Only in retrospect do I realize that helping my father was more in my interest than his. What I experienced then as a penance was in truth an invitation to grow and mature as a person, and I remain grateful that he was not content to let me sit inside playing Nintendo.
He wanted me, I believe, to have the experience of working alongside him because he knew it was good for me. He wanted me to participate in the effort of decorating our house, however modestly, in preparation for the birth of Christ.
The season of Advent begins each year with a call to remain alert and to repent in order to recognize the Lord. To think of these next weeks as a penitential season, not unlike Lent, may run contrary to the sweetness we typically associate with Advent and that comes through in the Christmas music we hear all around us.
But Advent’s graces rouse us, as my father’s request for help did me, from the selfishness and spiritual sleepiness that impede our spiritual maturation. In Advent, we are invited to deepen our relationship with our heavenly Father. We are his children, and he wants us to know him and to be ready to stand before his Son when he returns in glory.
-Father Sebastian White, O.P.
I am the LORD, your God,
who grasp your right hand;
It is I who say to you, “Fear not,
I will help you.”
Fear not, O worm Jacob,
O maggot Israel;
I will help you, says the LORD;
your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.
I will make of you a threshing sledge,
sharp, new, and double-edged,
To thresh the mountains and crush them,
to make the hills like chaff.
When you winnow them, the wind shall carry them off
and the storm shall scatter them.
But you shall rejoice in the LORD,
and glory in the Holy One of Israel.The afflicted and the needy seek water in vain,
their tongues are parched with thirst.
I, the LORD, will answer them;
I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.
I will open up rivers on the bare heights,
and fountains in the broad valleys;
I will turn the desert into a marshland,
and the dry ground into springs of water.
I will plant in the desert the cedar,
acacia, myrtle, and olive;
I will set in the wasteland the cypress,
together with the plane tree and the pine,
That all may see and know,
observe and understand,
That the hand of the LORD has done this,
the Holy One of Israel has created it.Isaiah 41:13-20
