Saturday of the Second week of Advent

From Dom Prosper Guéranger's Liturgical Year:

Come, let us adore the King, our Lord, who is to come.

From the Prophet Isaias 25:1-9

O Lord, thou art my God, I will exalt thee, and give glory to thy name: for thou hast done wonderful things, thy designs of old faithful, amen. For thou hast reduced the city to a heap, the strong city to ruin, the house of strangers, to be no city, and to be no more built up for ever. Therefore shall a strong people praise thee, the city of mighty nations shall fear thee. Because thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress: a refuge from the whirlwind, a shadow from the heat. For the blast of the mighty is like a whirlwind beating against a wall. Thou shalt bring down the tumult of strangers, as heat in thirst: and as with heat under a burning cloud, thou shalt make the branch of the mighty to wither away. And the Lord of hosts shall make unto all people in this mountain, a feast of fat things, a feast of wine, of fat things full of marrow, of wine purified from the lees. And he shall destroy in this mountain the face of the bond with which all people were tied, and the web that he began over all nations. He shall cast death down headlong forever: and the Lord God shall wipe away tears from every face, and the reproach of his people he shall take away from off the whole earth: for the Lord hath spoken it. And they shall say in that day: Lo, this is our God, we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the Lord, we have patiently waited for him, we shall rejoice and be joyful in his salvation.

Yet a little while, and the conqueror of death will appear, and then, in the joy of our hearts, we will say: Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him and he will save us; we have patiently waited for him; this is he, and we will rejoice and be joyful in his salvation. Let us, therefore, prepare the way of the Lord, that we may receive him worthily; and in this work of our preparation, let us have recourse to Mary. Saturday is the day which is sacred to her; she will the more readily grant the prayers said to her upon it. Let us consider her in her grand privilege of being full of grace, carrying in her womb Him whom we so long to possess. If we ask her by what means she rendered herself worthy of such an immense favor, she will tell us that in her was simply fulfilled the prophecy, which the Church so continually repeats during these days of advent: Every valley shall be filled up. The humble Mary was the valley blessed of the Lord; a valley beautiful and fertile, in which God sowed the Divine Wheat, our Savior, Jesus: for it is written in the Psalm that the Valleys shall abound with corn. O Mary! it was thy humility that drew down upon thee the admiration of thy Creator. If, from the high heaven where he dwells, he had perceived a Virgin more humble in her love, he would have chosen her in preference to thee: but no, it was thou that didst win his predilection, O mystic valley, ever verdant and lovely in thy flowers of grace. We that, like high hills, are so proud and such sinners, what shall we do? We must look on this God of ours, who comes to us in infinite humility, and then humble ourselves out of love and gratitude. O Blessed Mother! obtain this grace for us. Pray for us, that henceforth we may submit ourselves to the will of our Lord as thou didst, when thou didst speak those admirable words: Behold the handmaid of the Lord: may it be done to me according to thy word!

PROSE TAKEN IN HONOR OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN
(Taken from the Cluny Missal of 1523)

Gabriel, sent from heaven, faithful bearer of the word, holds sacred converse with the holy Virgin.

In the inner chamber he discloses the good and sweet word; and inverting the names of Eve, Eva becomes Ave, —his salutation, Hail!

The covenant made, and instantly there was present the Word made flesh; and yet the pure Maid a Virgin still forever.

Parent like no other; Mother, yet not losing the treasure; giving birth to her child, yet not a pain or travail.

Unheard-of prodigy! ’tis so indeed, and all thou, my soul, canst do is to believe it: we have not power to loose the latchet.

It is the great, the wondrous portent of the burning bush; let him that would approach, take off the sandals from his feet.

A dry branch, with not one drop of dew, once yielded a flower and fruit; it was a new law, a new way: so was it when the Virgin brought forth her Son.

What a blessed Fruit! a Fruit of joy, not of woe. There will be no Adam deceived, if men but eat of this.

He is our Jesus! the good Jesus! lovely burden of a lovely Mother! He who has a throne in heaven, has a stable for his birthplace!

May he, that for our sakes was thus born, wipe away all our gilt; for our sojourn here is full of dangers.

Amen.

PRAYER FROM THE MOZARABIC BREVIARY
(For the Friday of the third Week of Advent)

Who, O God thou Son of God, who can search into thy ways? and tell how thou wast born of a Virgin, when thou camest from heaven, or by what paths thou didst return thither? And therefore since thou alone knowest all things, thou whose name is beyond the ends of the earth; grant us so to think and speak of thee, as to be guiltless of error: that so thou, who, high in power, dost come down to lowly things and love them, mayest make us worthy of thy gifts. Amen.

From Dom Prosper Guéranger's Liturgical Year:

Come, let us adore the King, our Lord, who is to come.

From the Prophet Isaias 24:1-16

Behold the Lord shall lay waste the earth, and shall strip it, and shall afflict the face thereof, and scatter abroad the inhabitants thereof. And it shall be as with the people, so with the priest: and as with the servant, so with his master: as with the handmaid, so with her mistress: as with the buyer, so with the seller: as with the lender, so with the borrower: as with him that calleth for his money, so with him that oweth. With desolation shall the earth be laid waste, and it shall be utterly spoiled: for the Lord hath spoken this word. The earth mourned, and faded away, and is weakened: the world faded away, the height of the people of the earth is weakened. And the earth is infected by the inhabitants thereof: because they have transgressed the laws, they have changed the ordinance, they have broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore shall a curse devour the earth, and the inhabitants thereof shall sin: and therefore they that dwell therein shall be mad, and few men shall be left. The vintage hath mourned, the vine hath languished away, all the merry-hearted have sighed. The mirth of timbrels hath ceased, the noise of them that rejoice is ended, the melody of the harp is silent. They shall not drink wine with a song: the drink shall be bitter to them that drink it. The city of vanity is broken down, every house is shut up, no man cometh in. There shall be a crying for wine in the streets: all mirth is forsaken: the joy of the earth is gone away. Desolation is left in the city, and calamity shall oppress the gates. For it shall be thus in the midst of the earth, in the midst of the people, as if a few olives, that remain, should be shaken out of the olive tree: or grapes, when the vintage is ended. These shall lift up their voice, and shall give praise: when the Lord shall be glorified, they shall make a joyful noise from the sea. Therefore glorify ye the Lord in instruction: the name of the Lord God of Israel in the islands of the sea. From the ends of the earth we have heard praises, the glory of the just one.

Thus was the earth in desolation when the Messias came to deliver and save it. So diminished, so decayed, were truths among the children of men (Isaiah 11:2) that the human race was bordering on its ruin. The knowledge of the true God was becoming rarer as the world got older; idolatry had made everything in creation an object of its adulterous worship; the practical result of a religion which was but gross materialism, was frightful immorality; man was forever at war with man; and the only safeguards of what social order still existed in the world were the execrable laws of slavery and extermination. Among the countless inhabitants of the glove, a mere handful could be found who were seeking God; they were as rare as the olives that remain on the tree after a careful plucking, or as grape bunches after the vintage is ended. Of this happy few were, among the Jewish people, those true Israelites whom our Savior chose for his disciples; and, among the Gentiles, the Magi that came from the East, asking for the newborn King; and later on, Cornelius the Centurion, whom the Angel of the Lord directed to St. Peter. But with what faith and joy did they not acknowledge the Incarnate God! and what their hymns of glad gratitude, when they found that they had been privileged, above others, to see, with their own eyes, the promised Savior!

Now, all this will again happen when the time draws near of the second Coming of the Messias. The earth will once more be filled with desolation, and mankind will be again a slave of its self-degradation. The ways of men will again grow corrupt; and this time the malice of their evil will be the greater, because they will have received Him who is the Light of the world, the Word of Life. A profound sadness will sit heavy on all nations, and every effort for their wellbeing will seem paralyzed; they, and the earth they live on, will be conscious of decrepitude; and yet it will never once strike them that the world is drawing to an end. There will be great scandals; there shall fall stars from heaven, that is, many of those who had been masters in Israel shall apostatize, and their light shall be changed into darkness. There shall be days of temptation, and faith shall grow slack; so that when the Son of Man shall appear, faith shall scarce be found on the earth. Let it not be, O Lord, that we live to see those days of temptation; or, if it be thy will that they overtake us, make our hearts firm in their allegiance to thy holy Church, which will be the only beacon left to thy faithful children in that fierce storm. Grant, O Lord, that we may be of the number of those chosen olives, of those elect bunches of grapes, wherewith thou wilt complete the rich harvest which thou wilt garner forever into thy house. Preserve intact within us the deposit of faith which thou hast entrusted to us; let our eye be fixed on that Orient of which the Church speaks to us, and where thou art suddenly to appear in thy majesty. When that day of thine comes, and we behold thy triumph, we will shout our glad delights, and then, like eagles which cluster round the body, we shall be taken up to meet thee in the air, as thy Apostle speaks, and thus shall we forever be with thee. (1 Thessalonians 4:16) Then we shall hear the praises and glory of the Just One, from the ends of this earth, which it is thy good will to preserve until the decrees of thy mercy and justice shall have been fully executed. O Jesus! we are the work of thy hands; save us, and be merciful to us on that great day.

HYMN OF ADVENT
(Mozarabic Breviary, in the Second Week of Advent)

Only Begotten Son of the Father, thou comest to us by the Virgin, consecrating us all by the dew of Baptism, and by faith regenerating us.

The Most-High coming from heaven has taken on himself the form of man, returning after conquering death, and giving us the joys of a new life.

Wherefore, we beseech thee, O Redeemer, descend upon us in thy mercy, and give to our hearts the brightness of the divine light.

To God the Father, and to his Only Son, and to the Holy Paraclete, be glory for ever and ever.

Amen.

PRAYER FROM THE GALLICAN MISSAL
(In Adventu Domini, Collecta)

Grant, we beseech thee, O Almighty God, that our souls be filled with a desire of being inflamed with thy Spirit; that, being nourished with the divine gift, as lamps with their oil, we may shine as bright lights before the face of Christ thy Son, who is coming to us.