The Reflections today are ones that I have read over time and feel they help us to understand the readings which introduce the Season of Advent.

The first Reading God promises a Saviour, (a righteous branch..Jesus) the Response asks us to ‘lift up our souls’, Paul encourages us to Love one another and in the Gospel Jesus speaks of ‘signs’!

So let us read them slowly and ask the Spirit to help us receive God’s Word. Maybe I imagine Christ coming in power and glory and ponder.. He is also the Jesus in the cloud of the Transfiguration or the Ascension. He comes in strength and calms the earth’s catastrophes. Perhaps I can recall the Lord’s help in times of anguish or distress in my life…. and can give thanks for hidden strength, or for the support of a friend, or my community….. Or maybe I pray not to be hardened by the cares of life… I bring to mind those coping with all kinds of suffering, or I look at the troubled parts of the world and hold them before the Lord. At this Advent time, I speak to the Lord of my need and that of the whole world, for Jesus our Saviour. As I prepare for His coming I ask Him to keep me in joyful hope, sure that He will come.

How many of us have felt the secure world we knew is being shaken to its foundations? Our life is a perpetual series of change. We move, we gain or lose a job, we marry, have a child, grow old, someone we love gets sick or dies, a relationship ends, things change.  In truth we live among flux and change all the time.  It is not always cataclysmic change, but change nevertheless.

The language of Advent is the language of anticipation for God’s new future.  It is not a future we can make for ourselves. It may be something we cannot readily see or even imagine. Through thick and thin, through trying times and good times, faith waits and watches, alert for the coming of Christ.

‘Advent is a time for exploring our deepest longings and desires and allowing them to surface’ Brendan Byrne SJ and Pope Francis says, ‘..guard against allowing ourselves to be oppressed by an egocentric lifestyle or by the frenetic pace of these days ..but be mindful and pray!’

Let us during these days before Christmas place ourselves in God’s loving care and know that we are loved and cherished no matter how we may think of ourselves.

God bless                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Sr Marie

LIVING FAITH IN THE EVERYDAY

Invitation to New Life in Christ

As we gather to celebrate the First Sunday of Advent in Year C we are Invited and inspired to be People of Hope & Hospitality!

The introduction to the Year C Advent Booklet invites us to:

Think for a minute of the wonder of God’s love for you and of God’s desire to be born in you. Avoid the

temptation to resist taking this seriously, for this is the power that has called you into existence and is drawing you into eternal life in God through Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

God being born in you might strike you as an unusual way to describe what happens as God engages with you. We are more used to seeing it the other way around – as us being reborn in God (John 3:3). The thought of God being born in us is intended to make us stop and think.

Let’s not be too pedantic about it, as we are wrestling here with ideas that are almost entirely beyond the

human ability to understand (1 Corinthians 1:18-25). For now, all that we mean is that there is mutuality between God and us, as God leads us ever more deeply into his life. We experience rebirth in God as God increasingly takes on his life in us.

 This is the beginning of a new Liturgical Year, and the spiritual nourishment God seeks to give us now will, if we can but respond to it, come to birth in us throughout the entire year. Jesus Christ wishes to be reborn in our lives and to walk with us through all the ups and downs of the coming year.

 Learning what it means to conceive, carry, give birth to and reveal Jesus Christ to the world is a challenge to us all year round.                      

(Shane Dwyer – Evangelisation Brisbane)

We stop!   We take time!   We watch!   We wait!