Advent through Christmas -- 2007
Advent through Christmas plans
Sunday, December 2, First Week in Advent
Spend today’s four to six minutes with the Lord sketching some ideas out on how you can spend these 23 days of Advent with your family, or if you are single, by yourself. Your plans can include items that are spiritual (deciding where and when you will pray each day)…or practical (your gift list)…or personal (sending a Christmas card to someone you’ve not been on good terms with)…or charitable (doing something for the poor)…
Before you write anything, spend a few quiet moments with the Lord and ask for His guidance
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Today the Church lights the first of four candles on the Advent wreath. Perhaps you will want to light a candle, too.
Advent through Christmas -- 2007
‘Radical Perseverance’
Sunday, December 2, First Week in Advent
In today’s reading, Jesus talks about the coming of the Son of God, the end of the world, and the great judgment.
The whole point of Advent is to help nudge us out of a kind of apathy as we go about our day to day things, while forgetting that life is going to end for us individually.
Sometimes we forget that the whole point of everything we do is to lead the world toward the kingdom of God.
The kingdom may be millions of years away – who knows? It seems so distant that there would be a world at long last transformed where there is no war, no sickness, no tears, no fights, and no arguments – a perfect world.
It’s a long haul.
That’s why I need what some call a “radical perseverance”. It’s hard to have. To persevere and try to build peace in the world and know that when I die, there will still be war. To persevere and try to build love in society and know that it is a seed planted, but one I’ll never see the harvest of in a lifetime. To persevere in trying to shape myself into the kind of person I know God made me to be…and to realize that I will never be that person until some day God wonderfully transforms me through death.
That kind of radical perseverance – sustaining a conscious effort and hope even though I’m not going to reach the goal in my lifetime – that’s the kind of perseverance I need to have.
Tomorrow we will start reading from the weekly readings from the four Gospels.
