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Advent Reflections 2013

Advent 1 - An Advent Examination
Edward Hays, A Pilgrim's Almanac

"Advent is the perfect time to clear and prepare the Way. Advent is a winter training camp for those who desire peace. By reflection and prayer, by reading and meditation, we can make our hearts a place where a blessing of peace would desire to abide and where the birth of the Prince of Peace might take place.

"Daily we can make an Advent examination. Are there any feelings of discrimination toward race, sex, or religion? Is there a lingering resentment, an unforgiven injury living in our hearts? Do we look down upon others of lesser social standing or educational achievement? Are we generous with the gifts that have been given to us, seeing ourselves as their stewards and not their owners? Are we reverent of others, their ideas and needs, and of creation? These and other questions become Advent lights by which we may search the deep, dark corners of our hearts.

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Advent 2 - Life Is an Advent Season
CONNECTIONS, 11-28-93 

"Life is a constant Advent season: we are continually waiting to become, to discover, to complete, to fulfill. Hope, struggle, fear, expectation and fulfillment are all part of our Advent experience.

"The world is not as just, not as loving, not as whole as we know it can and should be. But the coming of Christ and his presence among us-as one of us-give us reason to live in hope: that light will shatter the darkness, that we can be liberated from our fears and prejudices, that we are never alone or abandoned.

"May this Advent season be a time for bringing hope, transformation and fulfillment into the Advent of our lives."

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Advent 3 - The Coming of the Light
Sourcebook, 1996, Liturgy Training Publ.

"...Christmas celebrates the dawn of the Light of the World. The powers of darkness are overcome by his coming to share our life. The long reign of sin is ended and grace has been poured out upon the earth. The Sun of Justice has arisen, and evil is vanquished."

Perhaps the hardest thing to remember about Christmas is this. "It celebrates the incarnation, not just the nativity. The incarnation is an on-going process of salvation, while the nativity is the once-for-all-historical event of Bethlehem. We do not really celebrate Christ's ‘birthday,' remembering something that happened long ago. We celebrate the stupendous fact of the incarnation, God entering our world so thoroughly that nothing has been the same since. And God continues to take flesh in our midst, in the men and women and children who form his body today. And the birth we celebrate is not just the past historical event but Christ's continuing birth in his members, accomplished by the power of the Spirit through the waters of baptism.

"...What we celebrate is our redemption in Christ and the transformation of all creation by the presence of the divine in our midst."

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Advent 4 - The Call
Mike Wilkins

”Often times when we think of becoming a Christian, we think of what it is doing for us - that we are reconciling in our relationship with our creator that we are having our sins forgiven, that we are being saved... I think that the call to receive Christ is more like Gabriel's visit to Mary where he asks us, will you carry the Christ, will you carry the salvation of the world?“

Advent 4a - Our God-haunted World
Marilynne Robinson

”According to the Christian proclamation, God as man lived quietly in the world for more than thirty years before he called his first disciple, drawing no attention to himself or to his presence with us. His voice was not heard in the street. We must assume that sunlight was no lovelier those thirty years, or time less inexorable. The Romans, who made synonyms of order and desolation, tramped the roads of his holy Judea. If we take it to be true that he walked in the cool of mornings and the breeze of evenings among Adam's children, who were at no special pains to hide their transgressions from him or to put a gloss of piety on the good they did, and that he saw them sometimes comfort the lame and welcome the outcast, as people will do, then surely he rejoiced in them, and in the unutterable good he intended for them. Still, every day was like any other day through those thirty years, miraculous and God-haunted as the world was in the beginning, is now, and always will be.

The Lord is near. We know not the day nor the hour of his coming because he is with us always, every day and every hour. We can rejoice in the Lord because he first rejoiced in us, and because he has put his mighty blessing on every gentleness we offer one another. Let our gentleness be known to everyone. If there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, let us think about these things. They are the joy of God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will keep our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus.“

 

 

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