Begin Advent in prayer and prepare your soul to be a manger for Christ at His Coming. Read on for a prayer, hymn, and reflection for the First Sunday of Advent.
Prayer
Blessed Savior of men, You prepared us, Your servants, for long years by prophecies and symbols to foretell of the Coming of the Anointed One, the Messiah, who would redeem the world and reopen for us the gates of Paradise.
This Advent we pray and beseech You to accept our humble offering of preparation of our bodies and souls. May each day be for us a step, each step a prayer, each prayer a pilgrimage toward Bethlehem with Jesus and Mary and Joseph.
Help us to pray fervently, to walk valiantly, and to persevere to the end, You who live and reign with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. Amen.
Hymn
Mother, upon me gaze tonight
From thy beautiful home above;
And tell me are the stars as bright
As the beacon of thy love?
Mother, does sometimes upon thy knee
While the angels stand and stare,
The Christ-Child sit and tell thee of me,
And finger thy silvery hair?
Mother, when life’s short years are run,
And the Gleaner beckons to me,
Oh, pray the God in that Little One
To bring me home to thee.
Reflection
The story of the long awaiting for the coming of Christ is told in the words of Isaiah the prophet, who of all the prophets Sacred Scripture speaks most directly and explicitly of the Messiah.
For each day of Advent, Holy Mother Church has her priests and religious pray something from the writings of this great prophet in their recitation of the Divine Office.
In this prophecy, Isaiah speaks of the Lord, who exalted His children only to have them despise Him; he speaks of Israel, “who hath not known the Lord and His people, who hath not understood.” And he continues: “They have forsaken the Lord, they have blasphemed the Holy One of Israel; they have gone backwards.”
The words of the Prophet should make a deep impression on our hearts at the beginning of the holy season of Advent. Who of us can hear without trembling this voice of the Lord, who is despised and unknown even at the very time when He is to come and visit His people?
“If today you hear His voice, harden not your hearts.”
The story is being retold. The Church, in accents of solemnity, in colors of penitential purple vestments, in notes of solemn music is repeating for us the burden of her message. Christ is coming to save the world, which, as Isaias says, is sickened—“the whole head is sick and the whole heart is sad.” Christ is coming to judge the world, for “the powers of heaven shall be moved, and then they shall see the Son of man coming on a cloud with great power and majesty. When these things begin to come to pass, look up, and lift up your heads, because your redemption is at hand.”
Members of Christ’s Mystical Body, hearken to the words of “the greatest story ever told” as recounted by the greatest mother of them all. The story is Christ’s coming, or Advent. The mother is the Church.
Now is the hour for us to rise from sleep, to save the world from chaos, to rescue souls from materialism, and to save them for the all-powerful dignity of incorporation in Christ’s Mystical Body. We shall do this by beginning to reform ourselves, by spending Advent prayerfully, by “casting off the works of darkness . . . and putting on the Lord Jesus Christ.”
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This article is taken from a chapter in Spiritual Steps to Christmas by Monsignor Aloysius Coogan which is available from TAN Books.
