The Stained Glass Buffalo: Our Lady of Advent

17 December 2011

Our Lady of Advent

Our Lady of Advent is without any doubt a unique model of how to embrace and love the true Advent spirit as we continue on our road to Christmas. She lived her own Advent for nine months, a longer peirod than our short four to eight weeks. She also lived it in greater intimacy, for he whom we expect to come dwelled within her, and she nourished and cared for him with unsurpassed love.

The lowly, prayerful, humble, quiet waiting attitude exercised by our Lady during her own Advent exemplifies what all our Advent days should be like. In the midst of the noisy and often chatoic Christmas preparations we encounter in today's world, the example of the Mother of God stands apart from all that is false, haughty, glittering, selfish, or superficial. Mary's presence in our midst, radiating a serene beauty through her silence, her acceptance, and total submission to God's plan, speaks volumes to each and every one of us.

Like our Lady, we must live our own submissions to the Lord with complete simplicity, humility, and trust in his plan for each of us.

A Monastery Journey to Christmas
Br. Victor-Antione D'Avila-Latourrette

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It is Jesus

“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.”
--Pope John Paul II

Carlo Carretto:

How much I must criticize you, my church, and yet how much I love you! You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe more to you than to anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence. You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in this world have I seen anything more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful. Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face - and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your sure arms! No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you. Then too - where would I go? To build another church? But I could not build one without the same defects, for they are my defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ's church. No, I am old enough, I know better.