First Sunday of Advent 2024

As another Advent Season begins, I’m remembering the wonder of God’s incarnation in Jesus. I’m feeling God’s profound sadness at the terrible injustices and ecological disasters millions are enduring.  I know the God who is yet to come will never give up on us.

I recall the elation I felt in the final weeks of a 12 hour, two semester course on the history of philosophy during my undergrad studies at Loyola. We were introduced to Alfred North Whitehead, who postulated that the all-powerful creator of the universe was waiting to co-create the future in tandem with the choices we humans made. His notion of God freed me from the Almighty Ruler whose inexorable will I had to somehow intuit, or accept as interpreted by a religious authority. I embraced a God who lures me, in love, to make the best possible decisions for each day.

Standing before the rising sun, coffee mug in hand, I pray Bergan and Schwan’s poetic version of the Principle and Foundation for St. Ignatius’s “Spiritual Exercises”:

As your love is spilling over into creation
You are thinking of me.
I am from Love.  Of Love.   For Love. . . . 
May I never seek nor choose to be other
than you intend or wish.

What is your prayer to the One who invites our cooperation in loving our world into the fullest incarnation of God’s very Self?