The Advent season is a time of waiting, longing, expectancy, and
preparation. We find ourselves in this liturgical season and a new liturgical
year, during the busiest time of the year. There are Christmas parties to
attend, gifts to buy, meals to plan and cook, and a whole host of other
obligations that often lead to December passing in a whirl. It is not
incidental that the season of silence and waiting falls in line with a busy
time of year. It is when we are busiest that we need prayer and silence the
most, but it’s also the time we tend to forget it most.
The Church gives us the gift of the Advent season in order to
help us focus on higher goods, spiritual goods, as we prepare to celebrate the
great mystery of the Incarnation. Our salvation is only possible because the
Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Church reminds us of this great truth
and the promise of salvation as she leads us to enter more deeply into the
mystery of the comings of Christ.
We are called to walk with the People of Israel as they await the
coming of the Messiah. We are reminded that we are a people who wait in joyful
hope for the coming of Christ at the end of time. We also wait in anticipation
at each Mass as the priest speaks the words of consecration and Our Lord’s
body, blood, soul, and divinity is made present on the altar. Advent is meant
to be a season of silent expectancy and hopeful waiting for the coming of
Christ in history and in our own souls.
Making room for Christ
Since Christmas comes each year, we run the risk of going through
the motions without ever entering into the depths of the Incarnation. We cannot
encounter Christ in a more profound way if our entire Advent season is filled
with hustle and bustle. We must enter into the silence of prayer where God
leads us into the communion of love within the Most Holy Trinity. The Holy
Family’s plight as they seek a place for Christ to be born, demonstrates for us
the necessity of opening ourselves to Christ in an even more profound way
during Advent.
After traveling from Nazareth, St. Joseph looked for a room for
Mary to bore her Son and God, but he quickly discovered that there was no room
in the busy town of Bethlehem, which was overcrowded from the census ordered by
Caesar Augustus. Venerable Fulton Sheen writes in Life of Christ:
Joseph was full of expectancy as he entered the city of his family, and was quite convinced that he would have no difficulty finding lodging for Mary, particularly on account of her condition. Joseph went from house to house only to find each one crowded. He searched in vain for a place where He, to Whom heaven and earth belonged, might be born. Could it be that the Creator would not find a home in creation?
There was no room available in the crowded town of Bethlehem for
the Savior of the world to be born. The town was overrun, busy, and its
inhabitants completely oblivious that God Himself had come to be born in their
normally sleepy little town. Only the rich and those of power and prestige
would be given a room in the inn. Sheen states: “…there was room for anyone who
had a coin to give the innkeeper; but there was no room for Him Who came to be
the Inn of every homeless heart in the world.” No lodgings were available for
the true King of the Universe.
The danger for all of us in our own day is that we become overrun
by the tasks at hand and focus too much on material pursuits at the expense of
supernatural goods. Christmas preparations are good in themselves, but often
they can distract us from the supernatural realities they are meant to
represent because we get lost in the material preparations. We focus on the
things of this life and not the realities and infinitely greater goods of
heaven. This time of year, we often find ourselves running around with little
peace and stillness. There isn’t enough time in our daily lives to enter into
the mystery of the Incarnation. We do not stop to truly allow the Christ-child
to enter into the depths of our souls.
Even as Catholics, we can run the risk of making no room for him
in our Christmas preparations. Every time we place other priorities before
prayer, we are telling Christ that there is no room in our souls for Him. We
tell ourselves—much like the innkeeper who only had rooms for the wealthy and
powerful—that we have much more “important” things to do. We should not be
surprised, then, when we find ourselves exhausted, unprepared, and distracted
when the joyful feast of Christmas finally arrives.
Advent is the time of preparation, not primarily in activity, but
in opening our souls to Him in prayer and to allow Him to prune away our sins
and weaknesses that keep us from Him. This requires set time each day for the
silence of prayer; free of distractions, to-do lists, calendars, buying gifts,
and party planning.
Making our way to the lonely cave
When Joseph cannot find a room for Mary to give birth to Jesus,
he looks beyond the busyness of the town, to a place of silence, obscurity, and
poverty. Much like Our Lord in His public ministry when He’d go out to the
mountain to pray, Joseph finds a place—through God’s providence—set apart for
Our Lady to give birth to the Son of God.
Out to the hillside to a stable cave, where shepherds sometimes drove their flocks in time of storm, Joseph and Mary went at last for shelter. There, in a place of peace in the lonely abandonment of a cold windswept cave; there, under the floors of the world, He Who is born without a mother in heaven, is born without a father on earth…In the filthiest place in the world, a stable, Purity was born. He, Who was later to be slaughtered by men acting as beasts, was born among beasts. He, Who would call Himself the “living Bread descended from Heaven,” was laid in a manger, literally, a place to eat…There was no room in the inn, but there was room in the stable.
Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ
The Incarnate Word is born into the world in the silence of a
cave. We cannot come to meet Him if we have robbed ourselves of this precious
silence. We cannot be prepared for His coming at Christmas, the end of time in
the Parousia, or even in the Holy Eucharist, if we are not people of
prayer and silence.
The struggles of Fallen man to rightly order all things to God
continues to this day. It continues within our own hearts and minds as we seek
daily conversion. Each day we battle our own sinful tendency to make no room
within our souls for God. This time of year, more than any other, shows this
struggle in a more visible way. Many obligations are placed upon us and we want
to meet those obligations, but often we do it at the expense of our spiritual
lives.
Our first and primary obligation is to put God at the center of
everything and to seek Him in the silence of our souls. We all fail at
different times to leave the busyness of Bethlehem in order to walk to the
lonely, cold, silent cave where Christ waits to meet us. We cannot enter into
the true depths of joy that await us if we never make that journey in prayer.
If we do not make the pilgrimage to the stable cave throughout Advent, then we
will not be ready for the coming of Christ at Christmas. If we do not seek Him
in the silent places, then we will not be ready for the Second Coming, and we
will not be ready for His coming in the Holy Eucharist at Mass.
Advent is the season the Church gives to us to help us make room in our souls for the coming of the Incarnate Word. It is a season that we are meant to live throughout the year as we constantly wait for Christ to transfigure us into the saints He is calling us to become. We must seek Him out in the silent, lonely places within us. This is only accomplished through union with Him in prayer, the Sacraments, and a life of self-emptying charity. Come Christmas, will Christ find room in our souls?
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image: Heide Pinkall / Shutterstock.com
