Advent with Our Lady

We've arrived at the beginning of another liturgical year and another season of preparation; penitential, quiet, reflective so that we can celebrate the nativity of our Lord really well. You know, the

There's no better way for us to prepare for Christmas than to spend Advent with our lady. Advent is a preparation for a really holy and happy Christmas.

Advent is upon us once again. This wonderful season at the start of a new liturgical year so rich in contrast.

Darkness giving way to light. Fear giving way to confidence.

Our Lord's terrible coming at the end of time and his quiet first arrival as the little child in a humble manger. 

We begin the new liturgical year with a time of penance with the quiet of recollection and the penance of some fasting so that we will be ready to celebrate Christmas really well. Now, you probably noticed when you went to Holy Mass yesterday that the readings in the liturgical texts were actually about our Lord's second coming at the end of time, not about his first coming at his nativity.

Strange, you might think, to usher in the new church year and the season of preparation for our Lord's first coming, his birth of the blessed virgin Mary, by focusing instead on his second coming.

The church is teaching us that when we prepare for and then celebrate well the nativity of our Lord, we nourish our faith.

That faith that will give us confidence and peace to welcome his second coming.

Yesterday morning at Matins, the Office of Readings, St. The Cyril of Jerusalem reminded us that this first coming is a hidden coming, a quiet and gentle coming, like a bud silently opening on the branch of a very old tree.

Therefore, we need this time of Advent preparation so that we are well disposed to receive our Lord's birth or even simply to notice his birth at all. That bud on the tree is imperceptible at first and so is Christmas hard to find amidst the hustle and bustle and noise of the way that the world tends to celebrate it.

To cut through all of that and to get to him, our infant savior who is the object of our faith, we need greater quiet and peace in our interior lives. And so

Advent is a penitential season. If we observe it as such with some more time for daily prayer and reading, perhaps with some fasting or other penitential practices, then we'll be better able to notice the appearance of that just shoot on the stock of David.

If we spend this Advent with our Lady, she will teach us how to prepare well, how to be recollected and prayerful. You can be sure that she spent her pregnancy meditating on all those scriptural prophecies that foretold our Lord's birth.

We would do well to do that with her, too. So, let's spend this Advent with Our Lady and then we will be ready to notice him there in his first silent coming at Christmas. And if we let him really enter into our hearts and nourish our faith, then we'll have nothing to fear at his second coming at the end of time. If we can prepare well for his first coming, that wonderful, peaceful, quiet coming that we celebrate every Christmas, if we can keep this Advent as a time of patient and hopeful expectation with our Lady, then we will already have him with us when he comes again in glory as our judge. We will already have him with us.

In fact, we do already have him with us.

Did you recognize Christ coming to meet you this morning? When you awoke to face this brand new day?

What about when you greeted your family or your friends for the first time this morning?

Did you see him there? Did you notice him hiding there in the guise of the most familiar among you?

And what about right now in the depth of your heart?

Do you believe that he has already come? hat he dwells within you and that right now at this moment he is loving you?

St. Theresa of Calcutta used to teach her sisters to pray like this:

"Jesus in my heart I believe in your tender love for me. I love you." 

Our Lady is the best model and teacher of how we can focus on Christ who dwells within us by his sanctifying grace. He's with us when we pray. And he's especially with us in holy communion. Our Lady teaches us how to receive our Lord as he comes to nourish our faith and to be our rest and our consolation, even to be our food and our drink in his body and blood.

Jesus, in my heart, I believe in your tender love for me. I love you.

So here at the beginning of Advent, see with what great confidence we can stand, erect, and raise our heads for our redemption is at hand.

The Season of Sacred Waiting

Transcript:

Peace be with you. Friends, we come to New Year's Day. We have the New Year celebration of the liturgical year, the first Sunday of Advent; a day of great importance as we once again commence our march through the liturgical year. And here's the thing I want you to see. Advent is the season of sacred waiting.

We're waiting for the Adventus, for the coming of the Savior. It's four weeks of looking and waiting and hoping, watching with a kind of joyful anticipation. And I want you to see this. In a way, Advent, even though it's just four weeks, name something true of all of life, at least life in this world, right? All of us know there's a happiness that we want, but we don't have. I don't mean we're all in despair. I mean, we're making our way through life. There's all kinds of good things, but but deep down we know that we're hungry for something that we don't have.

And even at the best moments, I might say, especially at the best moments of ife, we come to realize that, you know, you you've attained the thing you wanted forever. You've reached this great goal of your life and you say, "Wonderful, wonderful." And then the next day it's like, "Okay, now what?" Uh, now what's my next goal? because we know what we're hungry and thirsty for, we're not going to get in this world.

Therefore, there's a watching and waiting and hoping quality to all of life. Now, to put it very negatively, I've quoted before from Theresa of Avila, that, you know, this life is like a bad night in a bad hotel. Now, again, that's putting it rather negatively, but you get the point that this is not what we're meant for ultimately.

You know, a hotel is a place you go and you okay, you spend a night because you're going to go somewhere else. It's not home, but it's, you know, it's a provisional thing. Well, all of life is like that. Even the best life, the best moments is kind of like a bad night in a bad hotel. I'm I'm still on my way somewhere else.

And that's why I'm going to call it a spirituality of waiting will mark the the whole of one's life. Okay. But here's the problem. And I don't know if you're like me, but I'm not a patient person. Patience is not one of my virtues. Um I rather hate to wait. Waiting. From the time I was a little kid, I remember waiting for my mother to come pick me up after school when I was in, you know, fourth grade. difficult, anxiety producing, uneasy. I'm looking at these cars. Oh, that's not her. That's not her. Where is she supposed to be here by now? Other people getting picked up. They're they're getting it right. Where's Where's mine? Right. I've always hated waiting. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "The three worst things in life are to try to please and not be able, to lie in bed and not to sleep, and to wait for someone who does not come."

Waiting is all over the Bible. Uh the people of Israel have to wait for centuries for the coming of the Messiah. Generation after generation, waiting, watching. Israel waits 400 years in slavery in Egypt before the deliverer comes.

Abraham is promised a son who will carry on his name and make him the father of many nations. He's 75. He's 85. He's 95. His wife is the same age. said he he has to wait until Isaac comes. Um Noah, remember when the Arc lands on Mount Ararat and then he still has to wait until the waters subside. It's so eager.

They were so eager to get out of that darn boat, but they had to wait. Look how prominent waiting is in the spiritual tradition. 

In Dante's Divine Comedy, Virgil is leading Dante through hell, they're moving along and Virgil knows just where to go. But at certain points, they're blocked and they just have to wait. And and Dante says to Virgil, "What's the matter? Can't Can't you get us?" Nope. uh we just have to wait for divine help to come and eventually an angel comes and and they they make their way. Also at the very beginning of the Purgatorio. So they're they're about to climb up Mount Purgatory which is its own form of waiting, isn't it? They have to wait through all the the the disciplines of Mount Purgatory. But even before they get up on the mountain, they notice this whole group of people at the foot of Mount Purgatory. What are they doing? Nothing. They're waiting. They're waiting until they get permission to go up the mountain. It's like being in the doctor's office. You're just waiting.

All right. All right. So, I hate waiting. I bet you hate waiting. But the Bible is is telling us a lot about waiting. So, what is going on? Here's how I'd put it, everybody. And this is now my advent thought for you the next four weeks. At the heart of it is the painful process of de-centering the ego. The ego: I want. I envision. I've got a plan. I've got a project. It's on my timetable. Let's get going. Come on. I know what I want to do. Yeah, that's most of us.

But the spiritual life is about letting go of that ego, de-centering that ego and allowing God to be the Lord of my life. Not to undertake my project all the time, but to wait on the Lord. Painful. Uh-huh. Yeah. Annoying, boring sometimes. But a key point in the spiritual life, everybody, is you're not in control.

We put a high premium on control. I love being in control of things, right? Nothing wrong with that in itself. But when it comes to the deepest things in life, you're not in control. God's in control. And can you learn to live out of that acceptance to let go of your need to manipulate everything and let God set the tone? You know, I've told you before about um these insights from the initiation rituals of primal peoples and and one of these insights I've taken as a basic truth in the spiritual life which is your life is not about you. It's your life. Uhhuh. And you have to live it. But it's not about you. It's not about what you envision. It's about what God wants. And that means we sometimes have to wait. De-center the ego. Let God do what he wants to do. Think here of the prophet, Jonah, right? Jonah hears God's voice; but no, no, I'm not doing that. And and in control of his life, he goes as far away as possible. gets on the boat. I am going to sail away from what God wants. What does God do? He sends the great fish to swallow up Jonah. And then watch how he has to wait. It's one of the great prayers in the Bible, by the way, when Jonah prays from the depths and from the belly of the fish, the Dei profundus, from these deep down places where he's made to wait. But here's interesting. What's happening while he's waiting is he's being brought by God exactly where God wants him to be. What's waiting just dumb suffering? No, no, no. Not if you see with the eyes of faith.

Waiting is turning one's life sometimes painfully over to the purposes of God; accepting not my timetable, God's timetable, which is always right. Not not the life I would lead of my own volition, but the life that God wants me to lead that involves waiting. 

Let's look at one more image from the Bible to think of during Advent as we prepare us for Christmas.

At the first Christmas over 2,000 years ago when Jesus Christ was born. What were the Magi doing? Well, during Advent, the Magi were looking. They were watching. They were waiting for a sign. They weren't going to go where they wanted to go. They were patiently waiting for an indication. But listen now. When they got it, they moved. See,there's nothing passive about what I'm describing. When you wait, you're letting go. That's painful. I know you're letting go of your ego, but you're turning your life over to God. And when you get the indication from God, you go, you act, you move. 

I think that's the spiritual attitude of Advent. And God bless you.