My Friends,
MY God, I adore You for the continual renewal of Your merciful love through the signs of Your liturgy.
Advent is an invitation and a grace to renew myself and start my life anew with You, Jesus. You offer my weary soul the morning of a new day. Your presence shines on the horizon like an unconquered sun that will not set, an eternal joy. Therefore I feel filled with joyful courage, determined to improve myself, to purify myself in order to receive You well.
Although I have already received you, I want to receive you better, in a truer way than ever before, by receiving your forgiveness and your blessing to live from you alone, my Jesus! In You everything is always new, life is always new. You let us share in your eternal renewal through your Church and its sacred liturgy at this time of Advent. I want to make use of it, to be ignited in my faith by the new liturgical year circle, to be drawn to carry it out well.
We are thus at the beginning of Advent, together with the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph, themselves new persons of the New Covenant, and we are waiting for the Redeemer. As for them, it is immediately around Him that the complete renewal must take place: that of my faith, of my hope, of my love for Jesus. It is indeed to this that the Church invites me through the incomparable didactics of her sacred liturgy. She makes me wait with Mary and Joseph for the coming of the Redeemer.
So I will think of You, Jesus, to prepare my soul to receive You better at Christmas. To this end, my heart must at last be ignited by the « greater fervor of a deeper love » for you, Jesus. The Church will help me in this, because even before making me act, your liturgy makes me love, before asking me for sacrifices and leaving everything behind to follow him, she makes me happy for Jesus who is about to come.
Completely filled with Jesus, I will therefore make my resolutions. My letter of intentions will be a love letter addressed to Jesus who is about to come, promising to do what He wills, so that in our meeting at Christmas no shadow may remain, no reproach, but only love.
It is easy to promise that to Jesus, with your help and through your intercession, Mary and Joseph, by following your example. Let us be faithful to the meditation of life in Nazareth, to be with Mary and Joseph in expectation of Jesus: purity, simplicity, poverty, humility, fervor in prayer, faithful love in God our Father, mutual respect and tenderness , love for and constantly thinking of Jesus who is to come and who is already there, in a hidden way.
It is easy to promise that to Jesus, with your help and through your intercession, Mary and Joseph, by following your example. Let us be faithful to the meditation of life in Nazareth, to be with Mary and Joseph in expectation of Jesus: purity, simplicity, poverty, humility, fervor in prayer, faithful love in God our Father, mutual respect and tenderness , love for and constantly thinking of Jesus who is to come and who is already there, in a hidden way.
How rich is this season of Advent! How I am helped inwardly, in my soul, by You, O my God, O Spirit of Love, and outwardly by the liturgy of Your Church!
Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph, Saint Anna and Saint Joachim, Saints of the Old Testament, righteous and “God-fearing” who wait for the Messiah, come to our aid, intercede for us before Jesus by virtue of your great merits, that we would be helped by his mighty grace. Come to the aid of the Church, which is once again preparing for the coming of the Messiah.
As for myself, I will keep the spirit of the Old Testament. I will carefully collect all the golden straws that the liturgy offers me so that my love might be kindled and my life changed at that particular point where I must make progress. I will be rewarded according to my efforts, and the feast of Christmas will be all the more beautiful as Advent has been filled with joy and with improvement in my demeanor
RevFr Ed Bakker
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