A Talk on Advent

The True Meaning of Advent Here’s a quick quiz for you all. Listen carefully and choose the best possible answer. The true meaning of Christmas is: A. Pushing and shoving other adults out of your way to ensure that your child receives the most coveted gift of the season. If you happen to knock over a small child, well, that’s the mother’s fault. Kids don’t belong in the stores on Black Friday in the first place. B. Skipping the mortgage payment in December…and January, so that your children can spend 3 or more hours on Christmas morning unwrapping everything they asked for. C. Spending mulitiple hours in the freezing cold, risking life and limb, attaching thousands of Christmas lights to every peak of your home so that yours is the best decorated house on the street because afterall, you are obviously the most Christian people in the neighborhood. D. None of the above. If you chose letter D, congratulations! You’re on your way to understanding the true meaning of Christmas, but what about Advent? What is the meaning of the Advent season? “If you have nothing aboove you, you will be consumed by that which is around you” I heard this quote in a homily at Mass this past Sunday. I believe it was from one of the founding fathers. It rings so very true for the Advent season. So many of our brothers and sisters have nothing above them, meaning they do not have God in their sights, and so are consumed by the materialism of the season that surrounds them. Christmas to them is all about the presents and the parties, getting the newest and greatest gifts and giving the same in return. How many people do you know who spend hours searching the internet looking for the perfect something for their babysitter, but spend less than 5 minutes searching their souls before their Advent Confession, if they even go to Confession in preparation for Christmas at all? We are so busy preparing our homes with decorations, cleaning, and cooking, that we take no time to prepare our hearts to receive the amazing gift which is coming to us in the stable at Bethlehem. So what is Advent? Is Advent merely a way for Catholics to extend the Christmas season? Is it all about shopping and wrapping? Is it about parties and visitning? Or is there a greater purpose for this holy season? Advent is a time for preparation. Certainly, cleaning and decorating, visiting, and shopping are all a part of our preparations. Christmas is a great feast after all, and anyone who has ever hosted a dinner party will tell you that no feast can be successful without these preparations. But there is a greater, more important banquet hall which is often times overlooked during this time. This is the hall of our hearts. This Christmas, the Christ child will not come into the physical world as He did on that first Christmas in Bethlehem. This is a remembrance of that time. God does not ask us to prepare a physical stable for His Son, but rather, a spiritual one. Christ will come this Christmas, not into our barns, but rather, into our souls. How will He find us when He arrives? Mary and Joseph traveled the streets of Bethlehem, stopping at every inn, only to be turned away at each of them. How significant the journey of that first Christmas Eve was. This year, as every other year, the Christ child will look down at the earth, to the hearts of His people, to the “inns” in which He desires to be born. And what will He find? First, He will find that many of the inns that He once visited have been closed down. For so long they have gone without “the guest”, that they are no longer awaiting His arrival. They have closed the doors to their hearts, boarded up their minds, and moved on, leaving no place for Jesus to rest within them. Next, Jesus will find inns that are still somewhat open, but which are filled to capacity. These inns are filled with the business of the commercialized season of Christmas. Of Santas and snowmen, shopping and parties. They have no time, no place for Jesus to rest. Then Jesus will come to the little stables of Bethlehem. Whether it be a crude hillside cave as the one Mary and Josephfound on the first Christmas night, or a great palace, ornately decoratedand buzzing with holiday cheer, the Child will know this inn when in it He finds a manger waiting for Him within the hearts of those who dwell there. And how will this manger be prepared? It will be clean of all dirt and debris through the sacrament of Reconcilliation. It will be filled with the warm straw of sacrifice and charity, covered with a blanket of prayer, and tended by the loving owner who has diligently prepared this little place in all humility. Christmas, as I mentioned before, is a great feast, second only to Easter in the Liturgical calendar. Shouldn’t, therefore, Advent be a season during which we prepare as thoughtfully and prayerfully as we do in Lent? Most people think of Christmastime as the season between Thanksgiving and December 25th. They spend this time celebrating with family and friends, purchasing and exchanging gifts, eating, drinking, and being merry. These things are all good, and I dare say God wants us to celebrate His coming in this fashion, but let us not forget, amidst all of that hustle and bustle, that the King is coming, and our hearts need to be ready to receive Him. I challenge us each to look at how we will spend our Advent this year. I’d also like to share with yo now, a few of the ways that our family will prepare for the coming of the Christ Child. First, I like to begin the season with a clean soul. Although the Church only mandates that we go to Confession once a year during the season of Lent, we all know that we do our best work when our hearts have been cleansed of sin. This weekend we will all have the opportunity to receive the Sacrament of Confession and I encourage us all to take advantage of this chance. I know sometimes I find it difficult to properly prepare for Confession because I always have kids tugging on me, toddlers and babies fussing, and older ones asking me, “Mom, do you really think this is a sin?” It will be nice this weekend to be able to sit down with a pen and paper in the silence and be able to just listen to what God wants me to lay down at His feet. I know He will tell me what I need to unburden my heart of before I go into this holy season. When you return home, I urge you to extend this opportunity to the rest of your family. Don’t wait until the week of Christmas. You can always go again if you need to, but begin this season of Advent as close to the Lord as you possibly can. Next, are acts of sacrifice. Advent may be a little more difficult of a season for fasting because of obligations to family celebrations, company parties, and such, but if we choose just one small sacrifice that we can commit to through the season, we will find that we are more easily able to remain focused on the season of preparation amidst a society that skips directly to the celebration. Something as small as avoiding a favorite food could go totally unnoticed by the people around us and yet, in that small sacrifice, we will be drawn so much closer to Our Lord. Now we move on to acts of kindness. Christmas is a time of joy and peace, but how often can the added business of the holiday season create a place of stress and added anxiety in our hearts? Focus on acts of kindness to reign this in. Our family has a couple of traditions that I will share with you. Our first tradition is donating to a local toy drive. I take the children out on a special shopping trip exclusively to buy a toy for a child in need. Whether we drop a random toy in a local donation box, or take a tag for a specific gift from the tree at Church or the store, we make this trip exclusively for this purpose. We do not add extra shopping or errands to the trip. In this way, even the very youngest children are aware of why we are out shopping and nobody overlooks the act of charity they are participating in. The next tradition we have is called “one random act of kindness”. This is a spontaneous act of charity that I look forward to every year. It is done when God places on my heart that it is time. One year we purchased a bag of diapers and left them on the steps at a house with a new baby balloon tied to the mailbox. Another year, I purchased a pair of gloves for a police officer directing traffic at the mall who had forgotten his at home. Small acts such as these help us keep our eyes open for opportunities to give. Other possibilities are paying a visit to a local nursing home to play checkers with the elderly, going Christmas caroling in your neighborhood, or preparing cookie baking bags to donate to your local food pantry. The opportunities are endless. Begin by choosing just one or two of these acts of kindness and adding them to your “to do” list for this Advent season. Confession, prayer, acts of kindness and sacrifice. These are four ways we should all prepare for Christmas with our families. One more thing before I close. I know in my life, I can get so caught up in being good to others that I can often forget to be good to those who I am most called to honor and love. I can be in such a hurry to get all those cookies baked for our friends and neighbors, that I forget to take time to let the kids help roll out the dough. I can be so caught up in getting the house perfectly clean for a party, that I forget the party is supposed to be fun for the kids, not just work. These are the years that memories are made. If you are in a rush to make the perfect dinner, stressed about getting the perfect picture for your card, or too worried about making the perfect gifts to let the kids help, stop. Concern yourself instead with making the perfect memory. Enjoy this Advent season and Christmas will be all that much sweeter.