We are in the season of Advent: a season of preparation, a season of waiting. It is lot of ways, this goes against the grain of our culture, in a world of instant gratification that does not like to wait, in a world of Black Friday sales and consumerism, where we already have been barraged with Christmas music way before Advent even started. Even with our Advent calendars and Advent wreaths, perhaps it is not so easy to embrace this as a time of waiting.
But think of the times we are forced to wait. I’ll tell you, even though I am a priest, even I don’t like waiting in a traffic jam on Highway 20 or Highway 55 trying to get to the Carmelite monastery or the chancery office. We wait for news, to hear back from the doctor regarding medical tests we've had, for how we’ve done on an exam. We wait to get an appointment. We wait in line at the airport. Advent gives us an opportunity to consecrate these times of waiting, to try to be more patient, to lift those things up to the Lord, to put aside our cell phone and our frustrations in order to pray or to read our Advent devotion for the day. In embracing this as a time of waiting, perhaps we can surrender control to Jesus Christ, whose birth we wait for during this season of Advent.
Since our time as children, we focus on the miracle of the incarnation this time of the year, as we prepare for the birth of Christ. I remember growing up as a child in Chicago, where the month of December is dark and cold. The focus on waiting during this days of Advent for the coming of Christmas brought a lot of light and joy to the dark winter days. But, today, the message from John the Baptist was not for the people to prepare for Christ’s birth, but rather for them to repent. St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), an influential Abbot in the Cistercian order of monks who lived almost 1,000 years ago, summed up the meaning of Advent when he suggested that in this holy season, we celebrate three comings of the Lord: the past, the present, and the future, The Past is what we usually focus upon during Advent: The first coming was the coming of Christ in history: the Miracle of the Incarnation. In the Present: Christ comes into all of our hearts during our journey of faith as his disciples. Finally, in the future, Christ will come again in glory at the end times.
This time of the year, a lot of us spend a lot of time decorating our homes, putting up Christmas lights, nativity sets, and our Christmas tree. Right around Thanksgiving weekend, I noticed a lot of different Christmas lights and decorations going up all over our neighborhood around the church. And it is important for us to have external things to help us celebrate this season. However, we cannot just focus on the external expression of the season. We need to look at internal repentance and conversion that is going on in our lives the is expressed in the messages of John the Baptist and St Bernard. We need to look at how we are preparing in our internal life, our life of prayer and our life of faith in this holy season of preparation and waiting. I think of Jesus: how he often scolded the Pharisees about being so concerned about externals and rituals, then ignoring their interior life and the need for repentance and confession in their lives. When John the Baptist tells us to prepare the way of the Lord, he wants us to get our priorities in order, to quit focusing on the things that do not really matter. We are called to focus on what matters: things like love, our relationship with God, our right relationship with our brothers and sisters, justice, acts of mercy and charity, forgiveness, respect, dignity, reverence. So, perhaps in the midst of the time we spend waiting during Advent, we could ask ourselves this question: What do we need to do to prepare our hearts and our lives for the coming of the Lord?
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