourselves In The Temple
- Lord, help me desire first and with all my heart to know your will for me. Grant me the grace to remain in the new Temple that is yourself, that guided by your Holy Spirit, I might live my life in a way that is ever more fully pleasing to you.
- Friday: A Small Family of Nazareth
- Lord, the first church for each child is the family into which he or she is born. Help us to imitate the community of love which nurtured you early in your own human life, that our families might bear the marks of your presence within them.