Waiting … with joyful hope
Advent is the season of waiting. And there sure is lots of waiting in marriage and family life.
Advent, from the Latin adventus, means ‘coming’. In the Church calendar, Advent kick starts the year with a period of preparation for the celebration of Christ’s birth at Christmas.
Like Lent, the colour for Advent is purple as a symbol of penance. Traditionally, Christians fast from indulgent foods and intensify our prayer to prepare spiritually to receive anew the Christ-child into our lives.
The anticipation of Christmas celebrations certainly made Advent torturous for us as children. We counted down the days as we waited for the big day (and the presents) to arrive.
No wonder Advent has been dubbed the ‘season of waiting’. It’s a spiritual discipline to wait patiently, hopefully and with good humour.
That’s quite counter-cultural in our consumer world. With all our Christian feasts hitting the supermarket months in advance of the actual calendar date, the discipline of patient waiting is ever harder.
Yet marriage and family life are full of waiting. Without a capacity to maintain patient hope, we can easily succumb to irritability or despair.
For whatever you are waiting – a proposal, a wedding day, a pregnancy, a birth, a new job, a graduation, a vacation, the return of health or the peaceful death of a loved one – bring it to prayer this Advent.
With our heavenly mother, Mary, who with all the Jewish people awaited the coming of the Messiah, we too can wait in joyful hope.
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