Advent & memento Mori
By: Missionary Team
Advent is the first season at the beginning of the Church’s calendar. And what a way to start the year! I love Advent, it is a beautiful time of the year filled with joy and love, but above all of that, it is when we get to prepare for Christ. Advent is a time of preparation. Yes, preparation for Christmas, but more importantly, a preparation for the second coming of our Lord. In the same way that it is at the start of our church year, it should be at the forefront of our lives. Our lives should be a preparation for the coming of Christ. Every day every hour we should be preparing, because we all will meet Christ one day. Advent should be reflected in our daily life no matter what season or time of year it is. Every day should be a preparation for Christ’s coming and us meeting Him.
This summer, I spent a couple of weeks in Pennsylvania at a Carmelite monastery. It was a beautiful time filled with prayer and silence, but one thing I will not forget was that there was a human skull on the Prior’s table while we ate together as a community. The skull was there to remind us that even though we were eating to stay alive and sustain ourselves, we would all die one day and meet Christ. This practice, also known as Memento Mori or “remember your death”, is a powerful way of remembering that our days are numbered. Life is so, so short and it will be over in the blink of an eye. We have no time to live selfishly or pridefully, all our efforts, all our strength must be put into loving God in whatever form that may come. We always have to be preparing!
Right about now you’re probably telling yourself, “Dang that’s dark bro... advent is a time of joy and new life and new beginnings. It’s about Christmas! Why are you talking about the shortness of life and remembering my death YOU SICKO!” The word “Advent” stems from the Latin word adventus. Adventus literally means “coming” or “arrival.” So yes, the word refers to the preparation or the coming of Christ in Christmas, but it also has another meaning for the second coming of Christ, and I would argue that it has a third meaning for our coming to Christ when we die. If we stop and think about it, in all three of the meanings we are preparing for the same thing, Christ. And in all three we ought to do the same thing. Live every day remembering Christ and our call to give our whole hearts to him. To fall in love with Him every day. If we live this advent letting our love for our Lord drive us in all that we do we will see miracles. We prepare for Christ’s coming by understanding His profound and perfect love for us more and more and then giving all of our love and lives to Him. This is talked about in more detail in the blog, Filled by the Father? So go check that out if you haven’t yet. Relationships will be healed, fears will be conquered, and so much more if we live this way every day. We gotta live as if every day is our last! I’m not saying it's time to start hanging skulls on our Christmas trees, I mean...I might now that I think about it hahaha, what I’m saying is that we can’t let the TRUE spirits of Advent and Christmas end after the 25th. The season of preparation for Christ should be in our everyday lives.
Advent must be a time for us to refocus our lives on Christ and prepare to meet Him. Let’s not waste this beautiful gift we’ve been given. Let’s take it and not run with it. There are no Platos in the spiritual life you are either going up or down. We must always be growing in holiness and in love, for if we don’t then we are doing the opposite. In Revelations 3:16 we read, “So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” Let us not be lukewarm Catholics this Advent and Christmas. Let us not get caught up in what the world tells us the season of Christmas is all about and remember that it is a time of preparation for Christ. Let us go and prepare, there is no time to waste. Let us go and prepare in Love, always in Love.
