Day 32 (October 2; Feast of the Guardian Angels)
Song—Contemplation (Thomas Merton)
O land alive with miracles!
O clad in streams,
Countering the silver summer’s pleasant arrows
And beating them with the kind armor
Of your enkindled water-vesture,
Lift your blue trees into the early sun!
O country wild with talent
Is there an hour in you that does not rouse our mind with songs?
The boughs that bend in the weak wind
Open us momentary windows, here and there,
Into those deep and purple galleries,
Disclosing us the birds your genius;
And yet the earth is loud
With more than this their timid vaudeville.
O brilliant wood!
Yours is the voice of a new world;
And all the hills burn with such blinding art
That Christ and angels walk among us, everywhere.
These are their ways, their fiery footsteps,
That flash and vanish, smile and pass;
—By those bright passengers our groves are all inspired.
Lo, we have seen you, we have seized you, wonder,
Caught you, half held you in the larch and lighted birch:
But in that capture you have sailed us half-mile-high into the air
To taste the silences of the inimitable hawk:
Nor do we swing upon the wind
To scan the flattened barns as brown as blood
Growing into the surface of the wounded earth,
Or learn the white roads, livid as a whipcut scar.
For suddenly we have forgotten your geography,
Old nature, and your map of prey,
And know no more the low world scourged with travelling.
The genuine steps, the obvious degrees
The measured cart-ways and the fields we trod all day
And the tunes of the clattering shops,
Even the songs that crowned the highest hill
Find us no longer beggars for their petty coin.
We’ve left the stations of the mendicants
And the ways of the workaday saints.
But in the dazzled, high and unelectric air
Seized in the talons of the terrible Dove,
The huge, unwounding Spirit,
We suddenly escape the drag of earth
Fly from the dizzy paw of gravity
And swimming in the wind that lies beyond the track
Of thought and genius and of desire,
Trample the white, appalling stratosphere.
God, that madest earth and heaven,
Darkness and light;
Who the day for toil hast given,
For rest the night;
May thine angel-guards defend us,
Slumber sweet thy mercy send us,
Holy dreams and hopes attend us,
This livelong night.
Guard us waking, guard us sleeping;
And, when we die,
May we in thy mighty keeping
All peaceful lie:
When the last dread call shall wake us,
Do not thou our God forsake us,
But to reign in glory take us
With thee on high.
Meditation
This is not a product of our own will; its origin lies elsewhere, in the depths of our being, since “God has joined us so closely to the world around us that we can feel the desertification of the soil almost as a physical ailment, and the extinction of a species as a painful disfigurement”.Let us stop thinking, then, of human beings as autonomous, omnipotent and limitless, and begin to think of ourselves differently, in a humbler but more fruitful way.
I ask everyone to accompany this pilgrimage of reconciliation with the world that is our home and to help make it more beautiful, because that commitment has to do with our personal dignity and highest values. At the same time, I cannot deny that it is necessary to be honest and recognize that the most effective solutions will not come from individual efforts alone, but above all from major political decisions on the national and international level. (LD 68-69)
Prayer
Almighty Father, You are the giver of life and provider of all things. Bless me with serenity that I may encounter each day with a calm and steady heart. Fill my mind with peace so that I may find solace in the presence of Your love. Place angels around me to guard against any evil or harm that might come my way. May their wings impart upon me strength, courage and hope during times of uncertainty. Let their wisdom guide me away from temptation and toward righteousness. Lead me to higher ground where I can be in communion with You, Lord, and receive Your grace and mercy in abundance. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen. — Alberta Vadanis