“Light Your World” by Tim Margiotta, Fiat Ventures
First Sunday of Advent
I LOVE Advent…it is probably my favorite Church season of the year! Aside from knowing that Christmas is right around the corner, the colors, sights, smells and words of Advent ring to the core of my heart each year and capture me anew. Is it the same for you? No? Well let’s break things down a bit then:
1) Advent is not Lent – I once heard it described like this: Advent is like getting ready to welcome a beloved guest and Lent is like doing a deep Spring cleaning of your heart. They were not meant to accomplish the same things so we shouldn’t treat them in the same way. But I can’t tell you how many people comment that they feel like Advent and Lent evoke similar responses.
2) Advent wreath? YES! – What a difference it makes to have a beautiful advent wreath sitting on the kitchen table with those bright colored candles standing tall announcing to the room that it is Advent. My wife and I made it a point right before our first Advent as a married couple to head to the local Catholic store and pick out an Advent wreath that we loved. It has become part of our seasonal decorations as well as our Advent dinner routine to light the candles and sing a verse of O Come O Come Emmanuel.
3) Candles and light – I love the light from candles. To me they bring warmth, hope, and symbolize the light of Christ within us. From the Advent wreath on your table to the lit candles at Church, they are impossible to escape this season. There is a song I love performed by Christian singer Chris Rice called “Go Light Your World”. I love ALL of the verses in this song but two lines in particular strike me; “There is a candle in every soul – some brightly burning – some dark and cold” and the simple line and title of the song, “Go Light Your World”. We are called to be Christ’s light and to then bring that light and flame to all those that Christ puts in our path – to light OUR world.
4) Hope and Grace – In my life, I have experienced that there are special graces available to us at the start of new seasons in our life such as moving into a new home, starting a new semester of school or launching into a new Church season. These crossroads provide us with the opportunity to pause, reflect, redirect and go forward! Hand in hand with these graces in the season of Advent is the message of HOPE that we hear – that Christ desires to come into our very hearts and make his home there.
Our mass readings today remind us that we know not the day or the hour and that the time to cast aside our sin is now. In the last two months, two individuals in my life were quickly and abruptly taken from this world. Left behind were the aftershocks of these tragedies along with a renewed realization that while there are many things we CAN control in life, our departure into the next is not one of them. Let us seize the moment and the season at hand to enter more fully than we ever have into Advent. PRAY: May the light of Christ within us grow brighter and stronger as we prepare to welcome Him anew on Christmas day and may we bring that same light to all those that the Lord puts into our path. Amen.