Talk on Advent given to the Sisters

On a warm Thursday afternoon in June I was walking through Bognor high road. It was warm and I was enjoying the heat of the day. I happened to peer through a window to have a look at what they were selling when I saw a table filled with Christmas Cards. It seems that we want celebrate Christmas too early and then it comes around to the actual day we are totally feed up with Christmas. I saw my first Christmas advert on TV on the first day of November. And yet we have a whole four weeks called advent to help us prepare for Christmas before it even arrives.

So we need to do advent well. But how? Lent seems to me to be easier to attach things on too. We have Stations of the Cross Fasting a focus on Reconciliation and God’s immense love and mercy on us who are sinners.  Advent is harder.

So what can we say about Advent? I think that the first thing and the most important thing to is to experience the spirituality of waiting in expectant ant anticipation.

There is one thing in society today that we do not want to do and find very hard is to wait. When waiting for a bus or a train we tend to be looking at our watches several times and we become very impatient well at least I do especially when it is a few munities late. Advent is about waiting.

So what is a spirituality of waiting? Let us take a look at the Jewish scriptures for the start of this spirituality. In the book of Genesis God promises him a land and descendants “That day the Lord made a covenant with Abram in these terms to your descendants I give this land from the wadi of Egypt to the great river.” As we can see from history and our Bible and especially recent history the descendants of Abram the Jews are still waiting for this land to be theirs. The experience of the Jewish people has been of a painful waiting for the Lord’s promise. We have seen much unrest in the Holy City of Jerusalem and the Holy Land.

The Spirituality of waiting has also been seen in coming of the Messiah. We discover every year the experience of the waiting of the Jewish people in the promise we see in the prophets of the coming of the Messiah. We see countless prophets who have told us what this Messiah will be like. The Jewish people are still waiting, for us though the wait is coming to an end

As we celebrate Advent we are encouraged to wait and hope with the Prophets. For us in the midst of darkness and winter a light has appeared. Just as an aside on the 21^st December it is the shortest day. On the 25^th December Christmas day according to people who know it is this day that it starts by the naked eye to get lighter and who is our light to enlighten the nations Jesus.

We wait for the light. This light is Christ our Lord. He is as the prophets have told us is “God with us” We should try our best to wait well. So what can we do in the midst of this waiting? I have while being here in Holy Cross experienced the spirituality of waiting. It seems to me that in the midst of the silence that I have discovered in the countryside that we can do one of two things. We can resent the waiting and get up tight or we can try our best to let the waiting speak to us. We ultimately try our best to Trust in the Lord. Jesus tells us time and time again to put all his trust in him. So Advent a time of trustfully waiting we can turn to prayer. We can turn to the Lord and ask him to help us with our patient waiting  we can get ourselves ready by making our hearts ready for Jesus coming by the sacrament of reconciliation, listening and studying the scriptures and by walking with our lady.  And that is what I want to look at tomorrow morning is waiting with our lady by looking at her journey through the Christmas story so please bring your Bibles tomorrow morning.