Isaiah 61:10a
©️2020 Gloria M. Chang
I will rejoice heartily in the Lord,
Isaiah 61:10a
my being exults in my God.
Canticle of the Bride
Holy Mother Church, the new Jerusalem, rejoices as one Body and one Bride. In the Liturgy of the Hours, the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary draws its first canticle from Isaiah 61:10–62:3 with this prefatory reflection: I saw the new Jerusalem, the holy city, prepared as a bride adorned for her bridegroom (Revelation 21:2).
Be glad, Virgin Mary, for you have deserved to bear the Christ, the creator of heaven and earth; you have brought forth the Savior of the world.
Antiphon for the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Celebrating the restoration of Zion, the canticle unfolds with exultant nuptial and agricultural imagery and concludes,
You shall be a glorious crown in the hand of the Lord,
Isaiah 62:3
a royal diadem held by your God.
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation,
Isaiah 61:10-11
and wrapped me in a robe of justice,
Like a bridegroom adorned with a diadem,
as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
As the earth brings forth its shoots,
and a garden makes its seeds spring up,
So will the Lord God make justice spring up,
and praise before all the nations.
Clothed in the garments of salvation….
The Garments of God:
God sits on a chair of darkness in my soul.
He is God alone, supreme in His majesty.
I sit at his feet, a child in the dark beside Him;
my joy is aware of His glance and my sorrow is tempted
to nest on the thought that His face is turned from me.
He is clothed in the robes of His mercy, voluminous garments
not velvet or silk and affable to the touch,
but fabric strong for a frantic hand to clutch,
and I hold to it fast with the fingers of my will.
Here is my cry of faith, my deep avowal
to the Divinity that I am dust.
Here is the loud profession of my trust.
I will not go abroad
to the hills of speech or the hinterlands of music
a crier to walk in my soul where all is still.
I have this potent prayer through good or ill:
here in the dark I clutch the garments of God.
Jessica Powers