Nourish your Soul for this Advent Journey

Dear Friends,

Advent approaches. Awaken. You are surrounded by angels and alleluias. Accept the coming of God with anticipation. Be attentive to the prophecies of Isaiah and John the Baptist. The new Ark of the Covenant, whom we call Mary, already bears the seed of God’s life and our future. Let us arouse Faith, Hope and Charity in ourselves for the sake of others.

Drop down dew, O heavens. The Desired of the Nations comes.  The Daystar rises. The desert and the parched land will exult (Is.35.1) Let us disturb our too easily contented lives and determine what need to be done to welcome the Holy Child into our hearts and homes. Let the anticipation of Christ’s coming reach into us deep down and bubble over. Let us decorate our lives, our words, our gestures and homes and places of study and work with splashes of color that bring attention to God’s great delight in the children of earth.

View the world from God’s vantage point. Venture out into the darkness. Volunteer to go to people who know darkness as the only way to live. Visualize the biblical figures who stand before and after and around the Holy Family. Value the depth of these days of waiting.

Extend a hand to those who want to come with you into Advent waiting. Evoke God’s name on their behalf.  Empathize with those who do not understand this waiting. Entreat those who are coming along too slowly and invite them to pick up their pace. Emit sounds of joy that make a happy sound in other people’s lives. Expect Emmanuel. Know that the Empowering One will make all things new.

Nourish your soul for this Advent journey with songs and psalms and tasty reading from Scripture and writers of faith. God is near. Nearby, too, are the holy ones who have been faithful or have returned to faithfulness. Nuance the value of what you hear, take in, absorb, believe. The newness of God is near!

Trust. The power to trust is given. Touch the lives of Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all who stand around them with tenderness. Treat all people you meet with the realization that God in Jesus is in them. Say over and over again: “Truly my hope is in you.” Teach others to say that too. Treasure  this time without measure. Tune in, be attuned, be tuned. From the stump of Jesse, the Tree of Life is growing. The timelessness of God’s presence is renewed.

                                    The season of the seed, the secret, the star and the silence is upon us.

~Sister Joan Sobala