I. Dawn Over Waikanae

Very early on the 8th of December, I switch on the light and prepare a cup of tea. Outside, something unusual draws my attention — a soft brightness already forming along the edge of the sky. Near the summer solstice, dawn comes early here, and at 4.55 am it feels as though the world is waking with me.

II. A Song in the Quiet

It felt so special as this new morning began that I found myself spontaneously beginning to sing the first verse of a well‑known song:

Morning has broken like the first morning

Blackbird has spoken like the first bird

Praise for the singing

Praise for the morning

Praise for them springing fresh from the world.

The quiet of the early morning seemed to open my heart to something deeper.

III. The Feast of a New Beginning

I take a few sips of my cuppa tea and sing it again. It is quite bright now, and I recall this day in the Catholic Calendar is dedicated to a very special new beginning — the first moment in a new life, of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

God is there with his blessing for the newly conceived child of Joachim and Anne, the future grandparents of the one in whom I would come to believe. I also believe that many divine graces were gifted to them — graces to love, watch over, and educate their Mary, who would one day be Mother of my God.

IV. Gabriel’s Greeting

God sent the angel Gabriel to a town in Galilee called Nazareth. The angel came to her saying: “The Lord is with you and has greatly blessed you.”

V. Creation Rejoices

Saint Anselm, in the readings of the 8th of December, writes:

“Virgin Mary, all nature is blessed in you. Blessed Lady, sky and stars, earth and rivers, day and night — everything subject to the power and use of man — rejoices that through you they are in some sense restored to their lost beauty and endowed with inexpressible new grace.”

VI. Threads of Light

As the morning light grew stronger at my window, I felt a quiet thread running through everything I had seen and remembered — the dawn breaking over Waikanae, the song rising almost without thought, Mary’s first beginning held in God’s grace, Gabriel’s greeting in Nazareth, and Saint Anselm’s vision of creation rejoicing in her.

Each moment seemed to echo the same truth: God’s work often begins in silence, in hiddenness, in the soft arrival of light.

Dawn does not hurry; it simply appears. Grace enters quietly; it does not force itself upon us. Mary received her calling in the stillness of an ordinary day, and creation itself rejoiced in the beauty God placed within her.

VII. A Quiet Gratitude

Sitting with my cuppa, I found myself grateful for these gentle beginnings — the ways God continues to touch our lives before we even notice, bringing light where there was none, and hope where the day is just beginning.

VIII. Morning Has Broken

Morning has broken, and with it comes the reminder that God’s newness is always near.

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