Happy Advent!
Advent is the season that marks the beginning of the liturgical year and helps us focus on preparing the way and waiting with patient hope, joyous anticipation, and watchfulness for Jesus. This time of year is full of traditions that are to intentionally cause us to slow down and take the time to connect with God and with one another around that hope, anticipation, and watchfulness. Yet another example of how we are to be counter-cultural! We are to be preparing the way of the Lord as He enters our homes and our hearts at Christmas. One cannot do that well scurrying around filling time with stuff and nonsense. If readying your external home is part of readying your internal home and brings you the peace that Advent is to provide, then you are certainly doing something right. We should be doing everything for Jesus and with Jesus. To unite our prayer to our work is indeed the gift that is an extension of the charity woven in our lives. I love Mother Teresa’s reflection on Advent in her book Thirsting for God: Advent is like springtime in nature when everything is renewed, fresh, and healthy. Advent refreshes us, makes us healthy and able to receive Christ in whatever form he may come to us. At Christmas, he comes as a little child small, helpless, and in need of his mother and all that a mother’s love can give. His mother’s humility enabled her to serve. If we really want God to fill us, we must empty ourselves through humility of all the selfishness within us.