Ann Rennie, Companion in Mission from Australia, shares an article that she has written for her parish newsletter. Ann teaches English and Religious Education at Genazzano FCJ College
There would be no Christmas without Christ. That is what we need to place front and centre as we join with family and friends in festive fellowship. However, we can get caught up in a frenzy as everything speeds up towards the end of the year. There are deadlines and to-do lists and stocking fillers and what to eat on the day itself. There are gifts to buy, farewells to staff, office parties. There are also annual reviews, school reports, all sorts of assessments about how the year has been and where it fits in the unfolding story of our collective lives.
The season of Advent provides us with an antidote to the demands that seem to overwhelm. The writer, Karen Beattie, suggests that what we really need to do is be quiet and attentive enough to discern what God is already doing in our lives. We do not have to rush and push and plan manically if we allow ourselves this gift, this present of the present, where we have time to commune meaningfully with God as the Advent calendar of days counts down. We also need to remember that the gift of ourselves means more to our loved ones than all the tinsel and trimmings and the latest product from Apple.
Advent is a time to slow, pause, reflect and wait; a time to be in the prayerful moment when we look into our hearts and offer what we can to our God and our community. It is a time of the quiet spiritual adventure that restores us, providing that grace-filled balance, that recognition that we wait, as Mary did millennia ago, in great expectation. Advent carves out a sacred time and space as we prepare for the Christ child, God in the manger, who became one of us and who will come again in a time of his own making. As we remember that holy night in Bethlehem, let us find a Bethlehem in our own homes and hearts.
In Australia, we celebrate Christmas in summer. Over these few short weeks, we adopt a casual camaraderie that is not so apparent once the working year takes hold. We are a little less stressed during the holidays and have time to respond to conversations rather more fully than we do in the haste and hurry of snatched greetings and perfunctory manners of our often overstretched lives.
Perhaps, in 2025, we might try to slow down, wait and listen a little more to others. No big resolutions that fade out by the end of January, just some gentle, life-affirming tweaking where we can feel better about ourselves and our relationships.
In summer the song sings itself writes William Carlos Williams. As one year ends and the next is filled with promise, we enjoy long blue days in the company of loved ones; perhaps we are camping at the foreshore or visiting relatives or staying at a holiday home or just mooching around the house pleasing ourselves. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote of bathing as summer’s sovereign good. He must have imagined our great Australian summers and the cavalcade of life on the beach exhibited with dare and with down-dolphinry and bellbright bodies. What a joyous picture postcard of Australians at play!
As we ponder the Christmas story, we are reminded that the world is made new every time a child is born.
As we ponder the Christmas story, we are reminded that the world is made new every time a child is born. A child offers hope and enters the future, their special story waiting to be written into the cosmic almanac. We pray before a nativity scene and think of the swaddled infant Jesus and that first fateful star-spangled night. We sing, shakily or at full throttle, in tune or somewhere near it, the hymns and carols we know and love.
Our voices are raised to heaven as we sing out Joy to the World!
Read other contributions by Ann Rennie on our website. Learn about the FCJ Companions in Mission.
Photos from Adobe Stock
