Wednesday, December 25, 2013

CHRISTMAS DAY - EVENING SIGH


     Thou hast, then, come down even unto me, O my Sovereign Lord!  and art reposing in my heart, as in a Crib, which thou hast vouchsafed to choose for thyself, O Infant God!  My heart is now become like a new Bethlehem, O Bread of Angels!  I most devoutly adore thee, thee the great God thus humbling thyself to such an abyss of lowliness.  To the hymn of the Angels, Glory be to God in the highest, I must needs add, Glory be to thee, my God, in the depth of my misery and weakness, whither thou hast so mercifully come!  Oh!  who will teach me, my sweetest Infant Guest!  who will teach me how to give thee a worthy welcome of homage?  Mary, thy most pure and Blessed Mother, having given thee birth, and placed thee in the Crib, prostrated herself before thee as thy humble handmaid, and adored thee.  Never had this guilty earth witnessed a homage so sublime as this:  and thou didst deign to accept it, as the noblest thou hadst ever received. Permit me to imitate this thy beloved Mother, and adore thee as she did, O thou my Sovereign Lord!  I humbly beseech thee to accept her homage to supply for the unworthiness of mine;  for she is my Mother, and thou hast willed that all her riches and merits should belong to her children.  I offer thee, likewise, the adorations of that Just Man, the chaste Spouse of Mary, the admirable Joseph, who had been admitted into the divine secret of Nazareth, and is now made a witness of the touching mystery of Bethlehem.  Oh!  that I might share in the devoted respect and love of this glorious Saint, so grand because so simple, and so favored above all mortals in that he was chosen to protect thy Infancy!  I also adore thee in company with the Angels, the Shepherds and the Magi;  with Simeon and Anna, and all the Church of heaven and earth, which contemplates in glade amazement the sublime miracle of this abasement of thy divine Majesty.  

THE LITURGICAL YEAR, Volume 2,  by Dom Gueranger O.S.B. (19th century)


Please click the play button below to listen to Mary's Patronage Prayer now.