Week of NoVEMBER 30, 2025

Weekly Reflection – First Sunday of Advent

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Entering Advent: A Season of Expectant Light
This weekend we begin the holy season of Advent, a time the Church gives us to slow down, awaken our hearts, and prepare for the mystery of Christmas: the Word becoming flesh for our salvation.

Saint Ephrem, the great Syriac poet-theologian, describes the coming of Christ as the dawning of “light deposited in the dark womb of the world.” For Ephrem, Advent is a season in which humanity stretches upward toward the Light while God bends low in mercy to meet us. Christ’s birth is not only a past event but a continual coming—God’s desire to be born anew in the humble places of our lives.

Meister Eckhart teaches something similar from a different angle. He reminds us that “what good is it that Christ was born in Bethlehem, if He is not born in me?” Advent invites us to make interior space—silence, stillness, openness—so that Christ may be conceived within us through grace. For Eckhart, the soul becomes truly fruitful when it releases its tight grasp on anxiety, fear, and self-concern, and lets God’s life take root.

In both Ephrem and Eckhart, Advent calls us to wonder:
Where is Christ longing to be born within me this year?
What inner manger is He seeking?

Reflection on This Week’s Video:
“Cardinal Yves Congar: Faith and the Spiritual Life – Part 3”
Cardinal Yves Congar teaches that the Christian life is lived “in the world but not of the world,” a path of letting go so that we might receive all things back as gift. Renunciation is not rejection but transformation: we loosen our grip on possessions, expectations, and self-centered desires so they may be returned to us in freedom, much like Abraham who entrusted Isaac to God. Congar situates this within the Christian mystery of the Incarnation--that God became human so that humanity might be drawn into divine life. As the early Christian saying puts it, “Show me your man and I will show you my God.” Christ reveals not only who God is, but who we are meant to become.

Congar also speaks about spiritual maturity, drawing on John Henry Newman’s image of growth through life’s stages—childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and full maturity. Early commitments such as baptism, first communion, marriage, or ordination are genuine beginnings, but they reach depth through years of fidelity, responsibility, and trial. This becomes especially clear in the “middle-age crisis,” when we face limits and the shrinking of possibilities. Congar insists that peace comes not from wishing for a different story but from embracing our real lives and discovering God’s presence precisely in our finitude.

Finally, Congar issues a challenge to the Church’s preaching and formation: too often we give children theology meant for adults—and adults messages meant for children. Authentic preaching must address the real questions, wounds, fears, and hopes of the human heart. True discipleship requires adults to take responsibility for deepening their faith, not passively accepting a shallow religious diet. Faith, for Congar, is both personal trust and commitment to revealed truth. It is lived through worship, humble service, love that respects the dignity and freedom of others, and a constant awareness that God is present in each moment—our companion now and the One who will receive us at the hour of our death.
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As We Begin Advent
May this season help us see the Light rising in our darkness, open us anew to the birth of Christ within us, and deepen our faith as we journey together.
Let us walk this path with expectant hearts, youthful in hope, mature in trust, and alive to God’s presence in every moment.
Blessings on your Advent.
Peace,
​Rev. Ben