This Advent you have got to figure out a way to stay fully awake!

We are now entering into this wonderful season of Advent. It really is supposed to be a time of retreat for our Church. That means for us, as Catholics, we are supposed to actually retreat a little bit from the craziness of life. This allows a holy time of entering into the mysteries for our Faith.

There are ultimately Three Advents:
The First Advent was 2000 years ago when we were waiting for Christ to come into the world. During Advent, we remember that Christ came into our world. The Second Advent is the present moment, waiting for Christ to enter right now into our hearts, and The Third Advent, is the one we heard so strikingly in The Gospel today. The end of time, when Christ will come again into our world.

What I would like to focus on in this homily is the present Advent. How can we experience God right now, in the present moment? I do not know about you, but sometimes my days are on autopilot, and I am crazy. Sometimes I am halfway through my day, and I think, “Man, have I even prayed? Have I even thought about God as I have been doing all of this?”

The other night I was out with a few friends, and we were all doing some reflecting. First of all, how wonderful our families are, but also sometimes how crazy families can be. One of my friends came from out of town. They had to stay with their parents for Thanksgiving weekend. You can imagine what that might have been like, to stay with your parents, together with all of your children. We just went around and shared stories of different struggles that are going on in each of our families.

One of them said something very interesting. She said, “I try to tell my children that this might be the last time we see your grandfather.” Her father is 80 years old now. They go to Cincinnati and stay with them. “I try to tell them to enjoy every moment because this may be the last time we see him.” The reality is that we don’t know the day nor the hour when the end will come.

Jesus says to us, “Stay awake!” That is what I would like to reflect on during this Advent Season. How do we stay awake? How do we constantly take in the moments of our lives that are so beautiful?

In praying with this, I was reminded of a wonderful book by Ann Voskamp. She wrote a book called, “One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are.” It was on the New York Times Best Seller’s list for over 60 weeks in a row. I came across it a couple of years ago. I would like to read you just a little meditation that she wrote on this whole idea of how to stay awake. How to constantly stay awake and enjoy all of the grace in the moment.

She isn’t 24 hours old yet,
Still that heaven scent upon her skin.
When I pull her close and whisper right into her ears
Whisper into her ears the meaning of life
The one thing she needs to know before she’s as old as I am
As messed up as much as I have
Moments. . .I tell her
Moments… this is all we have
Microscopic, fleeting moments
Her eyelashes flutter in dreams
And I wonder
How many moments of my life have my eyes been wide open?
But I’ve been rushing, racing, sleeping right through life.

How many of the popsicle days and run and twirl and spin days
How many of the moments of melting ice cream, and crazy laughter
Dangling bare feet
And the setting sun igniting the wonder of now

Someone wake me up
To the beating of wings and splashing of water
The setting of fog at twilight
The way the leaves and the childhood slip away in the woods
Torched with the last of summer
I wanna tell her this

You have got to figure out a way to stay fully awake!
Time is blurring by and everyone is slipping past
And how do we wake to the moments
How do we stop living like life is an emergency?
Something to be sped wildly through
Life isn’t an emergency!
How do we start believing that life can be carried only in the hands of the unhurried?
A bubble held in all

How do we stop wolfing down life?
Because life is our only dessert
Too brief too sweet to delectable to hurry
To live like a boy I once knew
Pause between bites
To wiggle his one loose tooth and whisper I love you mom.
And all this… all this
All these moments
All these are for you
Isn’t that the voice that we have to learn to hear?
The voice that is telling the whole world that the Earth under you and the rain over you and all the stars spinning all around you
This is for you, for you, FOR YOU

Your true love smile and nap in a patch of light
And the whir of bike spokes and the wild rose on the sill
And that one great puff over flickering candles
These are all for you.

What if we really figured it out?
That gratitude for the seemingly small and insignificant.
This is the seed that plants the giant miracle in the midst of it all

So count the ways that he loves you
A thousand more
Never stop
So that when you wake in the morning you can’t help unfold your hands to the heavens
And though you grieve and though you wonder
Though the world is ugly it is beautiful
And though time moves on its moments are holy
And though the planet spins… a blur
You can slow and you can wake and you can trust and you can pay attention to the moments with this offering of thanks
Because this is how you will spend your one life well
Receiving each moment for what it really is
Holy
Ordinary
Amazing
Grace
A gift

This Advent, you need to find a way to stay fully awake! You never know if this is the last Advent you will have. How do we do it? How do we stay fully awake? I am going to offer you just a couple of examples how we can do this in our Faith.

One of the prayers that I love so much is called the Examen Prayer. It is a
prayer by Saint Ignatius. Saint Ignatius said that this is the most important prayer that we could pray. If we were to drop any other prayer from our day, this one should be the last one to go because it helps us to stay awake. I am going to be presenting The Examen Prayer every Tuesday in Advent beginning this Tuesday, November 29 at 7:30 p.m. It is the prayer that teaches us to stay awake throughout the day. How to be aware of all the moments of grace and of the passing of time.

I also encourage you to come and spend some time in Adoration. This will be like a retreat for you. We do Adoration every Sunday and Friday.

Take some time at home for prayer. Allow yourself to light that Advent Candle at home and spend some time in prayer and solitude.

I am also going to be doing a Poustinia Retreat. It is 24 hours of silence where all you do is read the word of God and fast on bread and water. That is on Friday, December 9, and Saturday, December 10, 2016.

What I encourage you to do is find a way to “stay awake” this Advent. You have to stay awake. Because it is in “staying awake” that we can actually prepare our hearts to receive Christ in the present moment. Whatever way you may do it, and we will probably all do it a different way, make this a time of retreat. Really allow yourself to enter into the season of wonder and awe and do whatever you can this Advent to stay fully awake.