Advent Lessons

As we come to the last days of Advent, the season in Christianity of waiting, I am reminded of the words of Sr. Joan Chittister, a Benedictine Sister of Erie Pennsylvania, known for her social justice stance and working with and for the marginalized. “Advent is that unchangeable season when the same concepts, the same words rise over and over again, year after year, to challenge our hearts and plague our minds. Advent is the season of waiting. And who hasn’t waited? When we are little children, we wait for gifts from our parents. When we are young adults, we wait for the lover who will take us to the magic world of Everything. The problem is that the presents pale and the magic world sags all too quickly into reality. But then Advent comes, relentlessly and throughout life, with its words of hope and faith—shepherds and magi, crib and star, Emmanuel and glory—and stirs our hearts to pinnacles of possibility one more time. Ruben A. Alvez wrote, ‘Hope is hearing the melody of the future; faith is dancing to it today.’ The real Christmas gift, for which Advent is the process, is learning to hum hope, learning to dance the divine.”