It is a precious time of preparation for the coming – the advent – of God incarnate as Jesus Christ. It is a quiet time of thought, prayer, worship, and song. We reflect and remember with carols and cards the love we bear one another, a love planted in our hearts by Our Lord himself, a sacred love, a suffering love.It is that love that unites Heaven and Earth, traveling through matter and spirit, through bread and wine, and through each of us in thought, word, and deed.
We know we do not love enough. We know we fall short here on Earth in this time of training – schooling – for Heaven. We cry to the Lord, “Clean me, make a new spirit within me, dwell in my heart and give me new life.”
And in Advent we are reminded he answers us, through Scripture and Sacrament. He comes, this Emmanuel of ours, he comes to us as a baby in a manger, wrapped in sleep, as one song says. He will be born soon to be among us, and he will reside in our hearts.
I have found memory to be a wonderful thing, but memory verses even better, and memory prayers the best of all. For prayers committed to mind and heart and lips can be summoned again and again until the Lord of all Creation walks alongside me, with me, close. Prayers are a conversation, not merely a statement of reality and belief. Prayers say, come, come close and talk with me, walk with me. My usual source is the 1928 Book of Common Prayer Collects for the season and the week, and over the years the Advent prayer is revisited:
ADVENT SEASON
The First Sunday in Advent.
The Collect.
“ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the
armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us
in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.”
The First Sunday in Advent.
The Collect.
“ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the
armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us
in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.”
This Collect is to be repeated every day, after the other Collects in Advent, until Christmas Day.
(BCP p.90)
We are, as Dorothy Sayers said, attending the school of charity, the school of love. We must educate our consciences with virtue lessons and sermons and Bible verses. We must train our wills in the art of right and wrong, the commandments given to us by Our Lord through the ages. Then, when we see God face to face we will not be burned, but will see our lives and know what to repent. For only repentance will harvest forgiveness, and only forgiveness – cleansing – will open the doors of Paradise.
Our Lord respects our free will. He cannot force us. That is the nature of love. We have the freedom to choose our final destination. And so, in my aging season, I recently adapted the traditional “Jesus Prayer”, to invite Christ to be with me, to talk to me. The more I say this prayer, this “asking” for his presence, stepping through my day, the more I marvel. Ideas pop into my head. Reminders touch me tenderly. And my mind is (mostly) free from worry – for I trust His presence as long as I ask him to be with me:
Jesus, My Lord, I thee adore.
Teach me to love thee more and more.
and I end every prayer with,
Let thy will be done in my life.
Today, Rose Sunday, we remember Heaven, and we remember the fiat of Mary – “Let it be unto me according to thy will.” And so it was – she was visited by God the Holy Spirit, and Jesus, God the Son, was conceived. She was given a protector in Joseph, and they traveled to Bethlehem, a long and arduous journey, praying again and again, “Let it be according to thy will.” For it is only when we say yes, fiat, that God can work his marvelous miracles in our lives. We just remember to say yes again and again… and again.
Thanks be to God for his gift of life and love, his coming to dwell with us, in us, today, every minute and second. Come Lord Jesus, come. Shine the bright lights of Christmas, Christ-mass, into our hearts. Enter in and show us our sin.
Thanks be to God.
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Considering virtues and schooling ourselves, my post, “Visible Virtues: Judging Justice” was published this last week by American Christian Fiction Writers, about how Christian fiction considers how to live out the moral law, revealing argument and judging justice. Thank you ACFW!
Christine Sunderland
Christine Sunderland 