Advent 2017: December 20

Since Adam, being free to choose,
Chose to imagine he was free
To choose his own necessity,
Lost in his freedom, Man purues
The shadow of his images:
Today the Unknown seeks the known;
What I am willed to ask, your own
Will has to answer; child, it lies
Within your power of choosing to
Conceive the Child who chooses you.

--W.H. Auden


The threefold terror of love; a fallen flare
Through the hollow of an ear;
Wings beating about the room;
The terror of all terrors that I bore
The Heavens in my womb.

Had I not found content among the shows
Every common woman knows,
Chimney corner, garden walk,
Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothes
And gather all the talk?

What is this flesh I purchased with my pains,
This fallen star my milk sustains,
This love that makes my heart's blood stop
Or strikes a Sudden chill into my bones
And bids my hair stand up?

--W.B. Yeats


We do not prayer that your birth according to the flesh shall be renewed as it once occurred upon this day.  Rather do we pray that your invisible Godhead may be grafted into us.  May that which was then accorded after the flesh to Mary alone now be granted in the spirit to the church:  that faith unquestioning may conceive you, the spirit free of all corruption may bear you, the soul overshadowed by the power of the Most High may quicken with you evermore.  Go not forth from us; spring forth rather from within us.

--Mozarabic Rite