Advent Archives - Page 16 of 20

Blessed Sacrament

Happy watching and waiting! Today begins the season of Advent, one of my favorites of the liturgical year – perfect for stillness and quietude. Remember to take time during this season to slow down. Take some time to sit before the Blessed Sacrament in the middle of your busy day or give Jesus an hour of your week to sit during Eucharistic Adoration at your parish. Remember how saddened Jesus was when his disciples couldn’t stay awake during his agony in the garden. “Could you not watch one hour with me,” he said. (Mt 26:40) He’s probably saying the same to us.

This Friday was the first Friday of the month and I spent a few hours in adoration at my parish. We are blessed to have all night adoration on the first Friday of every month. So there I sat, with Jesus, for a few hours – sitting, praying, reading and writing. As I sat, just past midnight, I decided to open the missalette to Sunday’s readings and do Lectio Divina.

The first reading for this weekend is from Isaiah 63:16b-17, 19b, 64:2-7 – it starts off talking about how God is our Father and asking why He let’s us wander. It continues with how sinful we are and how angry He is. “Yet, O Lord, you are our father; we are the clay and you the potter; we are all the work of your hands.”

There’s that reason to HOPE again! No matter how sinful we are, He’s “got” this! Those words from Isaiah stopped me in my tracks. I read them over and over with a smile because it reminded me of how God truly IS in control of everything. Answered prayer, unanswered prayer, suffering, joy – it’s all there to teach us, to mold us into the people he would have us become and to help us recognize His Presence around us. In other words, the good, the bad and the ugly……..there He is in the midst of it all. Wow! What a comfort.

I continued to read the reading for Sunday and finally came to the Gospel, taken from Mark 13:33-37. I guess you could say it was appropriate for the season: Advent waiting and the message: WATCH! “Be watchful, be alert” said Jesus to His disciples. I’ve heard many homilies on this Gospel and the message is usually the same – we don’t know when “our time” will come or when Jesus will come again so we should never lose our focus, we should always be prepared to enter the Kingdom. We should always be working toward an increase in holiness, growing in grace and being ready to meet Him when He comes again.

In the past, my own understanding and interpretation of this Gospel and the many homilies I’ve heard proposed that same message. However, after reading it this week, my interpretation was a bit different. It may have to do with my focus on contemplation these days, but I think it also has to do with the connection I made to the first reading. You see, if God is the potter, we the clay, I think we are being called to watchfulness and awareness of Him. “Be watchful and alert” for His Presence in the here and now and how He is working to purify us.

In other words, I think this Gospel is telling us to be on the look out for God’s action and presence in our lives. To recognize it, surrender to it and to open our hearts to it. Basically, go with the flow of the potter’s wheel and don’t resist. We all know what happens to the clay when it encounters resistance! Surrendering to God’s action and presence in our lives is the only way we will be able to experience true union with Him in this life. The best part of this message is that we don’t have to wait until we die or for Him to come again to experience true union with Him.

This Advent, let’s challenge ourselves to be still and quiet long enough to recognize God’s presence and action in our lives, to accept it and be transformed by it! What will you do differently this season to make that happen? Share your thoughts with me! Happy watching and waiting. God bless you!

Wait in stillness!

Journey to Christmas? Yes, it’s called Advent. Several years ago, I bought a book called Monastery Journey to Christmas, by Brother Victor-Antoine D’Avila-Latourrette It’s a small book with daily meditations which start on November 15 and go through Advent, Christmas, Epiphany (also known at Three Kings), Theophany(Baptism of Jesus) and Candlemas (Presentation of Jesus). I love this book because it begins on November 15 – usually before the start of Advent. It’s a good way to settle myself and get into the proper frame of mind to commence Advent on the right foot – in the spirit of WAITING!

Each year I start reading when Advent begins because I forget that the meditations start way before and then I have to play catch up. This year, I remembered and pulled the book out just three days late instead of weeks late. Anyway, I’ve begun to quiet the mind, to be on guard for the temptation of the commercial world. I highly recommend this book. It provides great insight, ideas and history. You’ll definitely learn some things you never knew.

I’d like to share Bro. Victor’s meditation for November 18: Advent Waiting

Advent is primarily about waiting. It is about waiting for the Lord to come. There is something special about this particular type of waiting. First of all, waiting is a spiritual attitude we cultivate deep within ourselves. We know the Lord is coming, and therefore we desire and hasten his arrival by a patient attitude of waiting for him. We wait and wait for the Lord. We become very conscious of the waiting. It is an eager waiting, full of anticipation and wonder, for as the prophets of old, our companions on the road, we long to see his face.

The Lord, of course, is very much aware of this patient waiting, of this deep yearning for him, and he is ever ready to come into our lives and fulfill our deepest desires. Advent waiting is always twofold. On our part, we await prayerfully, consciously and anticipate his coming. On God’s part, he is eager to arrive and find a warm dwelling place in our hearts. The greater our desire and patience in waiting for him, the fuller we shall be filled with his presence.

The early Christians, as the Apostle James reminds us, live daily, steadily, waiting patiently for the Lord. Of course, they thought this was going to be the Lord’s final, triumphant coming and it was going to happen very soon, thus they wished to be ready for it. Perhaps at one point they were a bit disappointed that it didn’t occur according to their expectations. At the end, it didn’t matter, for their eager waiting for him was rewarded by the Lord entering into their lives more fully and transforming every inch of their beings.

Furthermore, many of them were blessed with a physical vision of the Lord just before they underwent martyrdom. The Lord may not always act according to our expectations. After all, he tells us in the Scripture, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.” Yet he never disappoints us.

If we learn to cultivate this inner attitude of waiting for him steadily, faithfully, not only during the blessed Advent days, but throughout the whole of our lives, we shall likewise be rewarded with the grace, joy and warmth of his real presence in the innermost of our hearts.

Ok………. so………….funny story. After typing this entire meditation, I realized the ending didn’t ring a bell. Am I losing my mind? Yes and no! I realized, it wasn’t the page I intended to share. But as we all know, God has a great sense of humor and obviously He had other plans!

I won’t post another meditation from the same book, so I’ll just mention the basic idea of what I intended to post. It was about making Advent “plans.” To decide early on how you will approach Advent and what you will do differently this year to observe the spirit of stillness and waiting.

Bro. Victor makes a good point in the meditation. He says: “often if no plans are made in advance, much of Advent goes unnoticed and wasted.” So there you have it. Make plans. Slow down. If you have children, start a tradition with them – teach them the art of waiting. Help them to embrace and savor the season of waiting, instead of jumping right into Christmas after Halloween (yes, I meant to say HALLOWEEN)!

Let’s get back to the meditation God shared. I was moved by several of the words in it (I’ve set them in boldface). It dawned on me that Bro. Victor was describing the benefits of contemplation. What I got from it is Advent waiting is more than a preparation for Christmas.

Advent serves to prepare us for life in and with Christ. Here’s what I mean: I have learned through reading that in contemplation God works in us – we do nothing but surrender. So many times, people will say that they didn’t “feel” anything when they were just sitting in contemplation. The reality is you may not feel anything, but God is working in you through grace.

Let’s try an experiment. Take all the boldface lines out of the context. When read together you may agree with what I am saying.

On our part, we await prayerfully, consciously and anticipate his coming. On God’s part, he is eager to arrive and find a warm dwelling place in our hearts. The greater our desire and patience in waiting for him, the fuller we shall be filled with his presence.

We sit prayerfully during contemplation in the hopes of growing in deeper union with God (anticipating his coming). God on the other hand is always waiting for us to surrender to his action and presence in our lives. When we surrender and are ready to receive him we begin to feel him taking up residence in our hearts.

At the end, it didn’t matter, for their eager waiting for him was rewarded by the Lord entering into their lives more fully and transforming every inch of their beings.

In the end, it doesn’t matter that we don’t “feel” anything. It doesn’t matter what our expectations are because regardless of what we feel, we are being fully transformed!

we shall likewise be rewarded with the grace, joy and warmth of his real presence in the innermost of our hearts.

God is showering down his grace on us during contemplation. Through this grace we become joyful, warm and radiant! Thanks be to God!