…but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.
JOHN 16:22
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Advent. What a sacred time of the year! The Christian faith invites us to embrace this season as an experience of expectant waiting – to open ourselves to a spiritual kind of pregnancy while we rely on patient hope for the dawning of new life… new life for our broken world and for our less than perfect selves. We are asked to allow ourselves to experience the darkness, and to open ourselves to a radical trust that new life WILL emerge. From this faith perspective, we are called inward to listen deeply and to let go of anything that gets in the way of hearing God’s gentle, loving voice within us. Without distraction, we are fully awake, fully present, fully open to recognize the light and to share it in all that we say and do. The power of light penetrates and dispels all darkness.
The tone of our dominant culture is quite different. All things Christmas are ready for purchase even before Halloween. “Are you ready for Christmas?” is the conversation of the day. Thrown into a time of busyness, the hype and the glitz of a storybook Christmas strip us of the fullness of the power of Advent.
For those of us with a desire to engage in the season of Advent, there is inner tension. The Spirit draws us inward while the world forces us outward toward a frenzied pursuit of something that rarely satisfies. How do we reconcile this tension? We don’t have to only acknowledge the way the Spirit is moving us inwardly. We don’t have to rebuke the sentimentality of the holiday rush. The invitation of the season is to allow our inner longings to emerge and to be patient with them. Perhaps we can be intentional about practicing Advent again this year and, instead of resenting the tension, embrace it with joy?
This week we dive into what it means for joy to come from within…
The third week of Advent invites us to ground ourselves in joy, even amid strife, and let that joy well up.
Mary Anne
Sladich-Lantz
Mary Anne has dedicated the majority of her career to ensuring that health care leaders have all that they need to remain faithful to the Catholic Mission while
responding to the signs of the times. Through her leadership, Providence has developed a ministry leadership formation program that has been highly regarded as best in class.