On this first week of Advent we are guided by the word ‘hope’. But for those that may not feel so hopeful or prayerful in this time, Sor Juana invites us to start simple by “praying to the God of Seeds.”
Mexican poet and creative writer, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695), chose to enter the monastery to avoid the social obligations of marriage, so that she could spend her time studying and writing.
In her play ‘The Divine Narcissus’ Sor Juana responds to the indigenous Mexican belief in the “God who makes fertile the fields.” She writes that in the incarnation of Christ, God becomes a seed and in the receiving of the eucharist God becomes our bread and sustenance. She invites us all, as we hold the anticipation of advent, ‘to pray to the God of seeds.’
What divine seed is being planted in you in this season?
Juana Inés de la Cruz. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Selected Works. edited by Anne More. Translated by Edith Grossman. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016.
Finding Eden 