First Sunday of Advent

“Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come.” Mk: 13:3

Isaiah, one of the greatest Old Testament prophets, spoke these words thousands of years ago:
“Why do you let us wander, O Lord, from your ways, and harden our hearts so that we no longer fear you? … No ear has ever heard, no eye has ever seen, any God but you doing such deeds for those who wait for him.”

Watching. Waiting. Remembering. Returning.

All of this – and more – is what the season of Advent is all about.

This year, however, is different. We have recently undergone a deadly pandemic.

Consequently, the command to “Be watchful! Be Alert!” has become all the timelier and more urgent.

Caring for ourselves and others spiritually during this health emergency commanded us to create a sacred toolkit to assist us in our journey through this time of trouble and deepening anxiety.

Here is a list of thirteen recommendations offered by Alexander Kern, Director of the Center for Spirituality at Northeastern University, to help us during this time of recovery from being “watchful” and “alert” due to a raging pandemic:

1. Carve out 5-10 minutes each day to meditate or practice mindfulness or immerse yourself in contemplative prayer.
2. Focus your awareness on something enduring or beautiful in your surroundings. Discover again the realities for which you are grateful and in which you find again a sense of awe and wonder.
3. Acknowledge your fears, anxieties, concerns. Offer them up in prayer. Write them in your journal if you use one. Share them with others. Feel what you feel, honor it, and know that it is not the final word.
4. Remember you are not alone. Ever. You are surrounded by care and support. Reach out.
5. Create and sustain community. Listen compassionately to those who are similarly burdened. Practice empathy. While the time of avoiding “close physical contact” has somewhat diminished, continue to stand with those people you care about and with those who have been most affected by this horrifying disease. Now, more than ever, check in on folks. Call your family as well as your long-lost friends.
6. Unplug, judiciously. While staying aware of developments, do not let the Coronavirus-chaos govern you. 
7. Practice kindness. There is a temptation in health scares to view others as potential threats. Remember we are all in this together. While practicing health guidelines and appropriate caution, remember to engage one another. Bring good deeds and good energy into the world in any way that you can.
8. Stay healthy through sleep, diet, exercise. See healing and wellness as part of your efforts to bring together mind, body, and spirit.
9. Make art. Discover, imagine, engage your hopes and fears, the beauty and ugliness of our world. Write. Paint. Sing. Dance.
10. Practice gratitude. In the face of crises, make note of the things for which you are grateful: your breath, the shade of the sky at dusk – or dawn. The gifts and strengths you have, other people in your life, the ability to laugh. A pet.
11. Connect with your spiritual, religious, humanist, cultural, or other communities. Find strength and solace and power in traditions, texts, rituals, practices, holy times and seasons – like Advent!
12. Pray as you are able, silently, through song, in readings, through ancestors. Remember the long view of history, the rhythms and cycles of nature, the invisible threads that connect us all.
13. Practice hope. Trust in the future and in our power to endure and persist, to live fully into the goodness that awaits us all.

 
The season of Advent has always been a time set aside by the Church to remind us of our need to “Be watchful! Be alert!”

It has always been a time to light candles as a means of remembering that we are called “out of darkness into the light.”

It has always been a time dedicated to singing songs that wake us up, praying prayers that call us to be vigilant, reading scripture passages that invite us to “get ready.”

It has also been a time to alert each of us to the need for interior renewal, and the need for actively reassessing our priorities.

The coming of the Christ Child at Christmas brings again a whole new way of seeing the world around us, as well as a whole new value system that confronts us, shakes us up, and demands a new kind of heart.

That’s why Jesus’ words in today’s gospel – “Be watchful! Be alert!” – jar us, and maybe even annoy us. They are words that stop us in our tracks, pull us out of a mood, and direct us to some very serious thinking.

Advent is an “on-call” time of the year alerting us to the need for interior review, and the need for actively reassessing our priorities.

In the end, the season of Advent has always been about highlighting our need to remember:
Remember that we are to become the light that dispels the darkness around us.
Remember that we are to become the place where God dwells – not just in Bethlehem, but in our hearts.

Remember that in the winters of our prayer lives, when there seems to be nothing but darkness and a situation of general frozenness, hold on, wait for God. He will come.
Remember that we are to “Be watchful! Be alert!”
 
Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.