“May the Lord make you increase and abound in love, for one another and for all,
just as we have for you,
so as to strengthen your hearts,
to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father
at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones. Amen” (1 Thes 3:12)
We heard these words yesterday in the 2nd reading for the first week of Advent. And it got me thinking. Something about loving each other makes our hearts stronger, and something about loving each other also moves us along on the path towards becoming “blameless in holiness before our God and Father.” We are so wired for relationships, that in learning to love, our holiness is perfected.
And yet this path of love and holiness is arduous, it requires strength, and more over – to reach love’s real fulness, we must call on God Himself – may the Lord make you increase and abound in love!
How is this connected to the season of Advent? Advent is a season of longing. Over the next few weeks, through the readings from the Old Testament, we will harken back to the generations and generations of the Jewish people who longed for the Messiah, who prayed for and awaited His coming. We will relive this waiting. We will hear and anticipate that soon the longing will be over, and we will hear the call to prepare ourselves for that moment, when our longings will be answered by the arrival of God Himself, divine Love Incarnate in a human child. As we sang this morning in mass:
“There is a longing in our hearts, O Lord,
for you to reveal yourself to us.
There is a longing in our hearts
for love we only find in you, our God.”
That song, that second reading, and indeed this whole season, call me to reflect on my own relationships, the practice of love in my life, and the longings of my heart. What an incredible daily challenge it is to love well! And I’ve really begun to wonder if anyone can love well without God. I suppose you could say that since love is God, anyone who knows love knows God, and I believe that this is true. And at the same time, it is also seems that knowing Divine Love as a Person unlocks an incredibly rich experience of relationship that is not possible when love is related to as an idea. We are wired for relationships, to relate person to person, in an I and Thou relationship (M. Buber).
It’s such a challenge to hold on to our selves and also stay connected to each other in mature love. What depth and breadth of love is possible when we aren’t connected upwards, upwards to God? I think it makes a difference. It makes a difference whether we direct the longings of our hearts to an idea or to a Person.
“If it becomes an inner experience for you that we are not surrendering to fate, not to an “it” but to a personal, endlessly loving Father, then we have a position that cannot be shaken by anything in the world. Then we will see everything, the greatest and the smallest, the most pleasant and the most difficult, in a very different perspective. Eternity reaches into our transitory thinking, loving and living, and our little heart expands into endless universes.” Fr Joseph Kentenich
So here’s my Advent Challenge for you: I invite you to spend some time this first week of Advent reflecting on the longings of your own heart. What cries and petitions arise from your soul? And what longings do you hear from your loved ones? Your family? What are the longings of your community? Of your nation?
And then I invite you to give your longings to the Father, to bring all your petitions to His Heart. In this way, we may tether our longings in Heaven, so that they may be fulfilled on earth. In this way, we may increasingly enter into a loving relationship with God the Father, who wrote that longing into our hearts, that we might find our way home through these wintery months to find rest in His warmth, the gift of Himself to the world in Christ Jesus.
Dear Blessed Mother, help us direct the longings of hearts to God, that our “little hearts” might expand in love as yours did when you sang your Magnificat. Help us to order our inner life this Advent season, so that our souls may find a stillness and emptiness able to receive Christ. Amen.
(There is a Longing lyrics:)
There is a longing in our hearts, O Lord,
for you to reveal yourself to us.
There is a longing in our hearts
for love we only find in you, our God.
1. For justice, for freedom,
for mercy, hear our prayer.
In sorrow, in grief,
be near, hear our prayer, O God.
2. For wisdom, for courage,
for comfort, hear our prayer.
In weakness, in fear,
be near, hear our prayer, O God.
3. For healing, for wholeness,
for new life, hear our prayer.
In sickness, in death,
be near, hear our prayer, O God.
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