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.
I have also had that sense this season, that it is a time for serious reflection and deepening awareness of those on the margins - of reaching out with loving tenderness, of bringing in from the cold/hunger/thirst/pain of humanity to the promise of new birth, to the hope/promise of a new day.
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