During the various seasons of the liturgical year, in the extraordinary form of the Roman
rite, the church sets aside certain days as so-called ember days, days of a particular kind
of penance. And in the third week of Advent, we have ember Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday.
And in particular, today, we have the so-called Rorate Mass, which comes from the intro,
where we drop down, do ye heavens from above, and let the clouds rain down the just.
And it's also sometimes referred to as the Golden Mass. And one of the reasons is because it's like
a little celebration of March 25th, the Annunciation. And in a particular way,
as we read the Gospel of St. Luke,
the Annunciation, along with the passages, an extra reading for the ember day from Isaiah and
the prophecy about the coming of Emmanuel, we are making this particular Mass sort of like
an Angelus, or really maybe, this is the Angelus of the liturgical year, you might say, or the
Angelus that we say throughout at different times during the day is an extension of celebrations in
the liturgical year.
Like this one, where we reverence the mystery of the Incarnation. And again, just like on Gaudete
Sunday, which we celebrated this week, this is kind of an extension of that as well. We wait in
anticipation with the Blessed Mother for the coming of the Lord. And so there's a certain
imminence to our Lord's coming. Today, we begin the Novena in preparation for
Christmas. Tomorrow begins the last part of Advent with the O Antiphons and the special liturgical
texts that begin on December 17th. So we're sort of at that last moment of Advent before the birth
of our Lord. And so we are exhorted, after having celebrated Gaudete Sunday, to renew our zeal for
penance, and to make our final preparation for Christmas. And that's after the final preparation for
for the coming of our Lord truly, truly generous.
So we should pray as we do in the collect,
that extra collect that comes just before the first lesson today.
We should pray for that extra grace that we need
to make our purification as perfect as we can for the Lord's coming.
Grant we beseech thee, we prayed, almighty God,
that the coming solemnity of our redemption
may both confer upon us assistance in this present life
and bestow the rewards of everlasting blessedness.
That's what we pray.
That's what we should desire with all our heart.
And that would be the best gift that we could give our Lord,
who is really the one who deserves to be gifted on Christmas.
Our gratitude should be full
at the coming of the Lord.
And it should be the purity of our hearts
and our desire to please him above all things,
which should be our dispositions at Christmas.
Amen.
.