Fr. Michael Casagram – Presentation on Advent – November 2022

+THE SEASON OF ADVENT                      LCG 2022

Greetings and peace in the Lord Jesus! Let us take a moment of quiet prayer..   Once again I am grateful to be able to share with you some reflections on Advent and I would like to do so in a more spontaneous way. I would also like to leave this sharing open to questions that may arise either during or after my reflections. This coming Season of Advent is always a special time of grace.

Let me suggest that this season sets the tone for the whole liturgical year. It is an effort to have all our Christian lives grounded in the mystery of the Incarnation, in God’s great love for us in taking on our human condition, sharing in all that we experience except for sin. I may have shared with you already that Ronald Rolheiser, in one of his books suggests that we are only beginning to understand the implications of what we have all accepted as part of our faith, the fact that in the fullness of time, the eternal Word of God took on our human reality and became flesh. Google the following:

Incarnation – God is with Us – Ron Rolheiser

So much of our life, it seems to me, is realizing the full impact of what we have heard and know by faith, that through Mary’s acceptance of the message of the angel Gabriel, God’s eternal Word took on our human flesh, entered fully into our human condition and struggles.

The mystery of the Incarnation was dear to the early Cistercians and in one sense, the most important mystery of our Christian faith for them. The reason for this, it seems to me, is that this mystery brought home to them the closeness of God in their everyday lives….

I have shared with many of you a saying from Meister Eckhart that

 “We are all meant to be mothers of God…for God is always needing to be born.”

The Advent season is inviting us ever more deeply into this this awareness of the closeness of God, the way God seeks to be incarnated in our own lives.

Words of Scripture from John’s gospel are becoming more and more meaningful to me in chapter 15:5 where Jesus tells his disciples that without Him “we can do nothing.”

An article someone recently sent to me entitled What Really Counts at Liturgy by a Gerard Austin, OP who taught and was chairman of the Department of Theology at Cath. University of America has brought home to me the same sense of the closeness of God, how Christ’s life is to flow in our very veins.

Here is the Article:

Austin Vol 9.pdf)

Look at some of the quotes from the article.

Advent is all about allowing ourselves to become more and more one with our loving God, opening our hearts, our whole being to the transforming presence of the Holy Spirit so that like Mary, God may become incarnate in and through us.

As lay Cistercians you carry your faith into many aspects of today’s society that a monk in a monastery will never experience. God wishes to transform every domain of human life, to take on, through your own lives, all of human life. Saying “yes” with Mary, allows the mystery of the Incarnation to bear its full fruit in today’s world.