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November 29, 2023Dear Parishioners,
We begin a new liturgical year this Sunday as we enter the season of Advent. I would like to suggest that the absolute best guide to living this time of Advent is to be found in Our Lady. Her preparation for Christ’s coming was more than a mere spiritual discipline or intellectual exercise. She was pregnant with him, which means that she experienced his presence growing within her in a way that entirely transformed her life, focusing her entire self - body, mind, and soul - on the journey toward his birth into the world.
Advent is meant to be a kind of mini pregnancy for the Church each year: a time of spiritual gestation.
What does it mean to enter deeply into the experiences that characterize such a sacred and privileged time? I would suggest three main areas: reflection, intimacy, and eager expectation.
As we will see in the readings and prayers of this season, the Church in these days reflects on the promises of God that are fulfilled in Christ. We reflect on the words of the prophets, the words of angels, the events over the centuries, that have led up to and prefigured the coming of the promised Messiah. In our own lives, personally, I think this is also a good time to search for the signs of God’s grace in our lives and to reflect on how he has been at work fulfilling his promises in us. As the Gospel of Luke says, Mary ponders the movement of God in her heart. During these days we are invited to quietly do the same.
A second dimension of a gestational experience is that it is very intimate. Of course men can only wonder at the kind of intimacy that exists between a pregnant mother and her baby in the womb. It is a closeness not of words, nor really of any of the five senses, but something deeper – a sharing of life at the most visceral of levels. The mother’s body literally makes a home for her child mysteriously deep within itself, cradling the child and providing everything that is needed for life. This natural gestation reminds us of the supernatural gestation that we all share as we are carried within the divine life of God in the same kind of intimate way that transcends words and the senses. One of the Psalms says “Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord hear my voice.” Ours are not lonely, isolated depths, but the intimate depths of the womb, where we are invited to once again experience the tender love and mercy of God that surrounds and sustains us each day.
Lastly, there is a kind of joyful excitement that one finds in the home of any expecting family, as they prepare for the arrival, the revelation of a new child. And this season is meant to also help us to turn to God with this same kind of hopeful, eager expectation, as we reflect upon the good things that he has in store for us. Christians are a gestational people, a people who are always preparing for the birth of new life into the world, who are always pregnant with the Holy Spirit. This means that we always have a reason to be hopeful, to be eager to see what comes next, to see what God has in store for us. We know that his birth will only bring us good and not evil. Mary’s beautiful hymn, the Magnificat, gives voice to our Christian hope:
“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.”
