Nothing could be more wonderful, moving, and enlightening than the Christmas story itself. It happened to a people who suffered beyond endurance under the Roman rule, with a mad Asmodean king tormented by prophecies of his own destruction. The yearning for a Messiah, a leader to freedom and a better way of life, filled all their thoughts and prayers. The out of Bethlehem cam the Nativity, prophetic, mysterious, and unearthly: choirs of angels singing from the skies; a strange radiance on the dark hills, shepherds stunned and speechless as they watched their flocks in the lonely night; Wise Men from afar following an unknown star to pay homage to a Baby born in a manger with a gleaming aureole about his head. All testified to the deep significance of “the thing that are and cannot be”. Until almost two thousand years ago, the greeting at midwinter was, “I give you light for the year.” About a century after the first Christmas, John, author of the fourth gospel, wrote of Advent in terms of spiritual Light shining through the world’s darkness….

… And the greeting gradually became, “I give you Christ, the Light of the World.” Frances Brentano, The Light of Christmas What are you waiting and watching for God to do this Advent Season? What is it that you are inwardly yearning for God to be at work this Advent?

Advent: Week 2

Advent is in many ways the most beautiful and profound time of the Christian year …

Advent means ‘coming’, and the season is about our waiting for the most mysterious and wonderful coming of all, into the heart of our lives, our needy lives …

… from the heart of the Christian people, and down through the centuries, the prayer has gone up: ‘Show us, Lord, your steadfast love. And grant us your salvation’. ‘ Come, Lord, and bring us peace. Let us rejoice before you with sincere hearts’.

And we can pray now: ‘Lord, help us to wait, with patience, with longing, for your coming – your coming into our poor lives. As once your people waited, and you came in our midst as a child, to be among us …

so help us now to wait, and hope, and love what we wait for: your coming, and your peace’.

Prayer in the Days … of Advent My brother, Jesus. It happens every year. I think that this will be the year that I have a reflective Advent. I look forward to Sunday and this new season, Jesus. But all around me are the signs rushing me to Christmas and some kind of celebration that equates spending with love.

I need your help. I want to slow my world down. This year, more than ever, I need Advent, these weeks of reflection and longing for hope in the darkness … Jesus, this year, help me to have that longing.

Help me to feel it in my heart and be aware of the hunger and thirst in my own soul. Deep down, I know there is something missing in my life, but I can’t quite reach for it. I can’t get what is missing.

I know it is about you, Jesus. You are not missing from my life, but I might be missing the awareness of all of the places you are present there.

Be with me, my dear friend. Guide me in these weeks to what you want to show me this Advent.

Help me to be vulnerable enough to ask you to lead me to the place of my own weakness, the very place where I will find you the most deeply embedded in my heart, loving me without limits.

Lord, let me experience your coming into my heart today. Lord, I want to embrace the gift of peace you are offering me. Please, Lord, slow me down. Forgive me my impatience, my judgments, my jealousies, my greed and any way I make strained relationships even worse. Help me be sensitive to the needs, struggles, pain of others today. Give me the courage to offer gestures of peace and love and reconciliation, where they are needed today. Help me chew the message of your coming today: into poverty, to enter my own experience, to be truly with me. Are any of these your Desire for Advent Season?

Lord, you know my heart, with all its mystery and complexity. Please let me know my desires, let me know what I need, let me humbly ask you for your graces these precious days ahead.

In the Bible, it was the poor who were especially conscious of God’s working in their lives. Called the anawim in Hebrew, they were often just a remnant, a small number, ‘a humble and lowly people’ (Zephaniah 3:12), who took refuge in God alone. Advent 2010 : Week 3

In the Gospel of Luke, people like Elizabeth and Zechariah, John the Baptist, Simeon and Anna, and above all Joseph and Mary, are portrayed as belonging to the anawim. They are not the great people walking the earth, but the hidden ones, living with faith, with humanity, and in truth.

It is to them God comes, and especially to Mary. Mary, in response to the Angel, says in effect: ‘Let what God wants come about in my life’ (cf Luke 1:38). And Elizabeth would then say to her cousin: ‘Yes, blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled’ (Luke 1:45).

Lord, help me in the poverty of my heart to be open to you – to your coming, your love, blessing, and peace. Help me to depend on you, for you are Lord of my heart, my deepest peace, and the surest guide along the path of my life. Lord, place me among the anawim, to be blessed by you through the gift of believing.

Can you recognize God at work in your life – family, neighborhood, church - this Advent season? What do you see Him being about?

And they shall name him Emmanuel, which means "God is with us." Oh, how wonderful it is that Joseph listened to God in his dream and was not afraid to take Mary into his home. God's ways are not our ways. Let us pray to be renewed and freed. And, like Joseph, in being faithfully unafraid to be open to our salvation.

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