Advent has arrived. What for? What are we meant to do?
A Carthusian monk breaks his sleep every night. He ‘rises up’ in time to be in his oratory at midnight and after some time in silent prayer he walks along the cloister to reach the Church for the Night Office, Matins and Lauds of the day. This takes around two hours. Returning to his cell, he prays on his own before going back to sleep (if he manages to fall asleep again!)
Why? To enter into his reality and find God there!
‘Reality’ is your marriage, your family, your character, body, health, illness, struggles… our sorrows come from the fact that we do not accept our reality, we fail to live inside our reality and hide our heads in the sand.
The Gospel of this First Sunday of Advent calls us to “lift up our heads” and stay awake praying. In other words, to stop being an ostrich and learn to be an owl. Training our eyes to remain open in the ‘night’ of our lives to see God there, his presence. Living ‘under the sight of God’, keeping ourselves in close, intimate, living contact with the source of the only true Life.
We begin tonight!
