¶ Welcoming Advent and Christ's Comings
Welcome to Slaking Thirst, a podcast that's all about bringing the thirst deep within our hearts for love and communion to the heart of Christ, a divine heart, who is seeking our love and communion in return. The hope is that the two thirsts would meet and both thirsts would be slaked. Well, here we are at the Advent season again. In Advent, we kind of orient ourselves traditionally around three different comings of the Christ.
The first was history, 2,000 years ago. Then there's mystery, sacraments, scripture, the life of the church. And then majesty, when he comes again in glory. We live between the first two and the third. We celebrate and remember his coming in history. With faith we celebrate and welcome his presence in the scriptures. the life of the church, the Holy Spirit, and we prepare for Him to come in majesty.
And that's what the season of Advent is all about, is to keep us rooted and oriented within these three comings of Christ, particularly as we get ready to celebrate his birth on Christmas. May I just say gently but factually, we do not pretend he wasn't born yet. Okay? That's a silly thing to do. He is...
risen from the dead, central fact of our faith. Therefore, he's alive and active and present. So we don't pretend he's not here and hopefully he'll come again at Christmas. No, no. He's born, he's here, but we recall.
¶ Understanding the Call to Stay Awake
And that's meant to soften and open our hearts as we prepare for when he comes in majesty. In the second reading today and in the gospel, we hear this phrase to stay awake.
To stay awake. Now this isn't like a biological thing as if we're meant to just not sleep all of a sudden. Although there's something very praiseworthy about anyone who's intentionally wakes up in the middle of the night to spend time in prayer, or there are people who will do all-night vigils in prayer to force themselves to stay awake, monks and things, of course, but other people at home do this intentionally.
beautiful acts of holiness and to grow closer to God but it's not primarily a biological reality. This staying awake has to do with the opposite of sleep. When you're sleeping nothing really affects you. When you're sleeping, you're kind of dumbly present to the room. You ever seen someone take a nap? You could do all sorts of things in that room. Or if you want to play a prank, you could even do things to them while they sleep. They're not engaged with reality.
They're kind of checked out. So too does that happen with us in terms of Jesus. Oftentimes we're asleep. We're numb. We're not engaged. We're not open to be affected by the things of Jesus to the degree that they're meant to affect us. So St. Paul and Jesus both tell their followers, their disciples, stay awake. Choose to be engaged. Choose to be vulnerable and open.
Choose to live in kind of an exciting faith, a faith that is eager to hear from God, eager to be affected by the things of the Lord so that he can prepare you for his own coming. In the olden days, if you were going to stay awake at night, it was a kind of a scary, difficult thing because it was so dark. We just flip a light switch on now. It's quite easy. You know, years ago, if they were going to stay up late or try to stay awake...
Sitting in the dark was both scary and boring. What helped them were the things like candles and lanterns. Hence, you can see our art and environment right before the Ambo has chosen lanterns this year. The lantern was a way in which in the scary kind of cold darkness of like the time most people would be asleep. A lantern with a warm candle shined a little light to give you some encouragement to kind of orient you as you waited for the sunrise.
So too, the word of God, this ambo, the lanterns in front of the ambo, the word of God gives us a little light as we wait on the second coming of Christ. The scriptures can give us a little clarity, a little inspiration, some illumination, something to kind of hold on to while we're waiting for the Lord to return. And...
The candles didn't just give off light, they would give off a little warmth. So too, the scriptures and the sacraments that we celebrate at Mass, especially during this Advent season, are meant to give our hearts a little warmth so they can stay open. and more relaxed rather than maybe the rigidity of fear. They have a way of being warmed and open, realizing that the one who's returning to us is love himself.
¶ Intentional Waiting and Inner Stillness
The Advent season is really meant to help us enter into a posture of waiting. So I'd like to encourage one practical thing during Advent is that I know many of you already pray. So if you don't pray, it'd be good to start praying. But let's presume all of you have some time set aside every day to pray. Maybe for you it's the 15 minutes the bishop asked for. Maybe right now in your life you're able to get five minutes sitting down praying.
I'd like to invite you to incorporate during Advent a time of intentionally waiting. Choose silence. Choose to not fill up every minute of prayer with your own thoughts. plans, your own little prayer books, your own goals to finish things in your prayer time. I wanted to read four pages. Choose to have some time where you just sit and wait, staying awake.
Open, watching, listening. How might God be speaking to you in that time of silence? How might he be showing up? St. Mother Teresa said we should be silent at least as much as we talk. So if you're doing 10 minutes, half should be a silent listening, waiting, trusting in the Lord. Half should be sharing and communicating with the Lord.
Now, if you're an engineer, you just say, okay, five, then five. It doesn't have to be so rigid. It can be more dynamic. But the point is that we would choose a kind of waiting, a kind of nothing's happening. but I trust that God is here. Lord, speak. Lord, I'm listening. And then wait on him. Perhaps this stillness...
and the pace of life we all want to have during this time of year. And then come Christmas, we all think, I ran around like a crazy person during December again. Perhaps the stillness and the silence that we're kind of invited and haunted to. is an interior one. Perhaps it's learning how to quiet the interior to create a space for the word of God to show up with his light and the warmth of his love so that from the inside out,
we could bring into this world the peace that at Christmastime we celebrate with such joy. To listen to more homilies, talks, and reflections from Father Ryan and Father Patrick. please check out slakingthirst.com and consider becoming a subscriber to the Slaking Thirst YouTube channel.