One of the resources I turn to as I pray and reflect on the readings for the Sunday Mass comes out of St. Louis University. The Center for Sunday Liturgy produces a website that provides both background information and spiritual reflections on the readings. Those that contribute are Fr. Ron Rolheiser, Larry Gillick, John Kavanaugh, John Foley, Sr. Joyce Ann Zimmerman, John Pilch, and many others. You can find it at www.liturgy.slu.edu and I would highly recommend you frequenting this site as a part of your own preparation for Mass on Sunday. Now with that commercial out-of-the-way, back to our regular reflections.
Changing our lives is very concrete and visible
Do you know the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. Isn’t that how we live our lives? I know its how I live my life. Right now I am very unhappy with my work situation yet, while I am doing some things to change or move on, I keep hoping that rather than me change the situation will change to make me happy. Now that I am a few years away from my divorce I am finding my weekends empty and lonely. Yet, rather than change my circumstances I would rather hide in my room and feel sorry for myself. And finally on a most practical level, I remain overweight and unhealthy and while I start my day off with the best of intentions I end up falling back to old ways of comforting myself with food. So, how does one change?
We hear in our Gospel this Sunday (Matt 3:1-12) Jesus’ cousin 
John the Baptist calling for all to “Repent”. He is calling for us to change our ways and thus prepare for the coming Kingdom of God. Yet, I am the same miserable soul. How do we change? How do we become different? How do we become better? How do we become the people we are meant and want to be? While you can find a million articles on the need to change, I am not surprised to find so few with a plan or suggestions on the how to. Change is not easy especially when we are talking about ourselves.
The one conclusion I have come to is that change requires different choices. I have spoken a bit about this in past blogs. We can’t hang out with the same people, or do the same routines if what we want to change is a big part of the experience. I must choose to do something different. I must choose to do something, other than what I have been doing. Yes, it will be hard and in some cases even painful, but that is why most people require some sort of support community to help them stay strong. I was able to go through my divorce because I had a support community who held me up. But often the changes that we approach in Advent aren’t that huge. Even so, there is a ready-made support community in our parish family.
Advent is about change. Advent is about preparing the world to receive the Christ child but as Victor Frankl said: “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” Not that I want to disagree with such a great 
man but I believe it’s both. We cannot change ourselves without changing our situation and we cannot change our situation without changing ourselves. Advent reminds us that we can no longer wait until the weather gets better, or our situation improves or when the … now is the time. Today is the day. Now if I can only figure out the how.
I remain, your servant in Christ, Theresa
