Preparing the way for Christ – Advent.
“You will face that moment. But will it find you prepared already in its advent? That’s the thing to think about. We are in the advent of Christ’s coming. And I don’t mean Christmas, but your end. Our preparation for Christmas is a reminder to prepare for our end, our meeting Christ. Whether He comes with a trumpet blast or He comes with our death, we have to prepare. This is the Church saying, prepare. Repent. Live the gospel which means to be crucified with Christ. See the kingdom in God’s Heavenly glory. This is the advent because you don’t know when the end comes, but we should be prepared. God love you.” Friar Anthony
Notes from Friar Anthony’s talk: Death in Christ, our Preparation for Christmas – Advent Retreat Part 1.
Life is so much about getting rid of our attachments to this world, because we are not of this world. This life is but a fleeting moment. I’ve read that this life is like a bird which flies in one window of a castle and right out another. The time the bird spends in the castle – but a fleeting moment – represents our life here on earth. So we must get rid of our attachments now. And Advent is a time to do it, because Christ is coming.
All words below are notes taken from Friar Anthony’s talk. They are not comprehensive but just my own highlights. Bold is mine.
“We’re attracted to the sentimentality of Christmas.
Sentimentality robs our attention. The lower faculties of our soul take our eyes off of what we’re supposed to be paying attention to. The goal and object of our life – God. And (the) obtaining God according to His desire and will for us.
It’s not about being fed, see that’s putting us in the center again. It’s all about us. Mass is about us going to the table.
The reality of your Christmas is not like it is on the movies or how it is in the song.
“Behold, I come quickly.”
“Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world the charity (love) of the Father is not in him.”
The essence of sin is disordered love.
When men take their eyes off what they ought to be having their eyes on, that is, God, (He should be their only love), willing to die and sacrifice and suffer every trial and torment for the love of Him, who deserves never to be offended by us. When we turn our eyes away from Him, and fix them on to something else that might bring us some kind of happiness, and things do, we see it as a good thing and that’s why we do it. If you saw it as the monstrous blasphemy that it is or how horrendous and disgusting the thing is before God, of course you would never do that thing that you shouldn’t do.
So if a man falls in love with another woman – or thinks he’s in love with another woman because it would essentially be disordered love, and that is sin.
It is difficult to be in the world. House, cars, etc. But when the attachments start coming in because we’re sensual people. When they start coming in and we’re not focused on our goal, little by little, your prayer life starts to go down, worldly secular lifestyles start to come into the house, before you know it you really don’t pray much, then you find yourself compromising. “My daughter wants to get married outside of the Church to a man who is not even Catholic, they’re living together.”
God knows these things are hard. These are real choices that have to be made everyday. But that’s death. That’s the hard part. See that fear, that anxiety that comes from death? It’s not only in the moment when we stop breathing, it’s in those choices that we have to make everyday, to keep following the objective, which is, the charity of the Father, the love of God.
Look at the way we live our Christian faith. We don’t really strive for it. We live out there and do what they do. We act like they act. They don’t know we’re Christians by our charity anymore. They can’t see it. They hear us complain like everybody else.
We have to examine ourselves, how much effort we’re really putting into it. That’s meditation. We think about the saints, we look at the life that our Lord lived and we remember that He tells us to imitate Him, and to follow Him and to pick up His cross and to die with Him. So we have to reflect in meditation and say “Where am I at?” “Why do I get so upset when this happens or that happens?”. Why am I so worried about this, why am I so worried about that? The saints lived a heroic way. Why is it so hard for me to live in a heroic way, when it just seemed so effortless for them to die like a dog in a hut and then just go straight to Heaven? Why was it so easy for them to do that but yet I’m so worried about even being brought to the hut?
Living completely for God. Little by little chiseling away those things that you’re attached too. It’s a life of mortification and love for God.
The one in 10,000 is all those obstacles, all those temptations, all those things you have to face, those are the odds. And if you heroically face it you’re going to go to Heaven.
Other people force things on us, like asking us to watch their marriage outside of the Church. As St. Paul says, “Bear not the yoke with unbelievers. A little leaven corrupteth the whole lump.”
“Or what part your attachments to eternity, your sins with perfection.”
It’s all about eternity.
“And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God; as God saith: I will dwell in them, and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 17 Wherefore, Go out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing: 18 And I will receive you; and I will be a Father to you; and you shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.”
See the benefit of heroically putting yourself against the 10,000, that is, all the temptations, the difficulties, the misunderstandings? It’s worth it.
This is a passing world. If we be dead, then what are these things to us but a false attachment to what we want the reality to be? The reality is, this is all passing away. Either you’re going to go to Heaven or hell.
O my soul, keep watch and reflect upon the awesome day, prepare your oil and keep your lamp burning bright for you do not know when you will hear the cry, “Behold, your bridegroom is come. Be watchful then my soul. Lest you fall into a deep slumber and the door be closed to you. But be resolved and watchful so that you may go out in all brightness to meet Christ our God. That He may admit you to the bridal chamber of His Divine Glory. Be resolved and watch. For Christ says to us, “Behold, I come quickly.”
You will face that moment. But will it find you prepared already in its advent? That’s the thing to think about. We are in the advent of Christ’s coming. And I don’t mean Christmas, but your end. Our preparation for Christmas is a reminder to prepare for our end, our meeting Christ. Whether He comes with a trumpet blast or He comes with our death, we have to prepare. This is the Church saying, prepare. Repent. Live the gospel which means to be crucified with Christ. See the kingdom in God’s Heavenly glory. This is the advent because you don’t know when the end comes, but we should be prepared. God love you.“