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Two years ago, I allowed myself to get weighed down with work. At the time, I was preparing both our youth and adults for Confirmation. I was also working on building up my Gospel according to Superheroes project, helping with the Christmas outreach, and approving planning the coming weekly Lenten Lunches meditation. To make it all more difficult, my foot was recovering from being broken.
Shortly after Confirmation and the start of Lent, the Pandemic started, which somehow made me more busy as I was putting out resources for learning five days a week (not counting Sundays). By the time Easter came, I was run down, and I wasn’t feeling God’s presence in my life.
Part of the reason I felt so distant from God was because I failed, due to my own being busy, to do what everyone of my mentors, teachers, and even myself to many colleagues had told me to do. I had not taken my monthly retreat day in several months by that time. The result caught me unawares as I desperately needed our Lord but was unprepared to connect meaningfully with Him. It took me that retreat day after Easter, as well as several subsequent ones, to slowly build back that relationship and regain the connection to our Lord so vital to my work in His Name.
When we refer to seasons like Advent or Lent as seasons of preparation, that is what we are preparing for: a deeper connection and relationship with God in our Lord Jesus Christ. There’s a reason we celebrate these seasons every year: we constantly need that renewal in our lives. We all need to do the work, to put in the time, to build our relationship with God.
That is why I share my own struggles. I do so to show that we all have difficult times with our faith, though I also do so to show that there is a way out.
Our lessons today focus a great deal on preparation. This isn’t just preparation for Christmas, the celebration of God entering this world through our Lord Jesus Christ. This preparation is also focused on the Last Day, Jesus’ coming again into this world. That is what Advent has always been about as a season of the church: Jesus’ Second Coming into this world. We simply mirror that coming with His first coming in the Nativity. It is for this event that our readings focus on us being prepared for.
Yet there’s one verse that stands out to me in all of this. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians that “Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith.” Paul in this passage seems to want the very thing that I want for you: that your faith will be strong not just to prepare you for the end, but so that you will be close to God always and be ready for all that life may hold for you.
My hope is that you never have to go through a dry period in your own relationship with our Lord. Yet if you do, I hope you will take the time to prepare yourselves to allow God to re-enter your lives so that you may feel His presence more and more. Like Paul says, I pray that you will be able to take the time you need to restore yourself in your faith and connection to God, especially when you need to. This is ultimately the kind of preparation that we need and that we should be looking for.
From time to time, we all struggle with our connection to God and our Faith. The Season of Advent allows us the time to prepare and renew our relationship with God, especially when we need to reconnect with our Lord. My hope is that you will take this time to renew and restore your connection and relationship with God by setting aside moments to rebuild your relationship with our Lord. In this way, not only will we be prepared for our Lord’s return to this world, whenever that may, but we will be renewed in our lives in a way that will strengthen us and allow us to experience the joy that comes to us from God and God alone.