In this last week before Advent, I always have mixed feelings. I’m torn between letting myself give in to the sheer and unadulterated excitement my children have about all the December merriment and climbing back under my duvet in fear and terror at the prospect of organising it all. I absolutely adore Christmas…but let’s face it. Organising all that magic is hard, hard work. Worth it of course, but hard work.

The first Jewish people had a real palpable longing for and expectation of the Messiah, whose birth we will celebrate in a few short weeks. When I get a minute to sit and pray, I wonder what it must have been like for them as they waited. Imagine the hustle and bustle and chaos of Bethlehem on that first Christmas when so many people had gathered for the census. They had no idea what was happening there. When I’m trying to fight my way through the aisles of Tesco or Dunnes, I’m wondering is this what it might have been like? People crowded everywhere, blissfully unaware of what’s really unfolding as we scramble for cheese boards or the last roll of wrapping paper?

Advent: a special time of preparation

In reality though, as we get ready to celebrate Christmas every year, we have no excuse not to be aware. The child who is born is our Saviour. That thought has to have an impact on us - every day of course - but even more so in these days of Advent. The last thing we want is to be tourists of the Nativity, vaguely interested in the true meaning of Christmas, but ultimately distracted by shiny gift packaging and matching family pjs. I am the first to hold my hand up here!

We all know how important it is to prepare for big events and Christmas is no exception. All of the things we do for Christmas are wonderful and necessary and bring so much joy to those around us. Everyone loves a cheese board! But perhaps we can become complacent and used to the idea of the Incarnation - God becoming man - and his birth in a simple stable.

Speaking about the first words that she heard her husband Dietrich speak in a lecture, Alice von Hildebrand, the Catholic philosopher and theologian said:

“It is not enough for us to believe. We must know how to live our beliefs. Thanks to his lecture that day, I understood that my soul should become malleable, like wax in God’s hands, so that I could become what he wanted me to become.”

Advent is a time of conversion. A time to see what conversion God wants to bring about in our souls, in these weeks leading up to Christmas. This is the time to ask for light from the Holy Spirit to see what form this conversion might take and we can ask Him for the grace - the help - to achieve it.

Sometimes we focus too much on the thought “what is God asking me to do? What does God want of me?” And that can feel stressful, as though God is adding one more thing onto our to-do list! But the way von Hildebrand has phrased it here, “what he wanted me to become” is perhaps a better way to think of this conversion. God has a specific plan for us that He knows will lead to our happiness. Perhaps in these busy days ahead, when we feel overwhelmed, panicked or stretched too thin, we can reframe our thinking - what does God want for me at this moment? Von Hildebrand continues:

“I discovered that my own readiness to change was highly selective. For whereas I was willing to improve in some areas of my life, I wanted to remain in command, and to determine myself the scope and limits of my transformation. Rare are those, and they are properly known as saints, whose readiness to change is total, absolute, unconditional; and who let the Divine Master decide how deeply the marble is to be chiselled.”

Think of any typical women's magazine and how they promote fad diets or life hacks that promise to transform you, if not overnight then pretty quickly! Well this Advent can be a time of real and genuine transformation - if we are prepared to let our Lord chisel away at us.

Letting God take control

But we have to let God in. We have to hand over full control; perhaps the area he wants to change is one that we are unwilling to face, or at the very least gloss over. Sometimes rooting out a defect and getting to the real heart of the problem can be very painful, because we have to acknowledge something within ourselves that isn’t perfect and we have to acknowledge that we can’t fix it ourselves.

Having been heavily pregnant at Christmas, I often wonder how on earth Mary made that journey to Bethlehem with Joseph leading her on a donkey! It must have been incredibly difficult and I’m certain there was much human misery and embarrassment and shame of everything they lacked. However, those feelings were trumped by their sure knowledge that the child they carried with them was Christ, and that He had good for them in that difficulty. 

In these weeks of Advent, we can walk with them and the Christ child and just as they contemplated Him and tried to see His will in what was happening around them, we can too. We can ask their help to be strong enough to ask ourselves, what is it that leads me away from contemplating Christ? What distracts me? Is it my phone and the constant need for a notification? Is it my work and getting caught up in human success? Is it thinking about all the things I need to do and being overly anxious about it? We can turn to Him and say “you are the most important thing now, help me to centre my life on you so I know what level of importance these other things actually need, so I don’t lose my peace.”

Making it specific 

Holiness consists in the very ordinary things and we have to apply things to our own particular circumstances. What does it mean for us, as women, in the world, during this Advent to become more Christ-like? Each one of us has some area of our life where we feel the need to stay in control; where we find it hard to hand over everything to Christ and be malleable, so the Holy Spirit can get to work. Is it biting our tongue when we want to give out to someone? Is it the temptation to keep up with the Joneses this Christmas season? Is it worrying about what others think? Is it a habit of adding “just one more thing” to an online basket? 
Whatever it is, maybe this Advent we can give God control. By the time we get to Christmas morning, we might be a little bit frayed at the edges but it’d be a pity to be somewhat frazzled and still not enthralled by the real meaning of Christmas. Lord, what is it you want me to become?