Advent Waiting

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.

1 John 3:2-3 ESV

Advent waiting is the prayerful longing for God’s Holy Spirit to pour upon us. In preparation for the coming church and secular year, we yearn for the transformation of our hearts. Advent waiting is gratefulness for Christ’s first coming while eagerly expecting Christ’s second coming in glorious majesty. Advent waiting converts our personalities as we await Christ’s physical appearance in the skies.

In this present world, we endure while calmly trusting the Holy Spirit to be Christ in us in the midst of a fallen and decadent world.  In hope, we look forward to seeing our blessed Savior face-to-face. Oscar Romero, martyred archbishop of San Salvador, points to the Blessed Virgin Mary as a model for Advent waiting:

Even when all despaired
at the hour when Christ was dying on the cross,
Mary, serene,
awaited the hour of the resurrection.
Mary is the symbol
of the people who suffer oppression and injustice.
Theirs is the calm suffering
that awaits the resurrection.
It is Christian suffering,
the suffering of the church,
which does not accept the present injustices
but awaits without rancor the moment
when the Risen One will return
to give us the redemption we await.

Oscar Romero, The Violence of Love, trans., James R. Brockman, S. J. (Farmington, Penn.: The Bruderhof Foundation, 2003), 27.

The season of Advent begins this Sunday, November 28^th.