Already but not yet.Ìý

It feels like the end of the year but our students have 3 more days of school and our staff a few weeks longer.

The shops would have us thinking it is already Christmas, yet we have a month to go.

The season of Advent, which started yesterday with the first Sunday of Advent, is the season of ‘already but not yet’ a season to wait. There can be many different emotions connected to waiting, feelings of dread, or impatience to excitement. The waiting of the Advent season is to wait in joyful hope for the coming of Christ. We know that the presence of Jesus is already amongst us but has promised to come again. The image of a pregnant Mary waiting to give birth is a beautiful metaphor for the longing, the imagining the anticipating that Advent represents. As we wait in expectation, it is a time to prepare our hearts, just as we prepare our homes for the Christmas feast. Yesterday’s second reading gives us some advice on how to do this. St Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians wrote, ‘make more and more progress in the kind of life you were meant to live: the life that God wants, as you learnt from us, and as you are already living it.’ This statement reminds us that this is within our reach. An Advent way of life is simple and yet profound. We are called to look for the seeds of hope in the smallest moments, the darkest times, the most challenging situations. We are called to free ourselves from all that would distract us from recognising God’s grace at work in our lives. This can be so difficult at this time when we are tired from the year just been and yet there still seems so much to do. Advent rituals, moments of daily pause or prayer, and acts of kindness to others are when we can make room for God to turn the ordinary into extraordinary.Ìý

Finally, I share with you this Advent reflection which I feel has a powerful message about opening our hearts and minds to be ready.

One year during Advent, our parish priest invited us to write down on a slip of paper a word that named something that is keeping us from getting closer to God. He suggested it might be a fear, a resentment, or an attitude that shuts us off from the love God so wants to give. We were to fold the paper over a few times, grasp it tightly in one hand, and make a fist around it while he began to preach on the Scripture readings.Ìý

After a minute, my hand began to ache. At two minutes, my hand grew numb. At three minutes, the hand started shaking uncontrollably. He told us to open our hands. I found how hard it was to do that. After grasping the piece of paper so tightly, my hand had stiffened and seemed to have a mind of its own.

I can’t remember what else he said that day, but I have never forgotten that lesson. Hold on to resentment, fear, or bad attitude long enough and you will become paralysed.

As I begin Advent every year now, I start with the realisation that I need to let go of any and all spiritual impediments I’m hanging onto. Advent is a time of receiving. It’s hard to receive if your hands are clasped shut. So I begin Advent once again with this prayer: Holy Spirit of God, open my hands, my eyes, my ears, all my senses, and all of my heart so I will be ready to receive your Advent blessings.

And then I sit there in the Advent darkness, my hands open before me, waiting on God.

As we come to the end of the year we have marked this time with some of our own rituals including our annual awards celebration including a College Captains’ handover and a belated Brigidine Day. During our Brigidine Day liturgy, we will acknowledge and farewell staff who will be leaving us at the end of the year.

The following staff are retiring after many years of service to the College. We acknowledge with gratitude the impact they will have collectively had on the lives of many young women. I also recognise that many of these staff members gave so much to the College, often instrumental in developing or establishing programs with limited resources as the College grew to the size it is today. This Friday we will host our first Past Staff Luncheon which will be a chance to gather, share stories and celebrate with gratitude the contribution of these retiring and past staff as well as providing an opportunity to reconnect and share the dreams we have for the future. We thank our retiring staff Richard Jones, Louise Davies and Ian Callahan.

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