Reflection for the Vigil of the First Sunday of Advent 2009
November 28, 2009

by Anne Shepard, OSB

Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life, and that day catch you by surprise like a trap...Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man. (Luke 21)

The Church gives us four weeks to wake up, to prepare for the coming of Christ. The season of hope, of waiting, of vigilance and of preparation is significant for us year after year.

Two stories come to mind when I think of preparation. One involved Sister Mary Alice Guilfoil. Mary Alice liked to cook. She was never a fancy cook, but she prepared good meals and in the spirit of most mid-westerners, she always served more than plenty. The week before she agreed to come to the Mount to live out her last weeks, she told me she wanted to cook a meal and invite her sister, Gloria, and her nephew, Justin. She wanted to prepare a roast for dinner with all the works, potatoes, carrots, salad, rolls and pie. That was fine with me. When I called her sister to tell her she objected vehemently.
“She can’t cook. What if she burns herself or falls in the kitchen?”
“What if she does?” I asked.
“She could hurt herself!”
“What if she does? She wants one last joyful time with you. Not being able to cook for you would hurt her even more than a burn or a fall.”

And so Gloria and I talked some more. We ended up having a great meal, a great time and left the next day to move to Atchison. Preparing. We know we are going to die and we know that the end of life brings with it a sense of urgency and a sense that every day counts. I was reminded while reading one of the biblical commentaries that “the end holds no terror for those who know God’s love because they know who determines the reality that lies beyond what we can know here and now.”

The second story involved Shirley. Shirley was a former street woman who would come to visit us at Peace House for supper at the end of the month. Often she stayed for vespers. She used to wear a heavy woolen plaid shirt with a front breast pocket. She had a notebook and papers bulging out of the pocket. She was always writing notes to herself. After prayers one night during Advent, that is, after praying the psalms and listening to the reading and writing notes, she stood up to leave and announced, “Well I decided I am going to kill him now.” We were all surprised, to say the least. Mary Alice had the best rapport with Shirley, so she took time to talk to her and calm her down. Needless to say, Shirley did not kill anyone, at least not that we knew of anyway. Later, after Christmas when Mary Alice was in Nicaragua, Shirley came by the house to give us a tuna casserole that she made. The next day I received a call to go to visit her in a hospital in Independence, Missouri. Shirley was found unconscious laying in the snow after having a major stroke. The only phone number she had on her person was ours at Peace House. Preparing to serve others, not knowing what the next day will bring, is what Shirley did most of the time. While she was mentally disturbed and sometimes would have violent delusions when she was off her medicine, she taught us much about giving from her simple supply and about preparing and wanting to give joy to those who loved her.

We begin this new liturgical year listening to and reflecting on the gospel as written by St. Luke. We are in for a year of readings from the evangelist most known for writing about the compassion and mercy of Christ, most known for his inclusion of women, most concerned about the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of the disciples, most concerned about the power of prayer. Luke tells us that Jesus was hard on those of us he calls followers, his disciples. Jesus wants us to respond to him with a strong faith and radical detachment from material possessions, and in doing so, Jesus gives us peace. (Personally, I really love the gospel of Luke.)

Luke warns us to be on our guard lest our spirits become bloated with indulgence and drunkenness and worldly care. We get weighed down with dissipation, worry or anxieties of life, but we are assured that God is near. We are asked to be vigilant, to be people of prayer.

Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man. Reading Jesus’ words on the coming of the Son of Man as a reflection of the God-ordered world in which we live, we find the assurance that in the worst of times the Son of Man is near. We stand before the Christ waiting for the reign of God.

In her most recent book, The Liturgical Year, Joan Chittister reminds us that “Advent is a time of preparing, a time of waiting. It is while waiting for the coming of the reign 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.

“We come to realize more and more each year how great are our blessings, how beautiful is a life lived in concert with the Jesus who came to show us the way. We learn the joy of anticipation, the joy of delighting in the presence of God all around us, the joy of looking for the second coming of Christ, the joy of living in the surety of even more life in the future.”

May God find us vigilant in prayer these weeks. May we prepare the coming of the Son of Man by reaching out to others, doing the loving thing even if it may seem impractical. May we divest ourselves of our excess and give from our hearts. May we bring about the reign of God in simple concrete ways. Therein will lie our strength.

© 2009 Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica
Atchison, Kansas