Next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent. Advent is that yearly opportunity to prepare for the remembrance of the birth of the Savior.
The birth of the Child of Nazareth, the Son of David, and Son of God, stands at the very center of human history. It is this Jesus who makes visible the merciful face of God.
Advent is a time to celebrate beginnings, which are also endings. T. S. Eliot: in the last of The Four Quartets, written in the early part of World War II in London:
“What we call the beginning is often the end.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.”
Eliot suggests that endings and beginning are interconnected. In the cycles of life and death, of stories with beginnings, middle and endings, there is no discontinuity. There is only the realization that we are part of the much bigger story—the saving story of God “who so loved the world that he gave His only Son.”
May Advent be a time of both endings and beginnings for you; a time of reflection and decision about yesterday and a plan for tomorrow.
Fr. Steve Adrian
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