It rolls around every year about this time...Advent, that season of early Christmas music, and Evangelical churches filling the world with Christmas Pageants before the liturgy has a chance to fully prepare our hearts for the Incarnation. I frankly could care less what music plays in stores, as I try to block out any music I have not chosen to listen to. Plus, if the Evangelicals want to act like it's already Christmas Lite, then fine, let them, they have no tradition to teach them otherwise.
We do. The liturgical churches do know that Advent is a season of preparation for the coming of Christ. The question the the Evangelicals ask us is: which coming of Christ? Well, not the actual Second Coming/Rapture sort of thing. Then what kind of coming of Christ are we talking about here?
The kind where Christ is born in your heart, and the season of Advent prepares us, helps to cleanse us, shows us the promises, and finally delivers into our hearts the Incarnation itself. Christ is born, yes, in us. In you. In me. For families it's time to drag out advent calendars and play cutesy games for the buildup to Christmas. For the Liturgy of the Hours, it's some heavy reading. For the monks at Gethsemani it's a busy time with fruitcakes, fudge, and cheese.
For me advent is going to be the coming back to weekday and all Sunday masses at the Abbey. I love the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, but they are not my first obligation. My spirituality is contemplative and monastic. My heart is at Gethsemani and the death of Fr. Chrysogonus made me realize that so strongly I felt guilty today being at Mass in St. Vincent's Church.
To celebrate advent appropriately I shall clean out my heart of all needless things, unclutter my spiritual closet, sweep out the corners of my prayer life, and try to make a dwelling for Christ to be born within me. I shall anticipate the coming of the Lord like the "groaning of all creation longing for the revelation of the children of God."
It is this time of year that present the greatest challenges to me spiritually. Staying with it, keeping it clear that how I feel is not how I am with God. The greatest gift I've been given, and it's even pre-Advent is that my Joy and my Love is greater than most people can handle. Well, tough. It's not my Joy or my Love it is God's Joy and Love. Therefore, I shan't worry any longer that I'm too much for some people. Personally I don't want to cross lines or upset anyone, but the bottom line is, if Joy and Love are too much for you, then you should look to yourself, and not blame it on me.
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