Lent 24 ~ Only the Lowly Will See

…everyone who exalts himself will be humbled,
and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

~  Luke 18: 14

          March 18th is God’s hand upon my heart, stilling the waters, quietening the billowing winds. For years, this day has been the angel’s paean to rest and watchful quiet.

          Today, though, a song alights gently upon my spirit. It is the song of the lowly, foreign and unacceptable to many. Yet, in a quiet that can only come from illumination, the song bears out the truth:

That only the lowly will see the Sun Arise

From Lands that See the Sun Arise
A solis ortus cardine
hymn from the Roman Breviary (5th century)

FROM lands that see the sun arise, to earth’s remotest boundaries, the Virgin-born today we sing, the Son of Mary, Christ the King.

Blest Author of this earthly frame, to take a servant’s form He came, that liberating flesh by flesh, whom He had made might live afresh.

In that chaste parent’s holy womb, celestial grace hath found its home: and she, as earthly bride unknown, yet call that Offspring blest her own.

The mansion of the modest breast becomes a shrine where God shall rest: the pure and undefiled one conceived in her womb the Son.

That Son, that royal Son she bore, whom Gabriel’s voice had told afore: whom, in His Mother yet concealed, the Infant Baptist had revealed.

The manger and the straw He bore, the cradle did He not abhor: a little milk His infant fare who feedeth even each fowl of air.

The heavenly chorus filled the sky, the Angels sang to God on high, what time to shepherds watching lone they made creation’s Shepherd known.

All honor, laud, and glory be, O Jesu, Virgin-born, to Thee; all glory, as is ever meet, to the Father and to Paraclete.  Amen.

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