Advent Mutterings

As Christmas swiftly approaches (more quickly this year than the last...) it is difficult to pause and relish the wonder of the Advent season before the Christmas season arrives.  I find myself so wrapped up in Christmas shopping, craft making, and decorating that I rarely allow myself to have a truly fruitful Advent.  (Not that all this preparation is bad; not at all.  It is a good thing, and necessary!)  But I must continually remind myself in the midst of the sparkling material preparation that spiritual preparation takes precedent.  

  Advent is a time for meditating upon the beautiful mystery of the Incarnation, the mystery of God becoming man to save us:  

"Therefore because the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself in like manner hath been partaker of the same: that, through death, He might destroy him who had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil: And might deliver them, who through the fear of death were all their lifetime subject to servitude." (Hebrews 2:14-15) 

In Pope John Paul II's first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, the pope writes on Christ's role as our Redeemer and the importance of the human person in the world.  I find this paragraph to be particularly wonderful food for thought in preparation for the Christmas Season: 

"Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. This, as has already been said, is why Christ the Redeemer "fully reveals man to himself". If we may use the expression, this is the human dimension of the mystery of the Redemption. In this dimension man finds again the greatness, dignity and value that belong to his humanity. In the mystery of the Redemption man becomes newly "expressed" and, in a way, is newly created. He is newly created! "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus". The man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly-and not just in accordance with immediate, partial, often superficial, and even illusory standards and measures of his being-he must with his unrest, uncertainty and even his weakness and sinfulness, with his life and death, draw near to Christ. He must, so to speak, enter into him with all his own self, he must "appropriate" and assimilate the whole of the reality of the Incarnation and Redemption in order to find himself. If this profound process takes place within him, he then bears fruit not only of adoration of God but also of deep wonder at himself. How precious must man be in the eyes of the Creator, if he "gained so great a Redeemer", and if God "gave his only Son "in order that man "should not perish but have eternal life"."

Another reason to make the most of Advent: beautiful, glorious Advent carols!  Below is one of my favourites.