It may be my imagination or a failure of memory relating to previous years, but it has struck me that in my local area Christmas lights and decorations outside peoples’ homes seem to have been going up earlier than ever. On the streets the countdown to Christmas began as soon as the Halloween pumpkins disappeared.
The Church gives us a defined time to count down to Christmas: the precious season of Advent, which begins on Sunday. There are always four Sundays in Advent, and then the remaining days between the fourth Sunday and Christmas Day.
Advent is a precious time because those four-and-a-bit weeks remind us that while the preparation of our homes, our gifts to give, our food to eat and so on are all important, we are invited to prioritise the preparation of our hearts, ready to receive and to celebrate the arrival of the Messiah, God on earth. After all, that God should be born as man, for you and for me, in a lowly stable, was such an awesome and earth-shattering event its celebration deserves some proper pre-thought and anticipation. Without this, the magnitude of the event, for you and for me, could easily be lost on us.
What ‘preparation of the heart’ looks like will be different for different people. Some may like to find five minutes of peace and silence each day, just to ‘be,’ without distraction or noise. Some may like to reflect on a few lines of scripture, or simply to repeat a few words like ‘Come, Lord Jesus, Come,’ regularly during the day. Christmas carols may help some to reflect on the true meaning of Christmas and some may like to pray a traditional prayer of the Church, particularly the Angelus. If writing cards, some like to say a silent prayer for each person they are writing a card for as they do it.
Different people find different things helpful in preparing their heart but the key message is the same however it is applied: Advent is a gift to encourage us to try not to let all the practical preparations for Christmas squeeze out the spiritual preparation of our hearts.
