Sunday Reflection: Daniel P. Horan on the third Sunday in Advent

Advent Hands . . .

 

Author: Catherine Alder

I see the hands of Joseph.
Back and forth along bare wood they move.
There is worry in those working hands,
sorting out confusing thoughts with every stroke.
“How can this be, my beautiful Mary now with child?” 
Rough with deep splinters, these hands,
small, painful splinters like tiny crosses
embedded deeply in this choice to stay with her.
He could have closed his hands to her,
said, “No” and let her go to stoning.
But, dear Joseph opened both his heart and hands
to this mother and her child.
Preparing in these days before
with working hands
and wood pressed tight between them.
It is these rough hands that will open
and be the first to hold the Child.

I see the hands of John,
worn from desert raging storms
and plucking locusts from sand ripped rocks
beneath the remnant of a Bethlehem star.
A howling wind like some lost wolf
cries out beneath the moon,
or was that John?
This loneliness,
enough to make a grown man mad.
He’s waiting for this, God’s whisper.
“Go now. He is coming.
You have prepared your hands enough.
Go. He needs your servant hands,
your cupping hands to lift the water,
and place his feet upon the path to service and to death.
Go now, John, and open your hands to him.
It is time.”

I see a fist held tight and fingers blanched to white.
Prying is no easy task.
These fingers find a way of pulling back to old positions,
protecting all that was and is.
Blanched to white. No openness. All fright.
But then the Spirit comes.
A holy Christmas dance begins
and blows between the twisted paths.
This fist opens
slowly,
gently,
beautifully,
the twisted fingers letting go.
Their rock-solid place in line has eased.
And one by one the fingers lift
True color is returned
And through the deepest of mysteries,
The holiest of holies,
O longing of longings
Beyond all human imagining
this fist,
as if awakened from Lazarus’ cold stone dream
reaches out to hold the tiny newborn hand of God.

 

Joseph's Dream

https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54282

A Wintering Prayer . . .

 

O God of all seasons and senses, grant us the sense of your timing                                                                  

to submit gracefully and rejoice quietly in the turn of the seasons.

In this season of short days and long nights,

of grey and white and cold,

teach us the lessons of endings;

children growing, friends leaving, loved ones dying,

grieving over,

grudges over,

blaming over,

excuses over.

O God, grant us a sense of your timing.

In this season of short days and long nights,

of grey and white and cold,

teach us the lessons of beginnings;

that such waitings and endings may be the starting place,

a planting of seeds which bring to birth what is ready to be born—

something right and just and different,

a new song, a deeper relationship, a fuller love—

in the fullness of your time.

O God, grant us the sense of your timing.

Taken from Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder

An Advent-ure of Love!

 

According to a story reportedly written by Leo Buscaglia, "On a cold day in December, some years ago: A little boy, about  10 years old, was standing before a shoe store on the roadway, barefooted, peering through the window, and shivering with cold.

"A lady approached the young boy and said, 'My, but you're in such deep thought staring in that window!'

"'I was asking God to give me a pair of shoes,' was the boy's reply.

"The lady took him by the hand, went into the store, and asked the clerk to get half a dozen pairs of socks for the boy. She then asked if he could give her a basin of water and a towel. He quickly brought them to her.

"She took the little fellow to the back part of the store and, removing her gloves, knelt down, washed his little feet, and dried them with the towel.

"By this time, the clerk had returned with the socks. Placing a pair upon the boy's feet, she then purchased a pair of shoes for him.

"She tied up the remaining pairs of socks and gave them to him. She patted him on the head and said, 'No doubt, you will be more comfortable now.'

"As she turned to go, the astonished child caught her by the hand, and looking up into her face, with tears in his eyes, asked, 'Are you God's wife?'"

 

 

No Room at the Inn . . .

       

Into this world, this demented inn
in which there is absolutely no room for him at all,
Christ comes uninvited.

But because he cannot be at home in it,
because he is out of place in it,
and yet he must be in it,
His place is with the others for whom
there is no room.

His place is with those who do not belong,
who are rejected by power, because
they are regarded as weak,
those who are discredited,
who are denied status of persons,
who are tortured, bombed and exterminated.

With those for whom there is no room,
Christ is present in this world.

~Thomas Merton

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel | Cinematic Christmas Cover – The Piano Guys

Cardinal Blase Cupich's Homily for December 7th, 2025

A Gentling Prayer . . .

 

An Unclenched Moment

Gentle me, Holy One,
into an unclenched moment,
a deep breath,
a letting go
of heavy expectancies,

of shriveling anxieties,
of dead certainties,
that softened by the silence,
surrounded by the light,

and open to the mystery,
I may be found by wholeness,
upheld by the unfathomable,

entranced by the simple,
and filled with the joy that is You.
~Ted Loder, Guerrillas of Grace

Welcome, Winter!

 

Photo by S.F.

The Agreement

As the Earth revolves around the Sun,
we travel in an endless circle of Endings and Beginnings:
end of Autumn–beginning of Winter;
end of the longest nights–beginning of longer days;
end of one cycle–beginning of the next.
Winter Solstice is a pivotal moment, a touch-point in time:
a betwixt and between.
‘Tis the final death knoll of the past growing season while holding the kernel of birth of the new. It heralds the return of the Light that tiptoes imperceptibly toward Spring.
It disregards the petty or profound differences of the Earth’s human inhabitants. Instead, it reminds us of our Connections:
That we are bound together by the same seasons,
The same Light,
The same feelings of grief and pain,
The same celebration of joy and peace,
The same yearning for Love in all its forms.
It is a place in Time of Agreement.

(Ulu Ola ~ Source unknown)

A little slow in our hurry . . .

 

Trust in God's holy slowness . . .

 

Above all, trust in the slow work of God. 

We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything to reach the

 end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages; 

we are impatient of being on the way to something                       unknown, something new. 

And yet, it is the law of all progress that it is made by                    passing through

some stages of instability . . . and that it may take           

a very long time.

 (~ Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)

A Warm Blessing . . .

 

A Blessing Befriending Darkness . . .

 

A Blessing for Traveling in the Dark

Jan Richardson

 

Go slow

if you can.

Slower.

More slowly still.

Friendly dark

or fearsome,

This is no place

to break your neck

by rushing,

by running,

by crashing into

what you cannot see.

 

Then again,

it is true:

different darks

have different tasks,

and if you

have arrived here unawares,

if you have come

in peril

or in pain,

this might be no place

you should dawdle.

 

I do not know

what these shadows

ask of you,

what they might hold

that means you good

or ill.

It is not for me

to reckon

whether you should linger

or you should leave

 

But this is what

I can ask for you:

That in the darkness

there be a blessing.

That in the shadows

there be a welcome.

That in the night

you be encompassed

by the Love that knows

your name.

 http://www.janrichardson.com/index.htmlichardson.com 
©Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com

December 7, 2025: Carmen Ramos Preaches for the Second Sunday of Advent

Scripture Reflection: First Sunday of Advent . . .

Things Take the Time They Take -|Nov 25, 2025|Columns, Fr. Joe Juknialis, Scripture Readings

Scripture Reflection

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Isaiah 2:1-5
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:37-44

We wait for life to make its mark, and time then etches itself upon our lives. When I was 4 years old, I couldn’t wait for Christmas to come. Each year, too, it was for my birthday to come around that I waited, all so I could grow up to be like everyone else. Once school began, I could hardly wait for vacation time, and then I waited for graduation, and finally for the freedom to be on my own. Isn’t that how it was with you too? We wait for life to do what life always does at its own pace.

Over the years, I’ve spent a fair amount of time in such a way — waiting to be old enough to get a driver’s license, for the Packers to win a Super Bowl, for the wonderful taste of summer when winter seemed to lock us all into a deep freeze, for political winds to shift and bring in the fresh air of new hope for the future. In some years, it was waiting for a new car, and in other years for a new parish. Sometimes, it was waiting for a friend to come, and other times waiting in a doctor’s office while watching everyone else being called ahead of me. And sometimes it’s been waiting for God to show up, though mostly I’ll admit I wasn’t sure if I’d know what that could or would look like — only something different than how I was at that moment, I presumed.

If Advent is supposed to be a time of waiting, then I’d have to say that in so many ways my whole life has been an advent of one sort or another — not always waiting for God, but sometimes for that, too.

And so it’s been all those somethings that I’ve spent time waiting for that have in their own time come to pass — from a child’s dreams for Christmas to a grownup’s wondering about God and a scattering of much else in between.

The prophet and poet Isaiah says, “In days to come … they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.” We wait for peace, too, though if we’re honest about it, we wonder if it’s ever really going to come.

Mary Oliver, another poet from another time, mused about all such waiting in a very brief poem that’s over almost before it begins. The poem is titled “Don’t Worry.”

“Things take the time they take. Don’t worry, How many roads did St. Augustine follow before he became St. Augustine?”

It’s true. Things take the time they take.

If you know anything about St. Augustine, you know he walked his share of roads. He tasted life — from the boyhood thrill of stealing pears out of someone’s orchard to the grownup thrill of falling in love and the daunting thrill of becoming a parent. His were many roads and paths and back alleyways — some forked, some with dead ends and most without knowing the ultimate destination, until, like all of us, he found himself arriving at one place or another, only to begin again. Things take the time they take for us to become who we are called to be.

As much as we wait for life to come to us, the truth is that life happens to us as we’re busy about our waiting. And if so with life, so also with God who happens as we’re busy doing other things, though mostly without our noticing. Some of us are captured by it all and some of us are left behind, as the Gospel this week suggests, but God does happen in our rummaging about, woven in amidst all the distractions that make demands upon our time.

For most of us, it is the silence that stirs us to notice. Sometimes it is the forced silence as when we are laid low by illness. At other times, it is the silence that comes masked as boredom tempting us to flee, and yet again it may be the silence of 3 a.m. as we lie awake unable to sleep.

Most often, the waiting for God to come does take on the cloak of silence. It will capture you whether you welcome it or not. So then sit with it, wait with it, make friends with it. It is holy, and because we become like those with whom we spend time, then it too will make you holy. Things take the time they take, and amidst it all God happens. Be at peace.

For Reflection:

• At this point in your life, what is it you are waiting for?
• How might God be there waiting for you?

About the Author: Fr. Joe Juknialis

Fr. Joe Juknialis has been writing Scripture columns for the Catholic Herald for maybe the past 25 years, as best as he can remember. He is currently a senior priest of the archdiocese, retired and living at Old St. Mary Parish in downtown Milwaukee, where he helps out weekends at the East Side parishes. He can be reached at jjjpax@gmail.com.

 

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