One Minute Reflection – 27 March – Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent, Readings: Wisdom 2:1, 12-22, Psalm 34:17-21, 23, John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30
“You know me and you know where I come from?
But I have not come of my own accord, he who sent me is true and him you do not know.
I know him, for I come from him and he sent me.” … John 7:28-29
REFLECTION – The Two Worlds by St John Henry Newman (1801-1890) – The Oratory, 1862.
“UNVEIL, O Lord and on us shine
In glory and in grace.
This gaudy world grows pale before
The beauty of Thy face.
Till Thou art seen, it seems to be
A sort of fairy ground,
Where suns unsetting light the sky,
And flowers and fruits abound.
But when Thy keener, purer beam
Is pour’d upon our sight,
It loses all its power to charm,
And what was day is night.
Its noblest toils are then the scourge
Which made Thy blood to flow.
Its joys are but the treacherous thorns
Which circled round Thy brow.
And thus, when we renounce for Thee
Its restless aims and fears,
The tender memories of the past,
The hopes of coming years,
Poor is our sacrifice, whose eyes
Are lighted from above.
We offer what we cannot keep,
What we have ceased to love.”
PRAYER – Loving God and Father, open our eyes and ears and our hearts. Help us to recognise the Light of Christ in the world around us. Too often we are hard of heart and closed up in our ‘rites’ – He is there but He is not only there and we are blind. May the prayers of the saints and angels help us to be open to Him. Mary, the Mother He gave us, pray for us. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, with the Holy Spirit, God for all eternity, amen.
