Advent: Learning from Mary and Joseph

The following is the third in a series of reflections for Advent.

"Come, Lord Jesus, prepare my heart!" we cried last week.

This week we will enter further into this spirit of recollection by turning to Mary and Joseph and asking them to teach us how to pray on our journey to Bethlehem. For we are on a journey, you and I; while others wait for Jesus only at His birth, we will accompany Mary and Joseph in the quiet of their travels.

How can Mary and Joseph teach us how to pray? Let us watch them. Joseph beholds Mary as she carries the Messiah, and his face is radiant with love. And Mary? How gently and joyfully she carries the Hope of the World! And how tenderly they welcome us to join them, how their invitation to join them awakens in us great longing for the coming of Jesus.

Saint Faustina described this longing: "During Advent, a great yearning for God arose in my soul. My spirit rushed toward God with all its might" (Diary of St. Faustina, 180)

As we travel with Mary and Joseph, we experience anew what it is to be poor, what it is to be without a home, what it is to be rejected. And yet we also experience in these trials a profound joy in the expectation of the One who is to come.

This week, day by day, we'll silence our distracted hearts by focusing on Jesus, in the womb of Mary. Let's repeat, "Come, Lord Jesus, hidden in the womb of Mary!"
mmwj

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