Religious Dimension
Advent
Advent is the season of the liturgical year where we wait in anticipation and preparation for the coming of our Saviour; it is time to wait, prepare and reflect so that we can allow the light of God into our lives. Advent means 'Coming' in Latin. Next week, our school begins celebrating the season of Advent with our weekly Advent Liturgies. This will be the first of four Advent Liturgies. Until Christmas, your child will be learning about the Season of Advent in class and how they can prepare their hearts and minds for Jesus’ birth.
Advent – coming home
By Lisa Hughes, Formation Officer, Catholic Identity at Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS).
Advent is an opportunity to take some time to prepare ourselves so we may enter the great feast of Christmas open and spiritually aware. The four Sundays prior to Christmas each have a theme for us to focus on to help us in this preparation, with the Advent wreath and candles sharpening our focus and attention and thus helping us to ‘stay awake’.
We focus on hope, peace, joy and love as we prayerfully fine tune ourselves to welcome Jesus more deeply into our hearts.
God making a home in you
At Christmas time many people return home to be reunited with family to celebrate this big feast. At home we are affirmed as the people we truly are, and we are invited to be more. Ideally, home is a place where we are known, loved and safe but challenged to grow.
On a larger scale, it is interesting to note the study of the environment – ecology – derives its meaning from the ancient Greek word oikos, which means house or family dwelling place. We are searching to discover where we belong, what is home.
To love is to come home to someone, and many would agree a definition of self-love would be to feel comfortable – to be at home with yourself. Advent is an opportunity to become more aware that God is making a home within each of us. Timothy Radcliffe (2023) explains:
Whatever is your home, God comes to dwell in it. For thirty silent years, God dwelt in Nazareth: an unimportant backwater. Nathaniel exclaimed in disgust, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth’ (Jn 1: 46). Philip just replies, ‘Come and see’.
All of our homes are Nazareth, where God dwells …
Wherever we are and whatever we have done, God comes to stay: ‘Behold I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come into you and eat with you, and you with me’ (Rev 3: 20).
Advent is a chance for us to ‘come and see’ where and how the Lord is making a home within us.
Making a home for God
Advent helps us to make a home for God by taking a breather from the usual pace of life and consciously preparing and waiting for Christ. This needs to be intentional and focused amid end-of-year celebrations, Christmas shopping and holiday planning. Stay awake! Prepare! Pay attention!
Reflectively slowing down and inviting silence into our day will help make the most of this holy season, and aid deep and sacred listening. Pope Francis powerfully reminds us:
… silence is essential in the life of the believer. Indeed, it lies at the beginning and end of Christ’s earthly existence. The Word, the Word of the Father, became ‘silence’ in the manger and on the cross, on the night of the Nativity and on the night of his Passion … Saint Paul tells us that the mystery of the Incarnate Word was ‘kept secret for long ages’ (Rom 16: 25), teaching us that silence guards the mystery, as Abraham guarded the Covenant, as Mary guarded in her womb and pondered in her heart the life of her Son (cf. Lk 1: 31; 2: 19.51) (Francis 2023).
Allowing the time and space for silence in our lives prepares the way for the mystery of God to make a home in our hearts.
Advent is a time for us to move at a slower pace and to contemplate the deep spring that is within us. As Catholics, there is a lot to learn from First Nations people about stillness, waiting and finding our home in creation. As Dr Miriam Rose Ungunmerr Baumann (1988) said:
Our Aboriginal culture has taught us to be still and to wait. We do not try to hurry things up. We let them follow their natural course – like the seasons. We watch the moon in each of its phases. We wait for the rain to fill our rivers and water our thirsty earth…
When twilight comes, we prepare for the night. At dawn we rise with the sun.
We watch the bush foods and wait for them to ripen before we gather them. We wait for our young people as they grow, stage by stage …
When a relation dies, we wait a long time with the sorrow. We own our grief and allow it to heal slowly.
We are River people. We cannot hurry the river, we need to move with the current and understand its ways.
It is an opportune time to acknowledge and reflect on what Pope John Paul II said in his address to First Nations people in Australia:
… the Church herself in Australia will not be fully the Church that Jesus wants her to be until you have made your contribution to her life and until that contribution has been joyfully received (1986, n. 13).
The uniqueness that connects First Nations people with their Country by waiting and listening is like waiting on the arrival of Emmanuel and understanding that God’s time is the right time.
Coming home
Coming to the season of Advent with an attitude of silence and stillness, entering the liturgical season with its richness of colour and ritual, resisting outside pressures of busyness and mayhem, and allowing the ancient wisdom of the Scriptures to permeate through the tiredness of body and mind, these are all measures that will contribute to an environment for spiritual growth and opportunity.
Advent is the opportunity to come home and to be at home with God; to experience the hope, peace joy and love of Emmanuel (God is with us) in our homes, our everyday lives – each and every day. It is a journey to discover where Jesus lives among us and when we do come face to face, to acknowledge with praise and worship, to bow down in reverence, just as the Magi did in Bethlehem those many years ago.
The photo (above) of the entrance to the Church of the Nativity in modern day Bethlehem shows a very small doorway that forces all to physically bow down as they enter. This Advent, may we become more aware of God’s presence in our lives and bow down in reverence when we recognise Emmanuel – God is with us. Amen.
Jacqui Hayes