Advent 2012: Week 1

Going into Advent, I was REALLY certain I was going to be able to dedicate myself to preparing for Christmas like I've never prepared before.  I was committed.  I was going to set aside so much time for God he was going to get bored with me.  It all sounded so good and I really thought that yes, this year, I'd be ready to celebrate the Incarnation and the Second Coming on December 25th.

I literally didn't make it through Sunday Week 1.

This year, children/youth in our faith formation and school programs at Saint Ambrose have received a weekly journal to help them focus on the "People of Faith" from each of the Sunday Gospels.  Week 1 focuses on the Prophets.  Since I am asking my catechists and my students to pray with the Gospels and reflect with the journals each week, it seemed only fair that I do the same.

I was really proud of the fact that I read the Gospel and worked on the journal several days in advance.  I was prepared for the Sunday liturgy by reflecting in advance, right?

Each week the journal asks the students (and therefore, me) to make some sort of commitment to help us live as People of Faith, following the example of those in our Gospels.  The reflection for Week 1 asked me to list four things I would do to show that I am a "Person of Faith" and to prepare for Jesus' coming.  My four responses were:

• Read "The Little Blue Book" daily
• Write a Christmas card each day to someone I've been meaning to contact - no generic cards to people I see all of the time.
• Write a weekly online reflection
• Go to confession once during Advent

So Advent, Day 1, I was up too late the night before.  That Day 1, I slept in, zipped over to a Christmas family reunion, and then zipped to work (in time for 5:00 PM Mass, since I didn't get up in time for morning Mass).  After work, I came home and wrote a post for www.puckettspond.com, where I am the Editor.  By the time I finished, it had reached the wee hours of Monday morning.

Drat.  I'd already messed up my Advent commitment, and it was just barely Day 2, so early it doesn't even count as Day 2.

I could barely keep my eyes open, so I wasn't going to write a card.  I wanted to do my reflection a few days in advance, like the previous Thursday.  But, what was one more day late going to hurt? There will be opportunity for confession, and anyway, there are quite a few things I don't want to face just yet, so I put that off.  At minimum, I could read the Little Blue Book before I went to bed.

Since it was Advent Day 1, the LBB suggested making an Advent commitment.  Easy!  Not only had I made a commitment, I'd already made four of them!  However, as I kept going through the entry, my heart sank.  Right there, in the entry was the "suggestion" that the reader (me) write a Christmas card to someone I was not on good terms with.

Ah, crap.

That LBB reflection, added to a few other recent things, was clearly an invitation by the Holy Spirit  (read:  really strong suggestion) to reach out to a small group of people with whom I used to be close friends.  I had been trying to figure out how to talk with these friends, and I hadn't been able to do it.  In fact, I'd given up.  I'd been so hurt that I decided it was easier to push them away all the time, even when they were in a place where they accepted me.  It was better for me to give up the good times in order to prevent the bad.

But the HS was basically telling me I HAD to write these cards.  Of course, I had free will in the matter.  It was just one of those moments where it was clear that the HS was really telling me that was the best idea.

Great.

It's not fair for me or for these friends to put any other details here, especially because we have never talked about any of this.  Today was the first day they could have received my Christmas cards.  I don't know yet if they did.  My hope is that they will accept the invitation to peace, whether our friendship continues or not.  I try not to care, but I do, so very much.  And I struggle with frustration with the Holy Spirit for urging me to put myself out there once again.  Despite all my failings (and they are SO very many), I try so hard to make my friends and family happy.  I hate that I fail and I hate that I'm not good enough most of the time, and I hate that I have felt so hurt and betrayed, and that I haven't had the courage to stand up and stop it before it became this disjointed.

And so I return to Sunday Week 1's Gospel, which I originally assumed would be the focus of this reflection.  I should know better than to make assumptions when it comes to the Holy Spirit.  In the Week 1 Gospel, the world is experiencing extreme tribulations, scary enough that people die of fright.  And yet, the Gospel urges us to vigilance and to persevere through the extreme difficulty.  There are some truly bad situations so many real people experience in our world - natural disasters, political wars, and abject poverty.  At the same time, those of us who are blessed with relative security most of the time still experience difficulties that seem beyond our control.  I truly believe the LBB, and even this Gospel, was meant to make me think of the friends I mentioned above.  I believe that they deserved a contact, whether I gain peace or whether I am spurned.

Truly, this is such a difficult Gospel.  What does one say?  For me, I have a feeling that my idea of a quiet, small introduction to the season was torpedoed early on; how do I keep the focus?  How do I handle my former friends completely pushing away?  How do I handle it if they try to make an effort?