Today is the first day of Advent, the beginning of the new liturgical year and the time during which the Church reminds us of the historical reality of Christ's birth into our space and time. In commemorating the Nativity, we come to understand that the incarnation is an invitation to all to enter into a personal relationship with Jesus, sent that we might be freed from our sins, finally to realise our true dignity as sons and daughters of the Father. At the first Christmas, Jesus entered into history and, each year, the liturgy of Advent helps us to renew our resolve to accept and make a place for Christ in our own lives.
Advent is not merely a time of joyous anticipation of Christmas day; properly observed, it is a time of spiritual preparation which will necessarily include penitential observances. The penitential character of Advent is perhaps more imperative than ever given that Christmas is increasingly subsumed beneath layer upon layer of secular largess and sentimentality.
This Advent, I have decided to give up social media and I hope that I will have the discipline to use the time I would otherwise spend trawling through my Twitter feed on prayer and spiritual reading. As a theme, I have decided to reflect upon Isaiah 40:30, "The voice of one crying in the desert: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the wilderness the paths of our God". Though this passage is usually used to allude to the role John the Baptist played in preparing the people of Israel for the coming of the Messiah, I have chosen to focus on the requirement to "make straight" the "paths in the wilderness". I perceive that within myself, I posses (and perhaps have cultivated) spiritual deserts which are not a fitting places to receive Jesus, God made man. I hope that this Advent will help me to identify those aspects of my life which are responsible for these wastelands so that I might pray for the graces to water their arid soils.
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