As the earth turned again one more time on its axis last night, and the shadows began to fall, night slowly crept over each part of our planet. Our sacred text, our sacred word, is not only written in the Bible, but the finger of God has traced his word across all of the earth, the galaxy, the universe, the whole of the created order. God continues to write and sing us his love song. The ground, foundation, and source of creation and our very being is the outpouring of the Trinitarian Love expressed between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

As the sun appeared to us to set, and night gently made its way across our minuscule earth in this part of the Milky Way last night, the vigil began and so also began the new liturgical year and we now find ourselves in the season of Advent. We heard or will hear again today the words of Jesus urging us to: “Stay awake” (Mt 24:42).

Paul in the second reading also sounds the alarm, for, “it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep” (Romans 13:11). Traditionally, the readings of the first two weeks of Advent focus on our watching for the second coming of Jesus. We are to watch and pray, to step away from the triggers of reacting. This Advent we are invited to slow down, observe how the daily cycle of day to night and night to day repeats itself. In doing so, we can enter into that daily rhythm of breathing, watching, and praying so that we can be more aware and more alert for the signs of his coming, like a watchman standing guard over the city. Then instead of reacting, we can choose to act according to God’s will.

During Advent, we also prepare in the final two weeks to remember again the first humble coming of Jesus, the Incarnation, in which the infinite Son of God took on flesh at his miraculous conception in the womb of Mary and became man. Fully God and fully man, Jesus experienced our human condition in the most vulnerable of settings. We are a people of memory, though we often forget, that is why we hear the story again of the simple birth of our savior, who many rejected even then, saying there was no room for him in the inn. Do we make room for Jesus to come to be present in our daily lives?

The third way we prepare for the coming of Jesus during Advent, is in our everyday experiences. We who have much in the way of material comfort need to remember, how God heard the cry of the poor and saved his people by sending Moses to free them from their bondage in Egypt. He sent judges and prophets to guide his people, and he sent his Son to be born in poverty, to free us from our bondage to anyone and anything that is not from him, anything that will lead us astray.

“God, in Christ, has come to set right a world gone wrong” (Grunow, 174). We have been made for God and nothing with fill our deepest desire to be in relationship with him. There is so much that attempts to lead us away from God. We can and do try to fill our deepest longings by grasping for anything but God and find ourselves dissatisfied time and again. We can’t save ourselves. The greatest willpower, discipline, and persistence is not enough. We need God, we need a savior. Let us remember this Advent who we are, whose we are, and who we are called to be. As we prepare for Jesus’ second coming and prepare to remember and celebrate his birth, may we also remember to set aside some time to enter into the rhythm of creation, to allow our hearts to beat in time with Jesus’ Sacred Heart.

We have been created by Love to love. As gently as the night gave way to the morning rays of the sun this morning, may we live and move more gently upon this earth. May our thoughts, words, and actions be filtered through the holy hepa filter of the Holy Spirit. So that we filter out that which is not, and accept that which is, of God. As we prepare well, we will not need to know the time or the hour, because we will know our Savior and so will be ready. Let us then awake, watch, and pray.

————————————————————–

Photo: Ready or not, Sunday Vigil here at Holy Cross, Advent has begun!

The Word on Fire Bible: The Gospels. Park Ridge, Illinois: Word on Fire, 2020.

Link for the Mass readings for Sunday, November 30, 2025