Advent is here. What do you plan to do other than shop for Christmas and decorate?
Advent is a difficult season for us as Catholic Christians. We don’t have traditions of
prayer and discipline similar to those that we have in Lent to help us enter into this season. Advent is also a very short liturgical season. And it is hard to enter into the Advent season when the rest of the world has been celebrating Christmas since early October! Yet, Advent is an important season for us as Christians. It is a time in which we should reflect seriously on the marvelous truth that God entered into human history in the person of Jesus. God did this so that we might share in God’s life now and one day share in the fullness of God’s life forever. God became flesh in Jesus so that each and every one of us might know the salvation that is the desire of God for us. God knows each of us by name and God desires the personal salvation of each one of us. This is truly remarkable! God loves each one of us personally and wants us to share in
God’s life now and forever! To savor this truth and reflect on its importance for us is a good reason to enter into the Advent season.
What can we do to make Advent a true season of preparation for the great feast of
Christmas? Prepare a gift for Jesus each day. The gifts you will offer Jesus on the feast of his birth will be the good deeds you do in this Advent season – visits to the sick and homebound, calls to those who are alone, donations that you make to food banks and soup kitchens, time that you spend with your family without any interruptions for calls, texts, or e-mails. Start each day of Advent with this simple prayer: “Good and gracious God, I ask that these days be a time of grace and blessing for me as I give thanks that you entered into this world in the person of Jesus.
May each kind word that I say and each act of kindness that I do be the gifts that I gather to present to your Son on the feast of his birth.”
Act and pray every day to make Advent real.