For many years we went all out during Advent. We did all the crafts with our children, celebrated every Feast Day in December with a big to do. A Jesse tree adorned with home-made ornaments sat atop the dining table, a manger in which the children had to fill with hay by doing kind deeds. We read every possible Advent reflection booklet I could get my hands on while sitting about the Advent wreath and candles, attended all the events, the list goes on. I know I am forgetting other things, but I am already exhausted from looking at this.
And that was the problem. By Christmas Day I was exhausted. In my great ambition to prepare for Christ’s birth, I had taken it too far. I was so focused on the “doing,” I overlooked the “being.” All of these things are good in and of themselves, important things. They all serve a purpose. My intentions were good. However, we know good intentions can only take us so far.
Slow Down
Fast forward many years and I am finally getting a hang of being with Christ. Just be. Be. Slow down. Listen. Be. Isn’t this really what He wants from us anyway? My children do not have to participate in every last activity to be with and to experience Christ.
Mother Mary
In these last weeks leading up to His birth, I am drawn to a statue a friend gave me as I was about to have our 8th child. It is a statue of The Blessed Mother visibly pregnant with baby Jesus. I had never seen this particular statue before, and I fell in love with it as soon as I opened it. In ordinary time the statue sits on the bookshelves in our main living space where we can see Her daily. During Advent I move Her to the center of the Advent wreath on the dining table where we eat our meals.
As I was looking at Mary and her beautifully large belly, it reminded me of my own pregnancies. And the pregnancies of all women, really. In those last couple of weeks just before the baby comes, there is a shift. Our bodies slow down, and we practice more “being” and less “doing.” The symbolism and connection were lost on me until recently as I really pondered it.
Begin Again
If perhaps you’ve gotten caught up in a lot more “doing” this Advent, it’s not too late to “be,” or as my good friend, a Deacon, says, “Begin again.” Sit with our Lord and be with Him. It will be one of the best things you do. Listen for His voice in the depths of your soul. Feel how much He loves you in the depths of your heart. Rekindle your deep relationship with Him. Ask how you can best prepare for– not just the Savior’s birth, but the Second Coming.
I leave you with an excerpt from Father Alfred Delp’s book Advent of the Heart. It is from the Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent preached in Munich December 7, 1941
“Each liturgical season has its own individual meaning and its own assignment. In that sense, the deepest meaning of Advent is man’s meeting with the Ultimate, with the Absolute. Therefore, our Advent considerations comprised man’s understanding in perspective of the end, man encountering the Absolute with the knowledge of the end, the final destination. We considered what will become of us there and how we should inwardly, on the deepest level, decide and live and act from this spiritual center and prove ourselves.”
