In the “Advent Way of Life” which we are trying to create this season, we are asked to remember that we easily forget what we’ve done for other people. We often share a kindness with another and then speedily move on. The same is true when other people have done a kindness for us. When Advent becomes a “way of life,” we more actively remember kindness, we are grateful for it, and we readily thank God for inspiring it in the first place.
In the “Advent Way of Life,” no one is ever shouting about their rights, but working to fulfill their duty to be kind – and finding ways to do a little more. We begin to look behind the faces of other human beings and into their hearts. It is then that we can see that they are hungry for joy, just like we are; they are hungry to learn to trust that, in the end, everything is going to work out. That’s the way God has planned it!
The “Advent Way of Life” also challenges us to change our basic posture toward each day: from “what are we going to get out of it?” to “what we going to put into it?” This is a perfect way for us to “stand erect and raise our heads before the Son of Man” and “prepare the way of the Lord,” as we heard at Mass last weekend.
Let us pray. “May this Advent season remind us, O Lord, to praise you in the shadows as well as in the light, to praise you in winter as well as in spring, to praise you in silence as well as in song, to praise you in solitude as well as in companionship, and to praise you in illness as well as in health. May this Advent season also remind us that “morning is coming,” and hope springs eternal. Amen.”
