Join Us in the Dance

In these days of world wide strife, there is a loss of hope and a sense that joy is hard to find. Yet good things come to us in small ways. The first reading Mi 5:1-4a reminds us that God is a saving God and the Lord promises a child will be born and this child is “peace”.

The second reading tells us that the success of Christ is not the victory of warring and violence. Christ’s success is in his “doing the will of God”. God desires not sacrifice and sin offerings. “[Christ] says. ‘Behold, I come to do your will.’ He takes away the first to establish the second. By this “will,” we have been consecrated through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb 10:5-10).

Here is a poem I have taken from an old At Home with the Word. This poem speaks volumes to me about the joy found in the newness of life, even a life that would seem to end in disaster. Knowing our world is hurting as it is, I can’t help wanting to take up this dance of joy, this dance of hope.

“Come dance with me” cried the baby in Elizabeth’s womb. “My arms and legs are twitching at the drumbeat of my mother’s heart. She calls you blessed and blessed are you. Our meeting exceeds all joy! So let us dance, my Lord, let us dance!”

“I gladly dance with you,” replied the baby in Mary’s womb. “Before the beginning of time, I pushed through the womb of creation. I lit the first stars on the firmament. I taught the ocean to dance with the moon, and I led the round of the kids and the lions in paradise. Now I have come to the earth for the most trying number of all. The piper death will pipe me all the way to the cross.”

“But you will overcome!” cried Elizabeth’s baby, “for you are the Lord of the Dance indeed.”

From At Home with the Word, 1998, pg 29

Ana Cloughly, OSB