Presentation Day Novena for 2023.pdf

HolyMystery…
Holy Presence…
Heart of our Living...

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1 October 2023
Dear Sisters, Brothers, Friends of Nano, Co-workers, and people with whom we are in
ministry,
On this special Feast of the Presentation of Mary in
the temple, which is honoured and celebrated by all
Presentation Sisters and Friends of Nano
throughout the world, we wish you all a very
Happy Presentation Day.
We are most grateful to the Sisters from the
Australian Society of Presentation Sisters who
prepared these inspiring reflections. They have extended an invitation to create space
that allows us to enter the deep places of our hearts where we may ponder how
Mystery is beckoning us to live in these times of uncertainty and vulnerability.
As we make this journey, let us be inspired by mystery seen at the heart of Mary.
Throughout her lifetime she was beckoned by the Spirit of God to understand who God
was and what God was asking of her, and she responded with trust and courage.
Like Mary, we are called to embrace mystery in our lives. In these times, we are
puzzled with being in a new landscape where we are touched by the fear of the
unknown. We are being beckoned to open our hearts and minds, to listen to what is
emerging and to respond to what is being asked of us as followers of Nano Nagle in
today’s world. By embracing mystery all around us, are we not being called to trust the
God of the Universe, the God of all longing, unseen and yet in our midst? May our
hearts and minds honour the creative energy of mystery that surrounds us, and may
this energy enable us to envision new possibilities and a new consciousness of how we
may respond compassionately to all of life as a gift.
Joyce Rupp in her devotional book The Cup of Life, offers a breath prayer to deepen
an appreciation for mystery.
Breathing in: O Mystery
Breathing Out: Alive in me.
May this gift of breathing allow us to touch mystery, alive in the deepest part of
ourselves, and may it enhance our communion with the Mystery of all that is.
Blessings of joyful mystical hope on this special day.
Congregational Leadership Team

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‘Divine Love longs to evolve through us.
Therein lies the call of our times.
It is a call to consciously live into and out of our deepest identity:
to be the presence of Love in our world.
It is a call to become more translucent,
less opaque,
bearers of the light of Love
by means of the depth and quality of our presence.
It is a call to turn our attention
not only to what response we give
to the compelling needs of our world
but also to noticing from what inner place that action arises.’
Pat Farrell OSF – LCWR Occasional Papers Summer 2023
This year’s Novena Prayer invites us
to enter the deep inner places of our hearts,
to ponder individually and together
Mystery at the heart of Mary of the Presentation…
Mystery unfolding throughout all time…
Mystery inviting us yet again
in this our time…
these our moments…
to be present in the now…
to lean into the future.
Let us hold one another, the peoples of our world, the community of
Earth as we unite in this time of reflection.

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God of the Universe
in this time of great vulnerability
throughout our world
you beckon us to create space to engage
in deep listening.
May we listen to you in silence.
May we open our hearts to listen
to the voices of one another
and may we listen to all of Creation
with wonder and respect.
In our listening may we be guided to -
speak courageously,
love inclusively,
imagine creatively
and co-create a more peaceful
and just world
that flows from living a spirituality
of being in communion.
IPA Assembly Prayer 2023

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Each Day we remember our Sisters, Brothers, Friends of Nano,
Co-Workers, the people with whom we are in ministry …
Day 1: 12 November 2023
Mystery … beckoning us into
silence … stillness … depth … pondering
Today we remember New Zealand and Latin America.
As for Mary, she treasured all these things and pondered them in her
heart (Lk 2:19)
Be still and know that I am God (Ps 46)
In stillness
in silence
in the silence
of our unknowing
of our fears
the silence
of our hopes
of our longing
you invite us
into the gift of now
this now
this life…
‘that all may have life’
Be still
be silent
be now
and know
I am near.
Mary
with what sureness
you choose silence waiting on God’s word
in heart’s stillness pondering.
Lead us
into that silence
where Word meets life,
piercing the mystery of God-with-us
Emmanuel.
May we too be graced with holy stillness,
wait in inner silence,
and, with Mary.
heed God’s call in our time.
‘Presentation’, Raphael Consedine in Songs for the Journey
p28

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courage and daring … possibility … risk
Today we remember the Philippines and Thailand.
‘I am the handmaid of the Lord,’ said Mary, ‘let what you have said be
done to me.’ (Lk 1:38)
She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’
Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’
She did not submit with gritted teeth,
raging, coerced.
Bravest of all humans,
consent illumined her.
The room filled with its light,
the lily glowed in it,
and the iridescent wings.
Consent,
courage unparalleled,
opened her utterly.
‘Annunciation’, Denise Levertov
‘Post Annunciation 2021’, Thelonius Stokes

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every moment
a voice
out of this world
calls on our soul
to wake up and rise
this soul of ours
is like a flame
with more smoke than light
blackening our vision
letting no light through
lessen the smoke and
more light brightens your house
the house you dwell in now
and the abode
you’ll eventually move to
now my precious soul
how long are you going to
waste yourself in this wandering journey
can’t you hear the voice
can’t you use your swifter wings
and answer the call
‘Every Moment’, in The Spiritual Poems of Rumi p42
Awaken our hearts, O God
that we may
see clearly
listen attentively
and answer your call.

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heart … compassion … love
Today we remember India and Pakistan.
Mary set out at that time and went as quickly as she could to a town
in the hill country of Judah. She went into Zechariah’s house and
greeted Elizabeth. (Lk 1:39-40)
Mary, friend of God and prophets
draws people into deeper friendship
with the heart of divine mystery,
turning them towards
the praxis of justice
and compassion
for the world
both human beings and earth.
Elizabeth Johnson, Truly Our Sister p120

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Magnify your goodness
O Holy One,
through us –
as through Mary,
simple peasant woman,
your goodness was made known.
Lift all that is downtrodden,
within us,
and all around the world, to a
glorious hope.
Shake the dust of broken dreams
and dead-end futures
from the cloth of our lives, and
crown us with righteousness
that we might be your people.
Bless us,
nurture the holy seed
growing within us,
that we might come to believe
the unlikely story
the angel told to Mary:
the life of God is about to be born –
in us.
Our souls magnify you;
our songs glorify you;
our prayer is a holy longing;
our life is a “yes”
to your invitation
to mother-forth your sacred future.
Amen.
‘A Mother’s Confidence’, John Phillip
Newell, If Darwin Prayed p26

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spirit…creativity… birthing…
Today we remember Newfoundland and Labrador, and the West Indies.
… the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to a
son … (Luke 2:6,7)
No man reaches where the moon touches a woman.
Even the moon leaves her when she opens
Deeper into the ripple in her womb
That encircles dark, to become flesh and bone.
Someone is coming ashore inside her,
A face deciphers itself from water,
And she curves around the gathering wave,
Opening to offer the life it craves.
In a corner stall of pilgrim strangers,
She falls and heaves, holding a tide of tears.
A red wire of pain feeds through every vein,
Until night unweaves and the child reaches dawn.
Outside each other now, she sees him first,
Flesh of her flesh, her dreamt son safe on earth.
The Nativity - John O'Donohue - Conamara Blues

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Let us give space
to what has not yet been seen,
to what is waiting for our hospitality
Let us trust ourselves into the chaos
out of which the Spirit creates forms
beyond our imagining.
Here, in the community of uncertainty,
we may hear the whisperings of the mystic,
gaze in wonder at the artist’s work.
Here is a time and a space
to be present to what our God struggles to birth:
an invitation to watch and
wait with hope.
Anne Siddall

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wisdom … knowing …
Today we remember England, Ireland, Israel and Slovakia.
When they had done everything the law of the Lord required, they
went back to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. Meanwhile the
child grew to maturity, and he was filled with wisdom; and God’s
favour was with him. (Lk 2:39-40)
One has to think of him as her son:
looking very like her,
with her walk, her gestures, her patterns of thought,
many of her tastes
and then remember
that this is not some fine mask for another being within,
but the human cast of his very self.
She gave him the humanity that was his;
a humanity including her kind of feeling for him.
…..this Yeshua, this peasant, this child of this Mary.
Fed when he needed feeding,
taught when he needed teaching,
pushed and held back when he needed them both.
His strength and his weakness,
his haunting peculiarity
and his rough and sweat-stained familiarity
bound up inextricably, forever with her own.
Peter Steele SJ

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That we may know the power
to embrace
or to release
to welcome
or to turn away
to agree
or to dissent
to speak
or to keep our silence
to open
or to close
and to know each choice
that lies before us,
O God,
we pray.
Jan Richardson, Night Visions p119

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peace … integrity … wholeness
Today we remember Zambia and Zimbabwe.
"Mary helps us to remember that we are not alone because of
her abiding presence with us and even more so the presence of
thousands of beings who want us to live fully into our holy
nature.” Christine Valters Paintner, Birthing the Holy: Wisdom from Mary to Nurture
Creativity and Renewal
The spirit of God calls us to new relatedness, new wholeness, a
letting go what we have known to create a new future.
Ilia Delio
Divine imagination is wider and wilder than we could ever dream of;
and it is closer and more loving than we dare hope’ God’s
imagination is at work in every aspect of creation from the heart of
the cosmos to the heart of the tiniest insect, and in the very core of
our own being. Daniel O’Leary, Begin with the Heart
We pray
Blessed is the One within the many.
Blessed are the Many who make One.
Arthur Waskow

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joy … delight … gratitude
Today we remember Australia and Papua New Guinea.
My soul sings in gratitude.
I’m dancing in the mystery of God.
The light of the Holy One is within me
and I am blessed, so truly blessed.
This goes deeper than human thinking.
I am filled with awe
at Love whose only condition
is to be received.
…those who know their emptiness
can rejoice in Love’s fullness.
It’s the Love that we are made for,
the reason for our being.
It fills our inmost heart space
and brings to birth in us, the Holy One.
Cf Joy Cowley

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I want to tell you this:
The moment will surely come
when the Holy Spirit
will be within you –
a wild goose
stretching and straining
through storms
with her taut body
determined.
For that moment
there will be nothing dove
about the Spirit
as she fiercely leads you
through wholesome refusals
and undreamt of surrenders
out into those wonderfully clear choices
within the boundaries of which
you will land so awkwardly.
But you will be like her,
exhilarated in your every part
by such strong winged
full feathered single-hearted flight.
‘Wild Goose’, Bernadette McCarrick in A Swan in Flight
We open our hearts in gratitude.

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potency … justice … action
Today we remember the United States of America.
They know her in the crowded lonely ways
woman of welcoming heart, whose lantern sheds
kind beams for eyes waste-minded by the weary miles,
for them her hands are open, for her their doors.
Room is made by dim and smoking fire, some small crust shared,
and she, receiving, knows still more to give,
and, welcomed, grows in art of welcoming.
Apart, in shadowed hours of night and dawn,
leaning heart to heart on the One who pulses life
into the lowliest and least of all that lives,
she learns to unclasp the last-kept store
and lay it down in welcome: ‘Take and share.’
‘Woman of Welcoming Heart’, Raphael Consedine in Songs of the Journey p40

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Gathered in a united Presentation spirit we pray with Mary,
with Nano and Presentation people throughout our world:
We pray with Nano who gave birth to justice,
compassion and love for the people of her time –
We pray with women who give birth to solidarity with all people
who suffer unjust systems –
We pray with women who give birth to compassion and love
when wounded humanity waits to be healed –
We pray with women who give birth to hope
when they hear the cry of those who are voiceless –
We pray with women who give birth to the regeneration of our
broken earth
We pray with women
who give birth to new dreams.

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Let it groan
as it gathers
the One
who was thought
forever stilled.
Time
be still.
Watch
and wait.
Still.
Jan Richardson
in Circle of Grace p139
grief … lament … hope
Today we remember all Members of the Nagle/Rice Family.
‘Near the cross of Jesus, stood his mother and his mother’s sister
Mary, the wife of Cleopas, and Mary of Magdala’.’ (Jn 19:25)
This day
let all stand still
in silence,
in sorrow.
Sun and moon
be still.
Earth
be still.
Still
the waters.
Still
the wind.
Let the ground
gape in stunned
lamentation.
Let it weep
as it receives
what it thinks
it will not
give up.

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So may we know
the hope
that is not just
for someday
but for this day—
here, now,
in this moment
that opens to us:
hope not made
of wishes
but of substance,
hope made of sinew
and muscle
and bone,
hope that has breath
and a beating heart,
hope that will not
keep quiet
and be polite,
hope that knows
how to holler
when it is called for,
hope that knows
how to sing
when there seems
little cause,
hope that raises us
from the dead—
not someday
but this day,
every day,
again and
again and
again.
‘Blessing of Hope,’ Jan Richardson
in The Cure for Sorrow

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Feast of the Presentation: 21 November 2023
thresholds … future … peace … blessing
On this special day we remember our Sisters, Brothers, Friends of
Nano, Co-Workers, and people with whom we are in ministry all
around the world.
The girl Mariam was brought to the temple when she was three
years old. The priest received her and, after kissing her, blessed her
saying, “The Lord God has magnified your name for all generations;
through you the Lord will reveal deliverance to the children of Israel
in the last days” (Protoevangelium of James VII, 2).
It is not thou that shapest God
it is God that shapest thee.
If thou art the work of God
await the hand of the artist
who does all things in due season.
Offer him thy heart,
soft and tractable,
and keep the form
in which the artist has fashioned thee.
Let thy clay be moist,
lest they grow hard
and lose the imprint of his fingers.
St Irenaeus
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Creator God,
you are luring us into a future
more expansive than our minds can conceive.
Grace us and make space
in the womb of our hearts
for the possibilities you offer us.
Unsettle us!
Disturb us!
Move us to the edge of new horizons
that we may be open
as you come to us
in our sisters and brothers
and the cry of our earth.
May wisdom’s flame shine for us,
within us and from us –
our feet know the way;
our hearts carry the light.
IPA Assembly 2017

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The God of the Universe beckons us,
the God of all longing unseen.
The God of all flowing,
of justice unfolding,
of healing by peace-filled streams.
luring us into the dream.
the God of all longing unseen.
The God of all flowing,
of justice unfolding,
of healing by peace-filled streams.
daring us follow the dream.
Miriam Martin IPA 2023

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NOT FOR CIRCULATION OR PUBLICATION.
For use as an in-house resource by Presentation Sisters and Presentation Colleagues only.

Presentation Day Novena for 2023.pdf

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