Gift yourself with precious time for your own spiritual recharge,
says Peter Kasko
It’s that time of the year again. The time when we often tend to forget our humanity, to some extent, and pursue all that is not important. In Matthew (chapter 6), Jesus reminds us not to worry, “but strive for the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” We are called to strive for what is commonly described as true, good and beautiful. And that we can only find in a kingdom that “is not of this world”. Let us take a closer look at what this means for us.
At the outset, I would like to wish to all of you a very blessed new liturgical year! Starting with the first Sunday of Advent, the Church begins a new year, a new cycle a ‘new beginning’. Yes, this is your chance to come up with all the resolutions for losing weight, finding more time for your family, reading more books, being more active, and so on. Just kidding! Advent is the time of the year during which the only resolution you should be considering is to find more time and space for yourself. Indeed, be selfish, but let me explain below how.
Advent means ‘to come’ or ‘coming’ from the Latin ‘ad venire’ or ‘adventus’ (parousia in Greek). We cannot claim with certainty the origins of this special time set aside before Jesus is born in Bethlehem. By the time of the 5th and 6th Century, the practice was alive and it became more defined during the papacy of Pope Gregory I. (590-604). The main focus is that of Christ’s two comings: His birth and His second coming at the end of time.
The phrase “I want” and “I want it now” is the unspoken motto of the era we live in”
St John the Baptist, the last true prophet, was calling on his listeners (in the words of a popular song today) “to prepare the way, to prepare the way for the Lord”. That calling is as true today as it was 2000 years ago. And so are the challenges accompanying it. You could probably argue that in our day, the challenge is even bigger with the number of distractions coming at us from all sides.
Greatest of all, however, is the challenge to our patience. The ‘insta’ world, as we know it today, has successfully killed what little patience we had in us as children, fostered – with all levels of difficulty – by our parents and environment. The phrase “I want” and “I want it now” is the unspoken motto of the era we live in. Having to wait in a queue for coffee or traffic for more than a minute is causing a heart-rate closer to an underground techno party of the ‘90s.
Patience
I believe that with this lost sense of patience we also lost our sense of childlike wonder. We lack expectations because we are catered and fed instantly, like a baby, directly ‘into our mouth’. When you don’t need to exert any effort to achieve something, the muscles become ‘lazy’, our attitude complacent and the longer this goes on the harder it will be to come back from such slumber.
St Bernard, a Cistercian monk and abbot in Clairvaux, speaks of three comings: Christ’s birth, His second coming and the third is between them. The first two are visible, the third is not. This middle coming of our Lord, as St Bernard puts it, “is hidden, … only the chosen see Him, and they see Him within themselves” (Sermo 5 in Adventu Domini). This is the way the St John the Baptist speaks of the way that you and I need to prepare for the Lord. This is the road that connects Christ’s two comings: St Bernard calls this middle way “our rest and our consolation.”
Our message is a message of hope and not of despair. We proclaim every Sunday that God is where we can find what is true, good and beautiful”
Another early saint, St Ephraem the Deacon, echoes my sentiment on patience in his commentary on the Diatessaron. When Jesus is asked about his time of coming, he replies with the famous words “no one knows, neither the angels nor the Son.” St Ephraem focuses on this ‘hiddenness’ so that we are patient but focused, and that we keep watch with Christ who is our consolation and keeping that honest and true yearning. The yearning that the modern-day world is trying so hard to cancel and destroy.
Hope
Our message is a message of hope and not of despair. We proclaim every Sunday that God is where we can find what is true, good and beautiful. To achieve that, I challenge you to gift yourself with precious time for your own spiritual recharge. I don’t mean to turn away from the world, but to turn it off for a moment or two and investigate your own heart. Search for the ‘middle hidden way’ and prepare it so our Lord can walk freely into your humble abode when you invite him in. Once you are fully recharged you can go out to the world and be a gift to those around you – your family, your colleagues and your neighbours.
Finally, I wish and hope that we all can come together as One Family and proclaim with joyful voices using the words of a medieval Christmas hymn: Gaudete, gaudete Christus est natus, ex Maria Virgine, Gaudete! which translates as ‘Rejoice, rejoice! Christ is born of the Virgin Mary, rejoice!’
Have a very blessed Advent and Christmas.
Peter Kasko is a core team member of Living Water prayer group, which meets every Wednesday at 7:15pm in St Teresa’s Church, Clarendon Street, Dublin, and has a passion for Theology and Patristics.