It’s like a song in the heart
You must stand ready, because the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not expect (Mt 24:44).
Isn’t this a beautiful thought? The Lord might come tonight. Maybe in an hour! What does it mean to “stand ready?” It means to be simple, dispossessed, joyous, expectant. It’s like a song in the heart.
The heart is like an immense listening ear, for the footsteps of God are light, and only those who love him much can hear them. True, sometimes they are like thunder. God help us if they are, because he is so gentle and kind.
To be there, waiting for him, is so simple. I sleep but my heart watches(Sg5:2). To stand ready is simply to love. It’s as uncomplicated as that. If I’m not occupied with myself, I’m ready. It’s so beautiful, because God really does come at every moment.
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Real Poverty
What else does it take to be ready? Dispossession. This is the poverty that everyone talks about. Nuns and priests and lay people want to be poor. They think of it in terms of goods. Well, it’s all right to think in terms of money, but nobody wants to talk about the real poverty, which is interior.
To begin with, let’s dispossess ourselves from lust, and then from unnecessary cravings for this or that type of food, and then from any ideas that go contrary to those of Christ.
One such idea, for example, may be the yardstick of efficiency — “I am worth as much as I can do.” No! Not at all! I am worth three hours of Christ’s death. I am worth his incarnation. I am worth the love of the Father.
Let poverty enter into our hearts, so that we begin to weigh and measure ourselves according to God’s standards, and not by our so-called talents. If we do this, we will be truly free, for we will be truly dispossessed. Our freedom consists in being bound like Christ was, in swaddling clothes. Freedom is surrendering to the will of the Father.
Come, the night is past, the day is at hand. He is coming! Lift up everything that is yours, and give it away. Give it to him, and run to Bethlehem. Come, Lord, for we are sitting in darkness. Come, Lord!
Truly today we are sitting in darkness again, a deeper darkness than the year before, so let our prayer be wider. Let our prayer rise like incense before you, O God, so that we might understand what it is that Advent is about, for it is not only an Advent for us believers, but it is an eternal Advent for all humanity until all shall be one as you asked that we be!
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Stay Awake!
Advent will soon be here again. The season of staying awake. This doesn’t mean that you don’t put your head down on a pillow and have a nice, good, holy sleep. Rather, it means that your life is a life of being awake, instead of a dour, repetitious, unending series of chores. Into every moment of your life is inserted this call to stay awake.
Say you have a dull job of some sort—peeling potatoes, ironing handkerchiefs, polishing silver, day in and day out. Is that a life? A Christian life? Well, if your heart is really awake to God and his love for you, and if you are ready to love him back, then even potatoes become exceedingly interesting and exciting.
Grace Flewwelling (Flewy), one of our staff, was working in Friendship House in Toronto, where we were feeding a lot of people during the Great Depression (the 1930’s). She had calluses on her hands from peeling potatoes. One day, she said: “I don’t understand it, Catherine. What is all this peeling of potatoes? I can do better things! I’m trained to do a lot of things!”(She was an artist.)
So I wrote her a poem. In it, I dreamt that all the potato peelings that seemed so unnecessary were transformed into a beautiful woven rug, and went up to heaven. There, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit decided that this wonderful rug, made out of potato peelings, was much better than their thrones, so they sat down on it, lotus fashion, and started judging people from there.
Flewy stuck this poem up over the potato bin, and whenever she got mad, she would read it. She said to me, “Thanks for the poem, because it really helps me.” She was like that. She was simple, and could take a simple poem and make herself feel good about it.
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He Comes
We have to stay awake in our hearts, remembering what we are doing and why. Advent is a special time of staying awake until the Lord comes.
Isn’t that a beautiful thought? Wouldn’t you stay awake for your boyfriend? I’ve seen people stay awake until two or three o’clock in the morning for their husband or boyfriend. If a husband or boyfriend rates that kind of vigil, how about God? I don’t mean for you to literally stay awake nights. I mean stay awake in your hearts because you know for whom you are waiting.
It will not take much time, for our lives are not very long, even if we live to be a hundred. One day you will know, before you die, the One you have waited for. So let’s stay awake.
Compiled from various talks given to the MH community.
Calligraphy by ©Pat Probst, Madonna House.
