Reflection
Take time to be aware that in the very midst of our busy preparations for the celebration of Christ’s birth in ancient Bethlehem, Christ is reborn in the Bethlehems of our homes and daily lives. Take time, slow down, be still, be awake to the Divine Mystery that looks so common and so ordinary yet is wondrously present….We can be so busy decorating, preparing food, practicing music and cleaning in preparation for the feast of Christmas that we actually miss the coming of Christ. The list of clouds that busyness creates to blind us to the birth can be long, but it is familiar to us all.
Edward Hays, A Pilgrim’s Almanac
Prayer
May Christ bring life into the darkness of our world and to us this Advent.
Action
Reflect on what is keeping you from the awareness of the real meaning of these weeks before Christmas. Use the remaining time to change your behavior.
Suggested Reading
John said, ”I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord”.
John 1:23
Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience bearing with one another and forgiving one another. . .as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must do. And over all of these put on love, that is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body.
Colossians 3: 12-15
Advent is the time we are given to welcome the Lord who comes to encounter us, and also to verify our longing for God, to look forward and prepare ourselves for Christ’s return.
Pope Francis
“Come, Lord Jesus” is a leap into the kind of freedom and surrender that is rightly called the virtue of hope: the patient and trustful willingness to live without closure, without resolution, and still be content and even happy because our Satisfaction is now at another level, and our Source is beyond ourselves.
Richard Rohr
The season of Advent means there is something on the horizon the likes of which we have never seen before…What is possible is to not see it, to miss it, to turn just as it brushes past you. And you begin to grasp what it was you missed, like Moses in the cleft of the rock, watching God’s [back] fade in the distance. So stay. Sit. Linger. Tarry. Ponder. Wait. Behold. Wonder. There will be time enough for running. For rushing. For worrying. For pushing. For now, stay. Wait. Something is on the horizon.
Jan L. Richardson
You keep us waiting. You, the God of all time, want us to wait for the right time in which to discover who we are, where we are to go, who will be with us, and what we must do. So thank you for the waiting time.
John Bell
Life is a constant Advent season: we are continually waiting to become,
to discover, to complete, to fulfill. Hope, struggle, fear, expectation and fulfillment
are all part of our Advent experience.
Anonymous