Monday of the first week of Advent: Active Waiting

Presence

As I begin this prayer, God is present, breathing life into me and into everything around me. For a few moments, I remain silent, and become aware of God’s loving presence.

Scripture

Romans 8:19-23

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labour, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

Reflection

The opening pages of Luke’s Gospel are full of people who are waiting: Mary, Elizabeth and Zechariah, Simeon, and Anna.
Henri Nouwen, the Dutch Catholic priest, spiritual teacher, professor, writer and theologian, strongly believed in waiting as a spiritual practice. He differentiates between active and passive waiting. For most of us, the latter is the case. We resign ourselves to the fact that we cannot speed up the waiting process. Zechariah, Anna and the others, however, experience a different form of waiting. In his book, Finding My Way Home, Nouwen describes the difference:
“Zechariah, Mary, and Elizabeth were living with a promise that nurtured them, that fed them, and that made them able to stay where they were. And in this way, the promise itself could grow in them and for them…They know that what they are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing…that the seed has been planted, that something has begun… Active waiting means to be present fully to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present to it. A waiting person is someone who is present to the moment, who believes that this moment is the moment.”
St Paul, in his letter to the Romans, uses the imagery of childbirth to describe the coming of future glory. There is nothing passive about the waiting in pregnancy! Bringing a new life into the world is full of active waiting and preparation, not just for the mother, but for all around her.

Prayer

Lord, let me make this Advent time of waiting transformative. Help me commit to entering daily into the depth and silence of my own soul and meeting you there – keeping in mind the words of the mediaeval Dominican mystic, Meister Eckhart: “God is with us in our inmost soul, provided he finds us there and not gone out and about with our five senses. The soul must stay at home in her innermost, purest self; be ever within and not flying out: there God is present, God is near.”

Amen

Glory to you, Father, source of all being,

to you, Jesus, Word made flesh,

to you Holy Spirit, Comforter,

as it was before time began,

is now and shall be into the future.

Amen.