You will show me the path to life, abounding joy in your presence, the delights at your right hand forever. (Psalm 16:11)

Advent continues, Gaudete Sunday is here, yet preparing our heart to receive our Lord on Christmas day in challenging. Complaints are often raised about the busyness of the season, and that busyness can divert us from conducting the needed interior work in our heart too. Slowing down our external activities creates opportunity for deep reflection and honest introspection.  Praying on mass readings from these first weeks of Advent, which are focused on Jesus’ second coming and the final judgement, can be helpful to that too.

Heaven or Hell is our choice

The Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, came to earth to offer us salvation. We are predestined for Heaven; God does not hate that which He creates (Wisdom 1:13-14). Heaven is union with God for eternity. At life’s end, however, our final destination is of our own doing. In this respect, Heaven and Hell are self-selecting. We are born onto the path to Heaven. Everyone starts on that path, and it is the common human experience that we fall off of it. Yet as the psalmist demonstrates, we are never without opportunity to step back onto the path of life. If we don’t make it through the eye of the needle like Jesus says, it’s because we’ve self-selected out of it. Our damnation is not God’s desire. It’s our choice. Every day and throughout each day, we should choose Heaven. “I choose, Heaven, Lord. I choose YOU.” 

But like the camel we must be “disencumbered of our hunch” as St. Bede taught. That ‘hunch’ is not just our attachments. It also includes the wounds which drive us into those attachments. Preparing for Jesus to be born into our heart on Christmas morning requires a bit of housekeeping first, and that involves a look back upon our life. No matter what you have done or what others have done to you throughout your life, God has chosen to keep you alive right up to this moment. Advent is a good time to look back to see how He has loved you. Right up to this moment He’s given you opportunity for conversion and for love. This is HIS desire, to keep giving you opportunities to receive His love.

The field of our lily

Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you. (Luke 12:24-28)

Considering ourselves as a lily and our life circumstances as its field, several questions might arise for reflection: what field was I born into? Who fertilized it and helped me to grow? What sunflowers have tried to steal the sun from me? When have I overshadowed someone and tried to steal the sun from them? What weeds have tried to choke me out? What cattle have tried to stomp on me? All of these questions bring meaningful conversations with God. Throughout your life have been both experiences of growth and of harm: those you initiate and others that have been placed upon you, choices that both help and harm yourself and others. Yet you are still here. No one has been able to stomp out your life. No weeds have been able to choke out your life. And even when others tried to steal the sun from you, God made sure you still had enough to survive and even thrive. 

He’s always given you enough. And for the people you have harmed, He’s always given them enough too to survive and thrive, even when you have tried to snuff out their sun. None of us can completely snuff out another person’s sun; we cannot completely prevent God from reaching them. He will always give them enough.  

Most of us go through life unaware of the depth and profundity of God’s care for us. But each day is a chance to look back at our life and say, “Yea God has always provided for me, even in the worst of times”. That is an important truth to sit with: even in the worst of times, He has always provided for you. Anything that you may have done to others, He’s always provided for them too in ways that you’ll never know or understand. And that’s OK. In the final judgement at the end of time, some of these things will be revealed; this is something to look forward to. But for now, be at peace with the unknowing. 

Very often  deep remorse can cause shame for what we’ve done to others. But He’s sustained them through it all. And everything’s OK. Their life may not seem OK right now (as they live out of their woundedness rather than their belovedness) but it’s OK—He’s got it. He’s got them. Ask Him to grow in you a deep understanding and profound gratitude that He’s got it. 

Sometimes our field seems more like a pinball game and we are the marbles bouncing off one another, our brokenness being the force that propels each of us. But after this life on earth, once we are through Purgatory and in Heaven, all of our relationships will be perfect because everyone will have been healed of their woundedness. So everyone in your life that you’ve wanted to love more perfectly, and those who have tried to love you, once in Heaven will have that perfect relationship that God has always intended for us to have with each other but because of our brokenness haven’t been able to do it on earth. Always keep Heaven at the forefront of our vision, live in the grace of the present moment, and don’t worry about the in-between (that’s where anxiety grows). We must give that to God. 

As you await the birth of the Prince of Peace, live in the grace of the present moment while facing eternity–Him. “Then the peace which surpasses all understanding will guard your mind and heart in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7).     

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam 😊

(Image by Bizar Van Jan from Pexels)