First Sunday of Advent 2023
December 2, 2023: The Eve of the First Sunday of Advent.
This evening, we stand on the brink of Advent. Before us stretches three weeks, twenty-one days where we will journey into the mystery of Emmanuel, God-with-us in the person of Jesus, the Gift of the Father. In the centuries before Jesus’ coming among us, the world was much as is it today: there were wars, hatred, self centeredness, greed and all that which is most inhuman in us. In Jesus we have the answer, the way and the life.
So why do these things continue? To quote GK Chesterton: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” What would happen if we truly left all to follow Christ? If we took up the Gospel and lived it, difficulties and all? Not just for a few days, but for our lives?
We were baptized into Christ to follow him and as consecrated religious we have made solemn promises to live the depths of being a Christian according to our Cistercian interpretation of the Gospel, with its emphasis on community, prayer, service, humility, and charity.
At Christmas, we will sing of the coming of the Prince of Peace. The Gospel, in the person of Jesus, IS peace.
Each week as we light another candle on our Advent Wreath, can we renew by prayer and action, our gift of self to the Father as Jesus did? By bringing the gospel to life, our own life here among one another and with all for whom we come in contact. It is the deepest and truest prayer for peace for our aching, violent world. It may not seem like much amidst so much war, but it is the widow’s mite which turned out to be the richest gift of all.
In these days between the first coming of Jesus and his final coming, may we renew our commitment to walk in the footsteps of He who is our peace.
And so we light our first candle …
“He shall be called the Peaceful One, and his throne shall be firmly established forever.” (2 Samuel 7:16)
Jesus, may we, too, follow in your footsteps and through our efforts to live your words, be a source of peace in our world. We give you all we have, our widow’s mite, that your kingdom of peace come in a deeper way in our world.