It’s natural, in the world we live in, to want to put walls up around us, to protect those we love, and ourselves, from the evil that has run rampant. We see the things going on and we want to block them out and isolate ourselves. No, I’m not talking about the literal walls people want to build (please don’t go there), but I’m talking about the mental walls, the emotional walls, the relational walls and the spiritual walls we build around us, that we think will protect us.
We see the signs in the world, in society, and we think – now is the time. The world is going to hell, the end-times are near. When is Jesus going to come again? Is He going to come? We spent the last couple weeks of Ordinary Time reflecting on this in the daily readings. And so, our natural instinct is to put up a guard out of self-preservation or the preservation of the ones we love. It’s easy to do. We pull away. But this isolates us – it isolates us from others and often form God.
We as humans have done this over and over since the beginning of time. We pull away from God. We put up walls and fail to trust in Him, and we become guarded. Hardened. He loves us so much that He gives us the free will to do this. He keeps trying to pull as back, and for a time we come close again, but then the weeks and months and years go by, and we pull away again. This is the natural ebb and flow. This is why the Sacraments are so special, the Mass is so special, because they are a way for us to come back to Him, or perhaps a better way to look at it – He comes to us.
This is why Advent is so special. Because Jesus is coming to us. He is arriving. It’s a new beginning, a new year where we can go back home and tear down those walls that guard us, come back to our faith and to Jesus and see and feel and experience His love for us, the ultimate love where He comes to us in the flesh as one of us, where He becomes our brother.
We can be touched by this Love, and transformed by the Love, and healed by this Love because it is not just something that happened 2000 years ago – but an arrival that is happening now. He is here – every day. But it’s these seasons in the Church that help us to not only come closer to Christ again, but to also remind ourselves how to live a Christian life out in the world today. It’s when we relearn how to be vigilant and learn how to avoid the distractions and be ready – ready for when He calls us home, ready He physically comes again, or simply ready for when He calls us to do His work in the world.
This is what we can do this Advent. We can use this as a time to tear down those walls, where we can go to Christ and let Him arrive in our hearts so that we can be Him out in the world, and bring Him to others around us.
