First Sunday of Advent
Reflection
Be watchful! Be alert!
You do not know when the time will come.
Mark 13:33-37
Advent is about newness. Something unimagined is about to happen. In this weary world a new voice will be heard. A voice that gives hope. A voice that will bring good news to those who are willing to hear. It is about believing in the Word that speaks of a better way to live, of a God who made a promise to make “all things new”. Advent is a time for believing in the unbelievable and expecting the unexpected.
Prayer
Come Emmanuel!
Action
Create an Advent wreath to ritualize these weeks of Advent. Let it be a reminder for you to reflect on the deeper reasons and values you hold that underlie the demands made on you as you prepare for Christmas.
Suggested Reading
It is the hour now for you to awake from sleep.
For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed;
the night is advanced, the day is at hand.
Romans 13:11
Advent invites us to a commitment to vigilance, looking beyond ourselves, expanding our mind and heart in order to open ourselves up to the needs of people, of brothers and sisters, and to the desire for a new world. It is the desire of many people tormented by hunger, by injustice and by war. It is the desire of the poor, the weak, the abandoned. This is a favourable time to open our hearts, to ask ourselves concrete questions about how and for whom we expend our lives.
Pope Francis
One of the essential paradoxes of Advent: that while we wait for God, we are with God all along, that while we need to be reassured of God’s arrival, or the arrival of our homecoming, we are already at home. While we wait, we have to trust, to have faith, but it is God’s grace that gives us that faith. As with all spiritual knowledge, two things are true, and equally true, at once. The mind can’t grasp paradox; it is the knowledge of the soul.
Michelle Blake
This is the homely heart of Incarnation, this meeting of God in man with men and women, this simple face of divine graciousness in ordinary life rather than in the hymns of church fathers or in the dry elaborations of theologians.
Eugene Kennedy
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
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.
Edward Hays
There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation.
Madeleine L’Engle
The message of the Incarnation is not to behold an innocent baby resplendent in inertia, but rather to take sides with a God who agitates for reform and shatters the status quo.
Doris Donnelly
Christmas has lost its meaning for us because we have lost the spirit of expectancy. We cannot prepare for an observance. We must prepare for an experience.
Handel Brown
When Christ entered our world, he didn’t come to brighten our Decembers, but to transform our lives.
Rich Miller
Let’s approach Christmas with an expectant hush, rather than a last-minute rush.
Anonymous