The first signs of the approach of Christmas appeared the very next morning after Halloween; seasonal shelves in supermarkets had been emptied of scary masks and accessories, and had been filled with new items; their packaging had subtle but easily recognizable symbols on them: snowflakes, stars, reindeer, a white-bearded man\u2019s face. A race for customers started that very day in the world of commerce; on the home stretch, Christmas is overwhelmingly omnipresent. Our \u2018advent\u2019 in fact lasts two months and sadly is rather commercially orientated. Even an Indian restaurant, run by Muslims, welcomes its clients with a big flashy \u2018Merry Christmas\u2019 on the door.<\/p>\n
Once there was a much longer advent preceding Christmas; although it\u2019s not well-known or famous, it was the most important one in the whole of history. The very beginning of that advent is described in today\u2019s gospel. The Messiah, awaited for centuries by generations of the Jewish people, was announced by the angel. Suddenly that long anticipation shrank to the timescale familiar to every human mother and father: nine months. That advent subtly started in the heart of an unimportant girl in a small town far from the then mainstream of events. Within those nine months more and more people were gradually involved as Mary\u2019s pregnancy was more and more visible.<\/p>\n
Was that advent much different from ours? Surely it was; but in many aspects not as different as we might think. We know the story and all its complications: the uncertainty of Joseph, Mary\u2019s husband; visiting Elizabeth; the long journey to Bethlehem just before the delivery; problems with accommodation in that town… And we can surely add to this the everyday hustle and bustle in Mary and Joseph\u2019s house. We can be certain of their anxieties and worries which are normal for every parent awaiting a child. More or less, their advent was pretty similar to ours.<\/p>\n
There is one particular aspect of Mary\u2019s waiting for Christmas that we can (and I think we should) adapt: permanent dialogue with God. I\u2019ve purposely used this word instead of the word \u2018prayer\u2019. In the Catholic tradition \u2018prayer\u2019 is too often equated with memorized rhymes mindlessly repeated as magic spells. It actually makes prayer a pointless and empty activity easily abandoned for seemingly more fruitful actions. In today\u2019s gospel we see Mary asking questions, looking for answers, pondering over them and finally deciding to follow God\u2019s plan as presented by the angel. Don\u2019t be fooled: in contrast to the scene shown in pictures or films, that conversation was not accompanied by unnatural light and sound effects! It happened deep in Mary\u2019s heart, unnoticeably to people around her.<\/p>\n
Our common impression that our prayer in not listened to by God. We give him instructions about what has to be done, and then nothing happens. So our final conclusions are simple: there\u2019s no God or he doesn\u2019t care. We can only blame ourselves (though we prefer to blame others). In today\u2019s gospel, God\u2019s message begins the dialogue between him and Mary. She could hear the message because she\u2019d been listening.\u00a0 In fact, any initial human activity in prayer can be compared to the tuning of a radio. God is speaking to my heart all the time; but my heart has to be tuned-in to him. When I hear God the dialogue can start; and all of a sudden everything that puzzles me begins to make sense. You can make sense of your advent \u2013 despite all the commotion around you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first signs of the approach of Christmas appeared the very next morning after Halloween; seasonal shelves in supermarkets had been emptied of scary masks and accessories, and had been filled with new items; their packaging had subtle but easily recognizable symbols on them: snowflakes, stars, reindeer, a white-bearded man\u2019s face. A race for customers started that very day in the world of commerce; on the home stretch, Christmas is overwhelmingly omnipresent. Our \u2018advent\u2019 in fact lasts two months and sadly is rather commercially orientated. Even an Indian restaurant, run by Muslims, welcomes its clients with a big flashy \u2018Merry Christmas\u2019 on the door. Once there was a much longer advent preceding Christmas; although it\u2019s not well-known or famous, it was the most important one in the whole of history. The very beginning of that advent is described in today\u2019s gospel. The Messiah, awaited for centuries by generations of the Jewish people, was announced by the angel. Suddenly that long anticipation shrank to the timescale familiar to every human mother and father: nine months. That advent subtly started in the heart of an unimportant girl in a small town far from the then mainstream of events. Within those nine months more and more people were gradually involved as Mary\u2019s pregnancy was more and more visible. Was that advent much different from ours? Surely it was; but in many aspects not as different as we might think. We know the story and all its complications: the uncertainty of Joseph, Mary\u2019s husband; visiting Elizabeth; the long journey to Bethlehem just before the delivery; problems with accommodation in that town… And we can surely add to this the everyday hustle and bustle in Mary and Joseph\u2019s house. We can be certain of their anxieties and worries which are normal for every parent awaiting a child. More or less, their advent was pretty similar to ours. There is one particular aspect of Mary\u2019s waiting for Christmas that we can (and I think we should) adapt: permanent dialogue with God. I\u2019ve purposely used this word instead of the word \u2018prayer\u2019. In the Catholic tradition \u2018prayer\u2019 is too often equated with memorized rhymes mindlessly repeated as magic spells. It actually makes prayer a pointless and empty activity easily abandoned for seemingly more fruitful actions. In today\u2019s gospel we see Mary asking questions, looking for answers, pondering over them and finally deciding to follow God\u2019s plan as presented by the angel. Don\u2019t be fooled: in contrast to the scene shown in pictures or films, that conversation was not accompanied by unnatural light and sound effects! It happened deep in Mary\u2019s heart, unnoticeably to people around her. Our common impression that our prayer in not listened to by God. We give him instructions about what has to be done, and then nothing happens. So our final conclusions are simple: there\u2019s no God or he doesn\u2019t care. We can only blame ourselves (though we prefer to blame others). In today\u2019s gospel, God\u2019s message begins the dialogue between him and Mary. She could hear the message because she\u2019d been listening.\u00a0 In fact, any initial human activity in prayer can be compared to the tuning of a radio. God is speaking to my heart all the time; but my heart has to be tuned-in to him. When I hear God the dialogue can start; and all of a sudden everything that puzzles me begins to make sense. You can make sense of your advent \u2013 despite all the commotion around you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon","category-year-b"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}