Psalm from our shore:
Blessed be the Lord
through Dominic and his family
who keep open their doors, eyes, ears and mind;
Open to divine wisdom and human science
all acquired through study.
Blessed are you, because in Dominic
the alliance between faith and reason was celebrated,
and so, the fire of your Word,
the divine science
embraced with human knowledge
sparked the fire,
in a thousand bright lights of truth,
lighting up reality
Blessed are you Lord, because today the
daughters and sons of Dominic
seek you, in the pages of Scripture,
which in turn gives light to all their searches,
in their journey towards the complete Truth.
The One who speaks from Scripture, history, creation
and the pages of new discoveries and human experience
is also found in the alley ways of misery,
on the roads and crossroads of the world
where life dreams, enjoys, weeps
achieves, fails, laughs and groans.
Blessed be the Lord
who created us with minds to investigate,
burning hearts to understand,
to accompany and welcome,
and feet daring to walk,
to share and commit to untrodden paths.
Blessed, because Dominic
prayer and study embrace,
community and dialogue are welcomed,
the sending forth and announcing begins
Lord be blessed in your Word,
it is fire; fire from an inexhaustible divine source
nurturing the spark of human knowledge through science
forming an alliance which unites faith and reason in intimate dialogue.
Blessed be God
in the men and women preachers, dispersed throughout the world,
shouldering the apostle’s luggage,
discovering You in your Word
and in the complexities of human experience.
Blessed are you Lord,
in those who contribute to love and human knowledge
for they inflame the human heart
and give wings to the preacher’s feet.
Blessed are you Lord,
because in this historic hour
you see the restlessness burning inside us
moving us to discover in the heights and in the depths
the project you have in mind for us.
Blessed be this thirst, that launches us
to stubborn searches for the truth
through study, dialogue, plans
dreams and encounters,
while knowing all of the time
that behind our living and our dreaming
is that which is most important,
our waking.
And blessed be this uncertain hope
keeping us awake
driving us to face fears and risks.
Blessed above all for your love,
which pushes us, to confidently, make the leap
into the looming unknown.
Lord, our wineskins are new
still empty, waiting to be filled
with the water that flows from fountains of love and wisdom.
Water that quenches the thirst which burns within us,
the water of yesterday promised to the Samaritan woman,
that of the jug, taken from the well at Sychar.
Turn this water Lord into the wine of courage
that courage of the race of
explorers, martyrs, adventurers
and the creators of the new.
Shake off our sluggishness, our comfort and our fear.
become flesh in our blood
and incarnate in the meeting of 2020.
Blessed are you, Lord because you gave us an ear
to tilt to the ground
and listen to the cries of the world
and that for which it thirsts,
with the jarring notes
that don’t have a place in your concert.
Blessed are you, in the eyes you gave us
capable of surveying horizons,
like that of the human soul
with its own misadventures,
and those of history in its own times
of yesterday, today and tomorrow,
awaiting new projects, straightening the route
to give way to your Kingdom.
Truly
… not theory or eloquent words
destined to be forgotten or to fill fleeting pages
with reports and minutes.
This stage finds us being just a minority
exactly as how you started Master, with only 12,
hoping that someday the whole world would wake up
to your Gospel of life.
We are indeed a minority
Like Abraham who departed from his homeland,
daring to undertake the journey through the desert.
burdened with uncertainties,
but also with faith
in a promise
of reaching the land destined for his people.
Blessed are you Lord,
because here we are
in this land that waits for you
with stubborn hope.
Land of suffering humanity,
of which the poets sing,
and the poor pray
and ask of the earth
as our race,
the aboriginal people did and
as John had already prophesied
“a new heaven and new earth.”
In your divinity, blessed are you Lord,
who urges us
to put in this last attempt
of all that we are.
It is the challenge of history
to consecrated life,
beyond everyday horizons.
It is the evangelical impulse,
it is the breath of the Spirit
It is time for incarnation,
above and beyond the limits
imposed by the institution
that sometimes guides,
and other times
chokes or slows and stops.
Blessed are you Lord, you have shown us
there is no more important rule
than the law of the gospel
we know it, we say it, we write it
Do we live it? …
That is the challenge.
Blessed are you Lord in this
time of bold dreams,
of not being installed
or comfortable
but rather
time to be, to live, to die
just like the One
whom we promised to follow
in the time of our first love,
and in his ranks, he finds us still
and forever
hurt, injured, handicapped
but whole.
Blessed are you Lord, because we are
Abrahamic desert and hope minority
and, as a prophet from my Latin American land said:
the desert awaits us,
it is a fertile desert
it is the desert where Jesus went to meet You,
to be energized
to live out the mission
that brought him into the human way.
Long live Hope.
Sr. Matilde Franchino OP
Victoria, Argentina