The Assistant Director of Spiritual Life for the School, Mr. Dan McQuillan, recently began sending out to the School community reflections collected for the season of Advent. As we enter more deeply into the season of Advent, we provide some of these reflections here to help our readers, “enter more fully into the mystery of God's nativity.” As Dan has expressed to the School, we also express to our readers the “hope they will serve as a moment of peace and prayer in your day.” 

Nativity Scene (Science Building)

The Meaning of Advent

The meaning of the expression "advent" therefore includes that of visitatio, which simply and specifically means "visit"; in this case it is a question of a visit from God: he enters my life and wishes to speak to me. In our daily lives we all experience having little time for the Lord and also little time for ourselves. We end by being absorbed in "doing". Is it not true that activities often absorb us and that society with its multiple interests monopolizes our attention? Is it not true that we devote a lot of time to entertainment and to various kinds of amusement? At times we get carried away. Advent, this powerful liturgical season that we are beginning, invites us to pause in silence to understand a presence. It is an invitation to understand that the individual events of the day are hints that God is giving us, signs of the attention he has for each one of us. How often does God give us a glimpse of his love! To keep, as it were, an "interior journal" of this love would be a beautiful and salutary task for our life! Advent invites and stimulates us to contemplate the Lord present. Should not the certainty of his presence help us see the world with different eyes? Should it not help us to consider the whole of our life as a "visit", as a way in which he can come to us and become close to us in every situation?

(Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI; gospel - Matthew 4:18-22)

Tabernacle tapestry by Esther Puccinelli

To Be Not Afraid

A group of doctors from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston went to Haiti after the earthquake in 2010. A young woman oncologist told the story of being totally overwhelmed by the situation in a very primitive tent hospital. There was a seemingly endless barrage of impossible medical traumas without proper medicines or instruments. And at one point she became paralyzed by her helplessness and fear. She was just then at the bedside of a little boy, whose leg had been amputated a few days earlier. It was all too much for her. Suddenly unable to function any longer, she began sobbing uncontrollably, her face hidden in her hands. It was then that this little boy about six or seven years old, saw her tears and her trembling and with a smile lifted his head from his pillow and encouraged her to move on to some other kids nearby whom he knew needed her attention more than he did. And remarkably she found she was able to do so. It was a numinous moment for her. For in that moment the power of death, the horror and hopelessness and fear were broken open. She witnessed in that little boy the triumph of love over pain and fear. (See Boston Globe, Spring 2010.) 

Now in Advent we look for the little hand of God beckoning us not to be afraid. Whatever our fears - great or seemingly insignificant, great traumas or smaller nagging ones - Jesus our kind Lord notices and offers us accompaniment and a way out. You and I are more than our fears. This is why he comes for us, to save us from all that would paralyze and hurt us. We can hope, we can dream with Isaiah and be “confident and unafraid,” daring to discover our “strength and courage” in the Lord, our Savior, and so come to draw the water of hope and life and joy flowing from his wounded open side. Jesus comes to show us that we are deeply, indescribably loved and even liked by our Father God, a God who is very interested in us, on our side. We are loved more than we can imagine. 

(from a monk of St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts; gospel - Matthew 15:29-37)
 

Our Lady Altar, Church of St. Gregory the Great

The Right Sort of People

It was the custom in the ancient world, long before engraved announcements or phones or texting or email, that when a baby was born to a respectable family, messengers would be sent out to announce the birth to the “right sort of people,” friends of the family’s social class in the best neighborhoods of the city. And so heavenly messengers announce Jesus’ birth to shepherds. Notice who gets invited to visit the baby. The very poor, these “lowest-esteemed laborers,” receive the birth announcement of God’s own Son. They are the “right sort of people” for our God, people of God’s own social standing. One scholar remarks that this open “traffic” between heaven and earth is the great sign of the awesomeness of the event of the Nativity. The heavens are opened, angels are everywhere. There is now an easy interchange, for God’s dream of intimacy with his creation has come true in Mary’s womb. Through Mary Heaven has been irrevocably wedded to Earth in Christ Jesus. And the right sort of people must be informed. Could it be that they are people like us? 

(from a monk of St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, homily of December 31, 2020; gospel - Matthew 9:27-31)