Advent has been called the "winter Lent." That makes today something like "Ash Sunday," for it begins a penitential rather than festive season--not yet "the most wonderful time of the year," though it should lead to wonderful things. Advent is a season of soul-searching, of serious reckoning with our failures, personally and corporately, to participate in God's ever-present Advent toward the world. Let us prepare the way of the Lord--which is to say, let us remove the impediments to our participation in this way.
