Advent Lights

the first 4 weeks of our new seasonal year, one candle each for hope, peace, joy, and love. This liturgical tradition helps us prepare for our God, born to us as a humble, vulnerable, and fragile baby. Our tender and infinite God wants to enter our world and be with us.

The Advent season calls us to our own poverty and humility. It invites us to empty ourselves and make room for God: to make room for hope in times of despair, to be peace in the places of struggle, to bring comfort to suffering and pain, and to love and share with a starving world.

We begin by lighting our candles. May they light the way for hope, peace, joy, and love to find welcome and home in us and in our world.

If You Want

If
you want
the Virgin will come walking down the road
pregnant with the holy,
and say,
“I need shelter for the night, please take me inside your heart,
my time is so close.”

Then, under the roof of your soul, you will witness the sublime
intimacy, the divine, the Christ
taking birth
forever,

as she grasps your hand for help, for each of us
is the midwife of God, each of us. Yet there, under the dome of your being does creation come into existence eternally,

through your womb, dear pilgrim—
the sacred womb in your soul, as God grasps our arms for help;

for each of us is
His beloved servant
never far.

If you want, the Virgin will come walking
down the street pregnant
with Light
and sing. 

–St. John of the Cross  (1542 – 1591).