As we enter into the season of Advent, this precious time of waiting in hope, peace, joy, and love, we share a reflection from Suzanne Cooke, RSCJ, Provincial of the Society of the Sacred Heart, United States-Canada Province. Sister Cooke recently recorded a video message for the University of San Diego (formerly a Sacred Heart School) community, which is celebrating their 75th anniversary. Her message resonates with the Sacred Heart family and invites us to carve out time each day to be still.
Welcome to Advent. We know that Advent is a four-week period, but sometimes it can feel mad: the energy and excitement preparing for Christmas can get the better of us. So what might Advent offer us? How can Advent mean something different for us this year?
Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat, who was the founder of the Society of the Sacred Heart, once wrote about Advent, “Prepare for Christ coming into your hearts, for that is why Christ came on Earth—to be born and to develop in your souls so on that beautiful day of Christmas we will taste the peace the angels have announced to people of goodwill.”
I think Advent for us is the time to deepen our capacity to be those people of goodwill. It’s the time for us to rediscover that Christ’s love requires of us contemplative listening, silence, centeredness, deep presence and attention to the people around us and to the reality in which we find ourselves so we can experience the revelation of God in our everyday life. This discovery of God’s love is insufficient. We are called to act, to reveal in our world the prophetic power of love and that discovery is what we will celebrate on Christmas.
So what might we do during these next four weeks? I invite us to carve out of our imaginations and our schedules five minutes a day during which we are quiet, we are still, we are silent. Why? Because I think that will allow us on Christmas day to discover we have truly prepared our minds and hearts for the joy, the hope, the peace that we celebrate at Christmas.
Advent is a time of preparation. It calls us to be spiritually attentive, to be watchful for those gentle touches of grace, to be expectant, to be diligent. So why choose to be quiet, to be still, to be patient? Why anticipate Christmas in this way? Because what we are trying to do is to develop our capacity to see the world differently, to see it as Christ sees it. We want to heal the world. But the way we actually do heal the world, the way we make a difference occurs in the way we greet each other, in the choices we make, in the way we touch peoples’ hearts.
Let’s pray for one another that we are courageous enough to choose silence, be still, to pause, to reflect, and to be expectant. Enjoy Advent.
