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| Eastern Point Retreat House by John Predmore, SJ |
Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent
Audio for Homily
I’m just back from a week’s retreat
at Eastern Point Retreat House in Gloucester.
There were about 40 other priests on retreat with me while I was there.
It was a “directed retreat” which means
you’re assigned a spiritual director from the retreat house staff
and you meet with your director for about a half hour each day.
There’s also Mass every day at 5:00 in the afternoon.
And aside from your daily conversation with your director
and singing and praying out loud at Mass,
the rest of the week is kept -- in silence.
A week of silence? Yes, a week of blessed, peaceful silence.
The silence isn’t a penance or a test:
it’s a mutually agreed upon atmosphere
intended to create an environment in which each retreatant,
at any point in the day or night,
is free to pray, reflect, read, write, and rest --
and simply listen for the voice of God, without distraction.
Did I hear God’s voice speaking out loud to me in the silence last week?
Not once.
Did God speak to my heart from his heart last week? Yes, indeed.
Am I going to share with you all I believe I heard God say to me?
Not on your life!
The heart of my retreat was simply this:
the peace and comfort of spending time with the Lord
and coming to know afresh God’s love for me.
All of us too easily forget (and sometimes we just don’t believe)
that God loves us: fully, freely and with forgiveness.
What I found this week on retreat
was a renewal of my faith in God’s love for me
and a rediscovery of the quiet joy that comes
from simply knowing that God is present to me.
You know, as I approach my 65th birthday this coming spring,
I think a lot about the span of my life
and how more of my life is behind me than ahead of me.
That’s a sobering thought.
So I wonder, often, and pray, too, about what the rest of my life will be.
I brought that question on retreat with me
and I brought it to the silence, sitting alone with the Lord,
listening for his heart to speak to my heart.
About half way through the week I told my spiritual director:
“I think this retreat is an Orientation Week for the rest of my life!”
My life, your life, is heading somewhere,
somewhere far beyond growing up, or the next job, or retirement.
Our lives, yours and mine, are heading towards God -
God is our final destination.
This past week on retreat was a time for me
to orient the ship of my life towards that harbor where I hope,
one day, to find the haven, the refuge of God’s peace forever.
I didn’t make any big plans or decisions this past week,
it was just a graced time to ask the Lord to show me if
I’m heading in the right direction, going where he’s leading me,
walking in his love.
My hope is that I’ve still got a good 20 years or so
before dropping my anchor for the last time in the Lord’s harbor.
But I need and I’m so grateful for a week like the one just past
to help me see where I’ve been, where I am and where I’m going -
and to recognize again who’s the real Captain of my life’s voyage.
You know - and this isn’t stretching things - do you know that ADVENT
should be a kind of retreat time for all of us?
We make a mistake, a big one, if we think Advent is only about
getting ready to celebrate Christmas.
It is that - but much more than that, too.
Advent is a season for remembering Christ’s first coming
some 2,000 years ago, when God’s Word became flesh in Jesus,
born in Bethlehem.
And it’s a season to prepare for Christ’s second coming -
but that’s not on Christmas day,
no matter how faithfully we wait until then
to put the baby Jesus in the manger scene!
Jesus WILL come again: at the end of time
and Advent is meant to remind and prepare us for that.
Of course, even before then, Jesus will come to each of us
at the end of our lives’ journeys.
And that’s a sobering thought.
Advent should help us prepare for that,
when Jesus will come again for each of us to take us from this life.
Most of us will spend plenty of time between now and December 25
getting ready to celebrate Christmas.
What if we also set aside some quiet time to sit with the Lord,
to refresh ourselves in his love,
to rekindle our relationship with him,
to look, with his help, at the course our life’s voyage is taking,
to ask him to orient us towards him, towards his love,
to the harbor of his peace?
You have just a few more than 500 hours
between now and Christmas Eve.
Can you find, will you make the time, for a little retreat with the Lord?
Just you and the Lord, speaking heart to heart?
It might be the best Christmas gift you receive this year.
And of course, there’s one more time the Lord comes to us:
here, at this altar, in the sacrifice of the Eucharist.
As surely as God’s Word became flesh, born of Mary in Bethlehem,
so do Christ’s Body and Blood become ours
in the sacrament of this table.
O come, let us be with him;
O come, let us receive him;
O come, let us adore him:
Christ, the Lord.
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It's good to have you back and even better to read how the retreat gave you time and that ever elusive quiet space to "re-orient".
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about that phrase "re-orient" and the link it made in my mind with how we are looking to the East for that star to guide us now in Advent, and how the sun always rises in the East. I think some altars face the East too.
Just as well about the not hearing voices part- you'd probably be carried off in a white van these days.:-)
Still, it;s lovely to know that the heart speaks to heart part happened.
Blessings
I'm so glad we have a way to read and hear your homilies if we missed them on Sunday. This is a remarkable one. I want to print it out and keep it with me.
ReplyDeleteMeighan
It was a gift to read your homily from yesterday's Mass! I could feel my stress level retreating to "normal" as I read your words and took them into my mind and heart.
ReplyDeleteAdvent is indeed a time for reflection and renewal and understanding of God's love for us.