Watching and waiting during ADVENT:
"Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come" (Mark 13:33).I have a big front porch on the front of my house. Sometimes I sit there to wait for company to come or to wait until the children come home from college.
Have you ever sat on the front porch waiting for someone to come home? This may be the kind of watching and waiting that the writer of the Gospel of Mark calls us to during ADVENT. Can you think of a time when you did this? Was there anticipation and excitement? Is this how we eagerly await the coming of the Lord at CHRISTMAS? Fr. James Martin, S.J., mentions three ways that Jesus comes into our lives:
"First, he comes in history. God chose to live with us in a particular place and a particular time, that is, in first century Palestine. So Jesus comes in history. Second, Jesus comes in our daily lives. Every moment of our day is an invitation to meet Jesus. Jesus, through the Spirit, is always entering in their lives, calling to us, coming to us. Third, Jesus comes at the end of time. We believe in the "Second Coming," a mysterious moment when time will end. Advent is way to prepare for all three of those times. Of course God has already come in history, so it's not as if we're preparing for that event again. But we are preparing to commemorate, to remember and to celebrate that day, Christmas. Advent is also a way of preparing ourselves for God coming into our lives each day. We do some spiritual housecleaning to make room for God, to make it easier for us to invite God into our daily lives. And of course Advent is a way of reminding us that our time on this earth, and the time for the earth, will end." (Fr. James Martin, First Sunday of Advent Vigil homily 11/29/14)
