Welcome to our celebration of Advent!
“This Season of Advent provides us with the opportunity for prayer. Each week as we light a candle on our Advent wreath, we pray for peace, hope, joy, and love. As the candles burn brightly and light our path, let us live as those who have the Christ’s light burning inside us today and every day.”
– Bishop Wayne Kirkpatrick
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An Advent Experience at Monastery …
By Jennifer Hatt
I have been spending time at Our Lady of Grace Monastery this past month, living and working there a couple of days each week.
On my last visit there was a table with a stack of old pictures.
Atop the stack was a glint of pink … a rosary.
I picked it up … the weight was comforting, the colour joyful … but it was missing its cross.
I was saddened for a moment. It was probably being thrown out. Then, why?
It was beautiful as it was.
I looked at the medal. Ste Anne de Beaupre.
I had visited the shrine in Quebec last summer, sat in the presence of St. Anne, felt her words invite mine.
This rosary was meant for me.
I asked about it. The chaplains had found it wrapped around a pipe. They had no plans for it.
Did I want it?
Of course I did.
It was blessed and given to me.
But wait, it doesn’t have a cross.
I assured them none was needed.
When I look at this rosary, hold it, pray on it, I do not see a missing cross, something to be fixed.
I see and feel perfection in the moment.
We carry so many rules about what should and should be, what is needed, what we must do.
We have become a race of fixers, rushing to fix problems, people, lives.
In that rush to fix, we squeeze our world into problems and solutions, checks and balances.
How much do we miss, how do we fully breathe, in that constant constriction?
What if there was nothing to fix? What if instead of broken, we saw ourselves as a perfect creation on a journey of evolution? What if instead of a problem, we saw an invitation to ask for help, do things differently, build relationships, create something new?
As we observe the third week of Advent, light the pink candle, I will hold my pink rosary and hold space for the perfection of this crazy world.
Be with me Lord, be with us all, as we pray for the guidance to do your work and be your love in the great mystery that is the life you have given us.
Amen.
Jennifer Hatt is Communications Officer
for the Diocese of Antigonish
Jennifer@DioceseofAntigonish.ca
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Journey Through Advent
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops presents Journey through Advent with the Most Rev. Bishop Jon Hansen, CSsR, Bishop of Mackenzie-Fort Smith. Join us as we reflect on the Scriptures for the Sundays of Advent 2023.
A joint initiative of the National Liturgy Office, the Office national de liturgie and the Office for Evangelization and Catechesis.
Advent Family Prayer
God of Love, Your Son, Jesus, is your greatest gift to us.
He is a sign of Your love.
Help us walk in that love during the weeks of Advent,
as we wait and prepare for His coming.
We pray in the name of Jesus, our Saviour. Amen.
Make a Jesse Tree
The Jesse Tree is the family tree of Jesus; its ornaments are symbols of the lineage from Creation to His birth. This video tells more:
Advent Reflections by Sheila O’Handley, Diocesan Hermit
We have often heard, and maybe we have even quoted one of the following expressions: “where has the time gone“, or a similar expression, “time waits for no one”. As the Liturgical Season of Advent 2023 quickly approaches, we might be experiencing similar feelings. I am.
By nature, we humans are story tellers. We love a good story and a good storyteller. At heart we are also a symbol-making people. Good stories and authentic symbols speak to us of what resides deep within the human spirit. As Advent 2023 advances towards us, our hearts are overtaken by the stories of war, both in the Middle East and Ukraine, and maybe we are becoming conscious of the unconscious wars playing out within our own hearts. All wars begin with unresolved issues within the human heart.
Both the images of war symbols flooding across our TV screens and the social media platforms are crushing to the creative imagination of the human spirit, creating an atmosphere of fear, hopelessness, and, in some instances, even despair.
Deep-seated anxiety seems to cover not only our world, but also our hearts. We need Advent’s Hope of anticipating, gestating, and welcoming LIFE’S fidelity to New Life.
This Advent I will highlight a word-symbol each week with the intention of inspiriting hope and creating an atmosphere for prayer. With each breath simply welcome ‘the spirit’s presence’ residing within the symbol. Join us next week, if you are so inclined, for Advent’s first word-symbol – WOMB.
Reflection Week 1
Welcome to Advent Hope. At heart, Advent evokes Hope, and announces Hope in sentiments of anticipation, sentiments of expectation, and sentiments of gestation. At this particular moment in our broken and war-torn world we are called upon to rise up and to birth signs of living Hope, both within the human spirit, and within our world.
As mentioned in the introductory invitation last week, we said we would highlight a word-symbol each week with the intention of creating an atmosphere for prayer and of inspiring hope. Our first word-symbol for the first week of Advent is the word – Womb. The etymology of the Hebrew word for womb is compassion. Meister Eckhart, the German Dominican defined compassion – “ compassion means justice.” Our world sure could use a good measure of justice and compassion.
It is quite natural that when we reflect on the word womb we automatically think of womb as a place of gestating life. We might think of: our mother’s womb that homed us for nine months, the womb of mother earth who, for billions of years coming to birth, prepared a homing space for all living life, and the Trinity – the womb of creative self-giving love that homed us from the beginning, and continues to beget God’s-Self, and us, in love.
Whatever womb image you engage with to create an atmosphere for prayer, know that with each inhale and exhale of your breath, that Ruach – the Breath of God, who is Love, is gestating new life within you.
What new life is gestating within you? What might be warring within your heart?
During this first week of Advent give a blessing of compassion to someone, or to some organized event in your area working for peace.
Suggested Prayer: Peace Prayer of Saint Francis
Suggested Reading: Delio, I (2022). The Primacy of Love. Fortress Press Minneapolis 2022.
Reflection Week 2
Welcome to Advent Hope and Light the Second Week of Advent.
Culturally, lights of every colour are lighting up everywhere, greeting us with warmth, in anticipation of the coming festivities of Christmas, of family gatherings, and of friend-filled get-togethers.
The word-symbol for this second week of Advent is – LIGHT, meaning consciousness: to illuminate, to bring into awareness, to arrive at a heightened enlightenment, a wakefulness of the whole, which is greater than one’s ego self.
Today, postmodern science tells us that there are photons of light waves in all atoms in the Universe, and that after billions of years of cosmic evolution, we are only now for the first time, understanding the origin of how the Universe, “let there be light”, (Gen 1:3) – is known. The scientific world refers to the marvels of this revelation as ‘a fire ball’, and/or ‘ the Big Bang’, and is presently exploring light and consciousness as our most fundamental realities.
Beatrice Bruteau, Christian philosopher and convert to Roman Catholicism refers, in her book, God’s Ecstasy: The Creation of a Self-Creating World, to the creative action of God , “let there be light”, as “God’s Ecstasy“. Rollin McCraty, scientist at the Heart Math Institute in California, contends “that the metaphor for the Divine is – God is light, and that maybe light is the oldest and most universal of all metaphors for God”. Raimon Panikkar, philosopher, theologian, and mystic offers the following root meaning for the mystery we call God – “light or brilliance.”
If we bring forth last week’s word-symbol – WOMB – for a moment and contemplate that we are born from the womb of the Trinity and created in their “image and likeness” (Genesis 1:26), we not only have the capacity for God, “we are made of God”, (Julian of Norwich); we are homing within us the Light consciousness of Divinity. Isn’t that how Jesus identified us also, “You are the Light of the world”. (Matthew 5:14). The question is: do we really believe what Jesus said?
Let us then, as we move into the second week of Advent prayer, enter into our word-symbol – LIGHT – with the anticipation that with each breath we will become more impregnated with the Light/Brilliance of Divinity that we are.
Each breath homes the Light-filled Consciousness that is needed to give birth to a new way of seeing, and of envisioning a new world order of peace, both personally and collectively.
Suggestion: Light a candle for peace.
Suggested Reading: Delio, I. (2018). A Hunger For Wholeness. Paulist Press. New York, Mahwah, NJ.
Reflection Week 3
Greetings of Hope, of Peace, and the returning of Light in the Third Week of Advent.
Nature herself at this time of year offers expectations of hope in the returning of Light with Winter Solstice, (December 21st), the shortest day in the Northern Hemisphere and the longest night of the year. Winter Solstice is like a sea-change for anyone like me, who is not comfortable with what seems like lingering darkness, so we welcome the slow but emerging new Light, with gratitude. Our word-symbol for the third week of Advent is – DARK.
Light and Dark are the given realities of life. They both have their merits. They both are homed in Mystery. Science tells us that dark energy, dark matter, makes up 97% of the Universe.
Might what we are living through today, the tumultuous dark moments of war, and the darkness of frayed relationships – personally and internationally – be an aspect of the human family’s collective Dark-Night?
Then there is our own inner darkness – the shadow-culprit, that is either unconscious, is denied, or it is unresolved, and so ‘it has us’ – manifesting itself in projections: the slip of the tongue, the cynical judgements, the sarcastic remarks, the petty jealousies, the idol-making, and war-making, assigning the axil of evil, whatever the evil might be, unto another.
A needed starting point to enter prayer this Third Week of Advent is a deep listening to the DARK. A beginning space would be to spend some time with the wise, who have come to understand something of the DARK, through their experience of the darkness of the DARK.
Meister Echart, the 13th century Dominican mystic, offers a gentle yet profound reminder for reflection in his words, “God is superessential darkness that has no name and that will never be given a name”, yet we so often find ourselves projecting our images of the Mystery, thus naming God in our image.
Reflect:
(1) What would it be like if we prayed, this third Week of Advent, the succinct prayer of Meister Echart: “I pray God to rid me of God”… and to rid us of our projections of God.
(2) What if each of us personally, and world leaders collectively, brought the darkness residing in our hearts to the ‘Light consciousness’ that we are, and that we prayed with last week… imagine the world that would emerge… and all the future Christmases of Peace.
Suggestion: This week Pray in the DARK and savor each breath.
Suggested Reading: Welch, J. (1990). An Introduction to John of the Cross: When God’s Die, Paulist Press, New York/Mahwah
Reflection Week Four
Already we are into the Fourth Week of Advent. We can almost taste the anticipated excitement of Christmas festivities, even more so this year, since there is only one day of Advent Week Four, and that one day is actually Christmas Eve. We may feel a little rushed.
Our word-symbol for the Fourth Week of Advent is KAIROS TIME.
Most of our time is consumed with Chronos time, the time spent in attending to our everyday needs and events for getting through the day, and maybe also, getting through the night. During the past couple of weeks our time has been spent in preparing for Christmas: cleaning house, preparing special foods, the buying and wrapping of gifts, the sending of Christmas cards, maybe getting ready to travel to be with family and friends during the holidays…, all of this was Chronos time.
What about KAIROS TIME?
KAIROS TIME – meaning the right time, the opportune moment in time, time for discernment, time for action, time to give birth to a significant event. KAIROS TIME is crucial time. It is a time of challenges, a time that requires a change in perspectives, and a time that initiates a process of personal and collective transformation.
KAIROS TIME is the appointed ‘TIMING’ for God’s purpose. It is God’s Time to act, and act God will, making possible what is seemingly impossible.
God’s TIMING is wrapped in Mystery:
Luke 1:26-28, “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the House of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary…”
Luke 2:6, “While they were there the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to a son, her first born”.
Christmas is KAIROS TIME: Let us contemplate in prayer and breath.
What was the gestating of KAIROS TIME like for Mary of Nazareth as she housed the Divine-Human child within her body?
What was anticipating KAIROS TIME like for Joseph, the supporting one, the companioning one?
What was the fullness of KAIROS TIME like for Divinity, in becoming human like us?
What is KAIROS TIME like for us, as we give birth to the Divine in our world?
Synod 2021-2024 is KAIROS TIME.
What is it like for us today expecting and anticipating God’s KAIROS TIME gestating in and through the Synodal process. The question remains: can we bring to fullness God’s purpose for a renewed Church? In the words of the prophet Isaiah, we are given a sense of direction. “ Forget the former things: Do not dwell in the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up: Do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland”. Isaiah 43:18-19
My Christmas Prayer for you, your loved ones, and the world is that ‘Light-Consciousness’ transforms the darkness of war into PEACE.
