The function of Advent is to remind us what we’re waiting for as we go through life too busy with things that do not matter to remember the things that do. When year after year we hear the same scriptures and the same hymns of longing for the life to come, of which this one is only its shadow, it becomes impossible to forget the refrains of the soul.

 

Advent relieves us of our commitment to the frenetic in a fast-paced world. It slows us down. It makes us think. It makes us look beyond today to the “great tomorrow” of life. Without Advent, we could be so frantic with trying to consume and control this life that we fail to develop within ourselves a taste for the spirit that does not die and will not slip through our fingers like melted snow.

 

It is while waiting for the coming of the Beginning on December 17, you can listen to the O Antiphons as sung by the Sisters’ choir at Mount Saint Benedict Monastery, Erie, PA. Click here. (O Antiphons will be on the front page.)eign of God, Advent after Advent, that we come to realize that its coming depends on us. What we do will either hasten or slow, sharpen or dim our own commitment to do our part to bring it.

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Jesus is the fullness of Advent’s “O Antiphons,” those piercing prophetic revelations of Isaiah telling us exactly who this is who has come, who is with us now. Who is yet to come again. He is Wisdom, Adonai, Flower of Jesse’s stem, Key of David, Radiant Dawn, God of all the Earth, Emmanuel—God with us.

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             —from The Liturgical Year (Thomas Nelson), by Joan Chittister

Beginning on December 17, you can listen to the O Antiphons as sung by the Sisters’ choir at Mount Saint Benedict Monastery, Erie, PA. Click here. (O Antiphons will be on the front page.)