An Imperfect Stable - An Advent Reflection

This past Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent our children were on a funny sleeping schedule (our youngest has been waking up at 4am and thus exhausted and ready for a nap again by 8am), there was no Sunday school due to Thanksgiving the previous week, and so my husband and I decided that we were just going to split up mass times to try to make the best of the situation for everyone in the family.  I don't really like doing this and will admit I made a bit of a stink.  The funny thing about that is, I know God has plans for me, for my marriage and for my family.  I also know that when I trust in those plans the results are usually better than I could have planned myself!  Because my husband and I split up mass times with different kids, my husband went to a different church than we usually go to.  When he was at this other parish church he heard that there was going to be a talk on Advent by one of our very favorite Jesuits, Father Larry Gillick from our alma mater Creighton University.  So, we called up my mom to see if she could watch the kids for an hour (thanks mom) and went on a lovely date night to Fr. Gillick's advent talk.  Maybe we missed mass together as a family that first Sunday of Advent, but I think God knew that my husband and I both needed to hear that talk!

Father Gillick's talk on Advent discussed so much but the biggest thing that I took away from it was that we are the imperfect stable, waiting for the coming of Christ.  God is already here, he is here in our community, in our lives, but it is up to us to determine if, when and how we are going to let him into our lives.  God had a plan, he always does.  God knew that Jesus would be born in a manger, not a gleaming room in the inn and that was for a reason.  We might say that manger was not fit for a King, surrounded by barn animals, cold, dirty, but honestly that is what we look like most days right?  I know that I am far from perfect, but amazingly God still chooses to come to my inn and love me.  Even with my faults and imperfections God chose to come for me and you, and chooses that again and again.  Every time I go astray he is just waiting there with open arms.  I am that imperfect stable.

We sing the song "O Come O Come Emmanuel".  This song has a lot of tradition and history, but God is already here and we should be singing "O Come O Come (insert your name!)"  We are the ones who need to come to Him.  Advent is the time to be ok with our emptiness and longing.  We live in a world where we don't have to wait for anything, we don't have to have unknown.  We have fast food, weather reports, smart phones, texting, so many things in our lives that scream "You don't have to wait!"  But God wants us to feel that longing so that we can appreciate Jesus and truly be in relationship with him come Christmas Day! 

Think about the image of the Advent wreath and how throughout Advent we take time to light the four candles but in the middle of that wreath is a hole, is emptiness.  It is not until Christmas Day when we insert the Christ Candle that the hole and emptiness is filled.  We need to take this time during Advent to let that emptiness be there, to experience that longing, and to be grateful for that longing.  When we can do that we will find that longing within ourselves to give to God what he is asking of us, which is faith.

 

So even though there has been Christmas music playing since before Halloween and even though Santa came to our community mall before Thanksgiving, let's take this Advent to experience the longing of Jesus.  We need to let there be some reality in the brokenness of where Jesus was born in that stable.  We want the stable for our King to be nice and pretty, but the stable in our own lives are not always that way.  God isn't asking us to get a housekeeper though, or to try to portray this "perfect" life.  He is asking us to come to him, to be in Eucharistic communion with him through the sacraments.  That's why he gave us the Catholic Church!  He is asking for us to come to him in reconciliation and for us to admit our own brokenness.  There are a lot of occupancies (or sins) living in the inn in our own lives that prevent Jesus from truly entering into our hearts.  Jesus will come in truth though, and the truth of each of us is that we are that imperfect stable.  Once we can let Jesus come to our truth, it is then, and only then that we come to the freedom to experience God's true gift of love within our relationships and community. 

 

The true gift of Jesus is to make us in Christ a gift to others.  Jesus is the one who takes away the shame of the stable, he makes that emptiness into the gift of the tabernacle!  The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: "No one can approach God here except by kneeling before the manger and adoring him hidden in the weakness of a newborn child"  (CCC 563).  This Advent I pray that we may be humble enough to be longing for Jesus, and kneel before the manger even knowing we are an imperfect stable. 

The Nativity


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