Friday, December 5, 2008

Passionate Advent Spirituality

Passionate Advent spirituality is all about longing with a stubborn and persistent hope. There is nothing bland or boring about it. God has done something in this world through the birth of Christ ... and God is not finished doing it. The miracle of the incarnation changed everything. The coming of Emmanuel means God is with us. That keeps changing everything as we continue to live into the miracle.

Carlo Carretto writes, in The God Who Comes:

"The best metaphor for our world of today is astronauts speeding through the cosmos, but with their life-supporting capsule pierced by a meteorite fragment. But the Church resembles Mary and Joseph traveling from Egypt to Nazareth on a donkey, holding in their arms the weakness and poverty of the Child Jesus: God incarnate."

When we hold in our arms what is profoundly alternative, it brings healing and wholeness in our world of brokenness, anxiety, and pain. All in God's time. God is doing something with us, one layer of grace at a time.