Catholic Life Ministries

By Robert Fontana

Advent is upon us. What a wonderful, complex time of the year. No other time of the year so brings out our competing desires as these several weeks when with the culture we celebrate Christmas and with the Church we observe Advent!

Oh, we want to slow down, take a breath, breathe in the Spirit of Advent…AND WE WANT TO DECORATE AND BAKE AND ATTEND CHRISTMAS PARTIES AND CONCERTS.

We want to avoid the commercialism of Christmas and go for a simpler Advent season…AND WE WANT TO GET THE RIGHT GIFTS FOR FAMILY AND FRIENDS, DRIVE DOWNTOWN TO SEE THE LIGHTS AND DECORATIONS, AND, OF COURSE, GET A NICE GIFT OURSELVES.

We want to read the Scriptures, pray through the daily Mass readings, and light the Advent candles to focus on the true meaning of Christmas…AND WE WANT THAT HOLIDAY MUSIC,  WHITE CHRISTMAS AND RUDOLF THE RED NOSE REINDEER AND GRANDMA GOT RUN OVER BY A REINDEER!

Oblate Fr. Ron Rolhesier describes this tension in a very imaginative way in his book “Holy Longing.” He writes that we want to be holy with a singular desire for God like Mother Teresa; and, simultaneously, we want to be like singer Janice Joplin and grab for all the fun that life can bring. But in the end, most of us are a version of Princess Diana, “not too good, and not too bad.”

The holidays are going to tap into a multitude of different desires that can leave us feeling frustrated and pulled in too many directions. We can easily lose sight of the great truth of the season: that “love” was born in the person of Jesus.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” John 3:16

I’d like to offer that the best way to manage our competing desires during this season as disciples of Jesus is to participate in the Advent prayer of the Church, at the local parish and in the home, and through this prayer to root whatever we do in the great commandment of Jesus – to love God with all our hearts and to love our neighbor as ourselves. As Saint Paul writes,

 …whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”^[ Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law. Romans 13:8-13

If the Advent/Christmas seasons draw us steadily and consistently into these twin aspects of love, then we are doing what the observance of the birthday of Jesus intends: giving birth to divine love in our lives.

What’s the Advent prayer of the Church at home?  Perhaps reading the daily Mass readings, lighting the Advent candles and reading a daily reflection (consider Henri Nouwen -https://henrinouwen.org/meditation/); and observing the feast days for the saints of Advent, e.g. St. Nicholas on December 6 (we have stockings for the adult children and grands filled with chocolate and a book, and we prepare a delicious breakfast of waffles with ice cream.) and St. Lucia on December 13 (families in Italy bake Christmas cookies on this day – see below).

What’s the Advent prayer of the Church at the parish? It’s certainly Sunday Mass and Mass on Feast Days, e.g. Immaculate Conception on December 8 and Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12. But it also can be joining an Advent prayer/study group (we’re hosting one), going to Mass during the week, and/or making a holy hour before the Blessed Sacrament or a beautiful ICON, or even taking a weekly contemplative walk in the park.

Prayer will help us slow down and open up our hearts to God. It will bring calm to our Janice Joplin impulse that wants it all; it will allow us to be modest in our commitments and gift-giving during this season. Prayer will also open our hearts to those people who do not experience the love of God and neighbor – the lonely family member, the newly arrived migrant, the elderly in retirement communities, the unsheltered people living in the park – and inspire ways to include them in our holyday observances.

Prayer may not turn us into a Mother Teresa, but it will open our eyes to God’s love, present within the hullabaloo of the secular Christmas that overlaps the Advent season. Perhaps it will help us to be just a little bit kinder, a little more generous than we are during the rest of the year.  We will be able to say with Scrooge’s nephew (https://charles-dickens.org/a-christmas-carol/ebook-page-03.php),

“I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round–apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that–as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!’

ITALIAN SWEET BREAD (https://www.italiankitchenconfessions.com/santa-lucia-shortbread-cookies-a-holiday-treat-from-veneto/)

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour all-purpose
• ½ ⅛ cup butter chopped in small pieces
• ½ cup sugar
• 2 egg egg yolk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• ½ tsp salt
• 5 tbsp sugar powdered, to decorate

Instructions

• Start by sifting the flour and forming a volcano shape on your countertop.
• Add the butter, cut into pieces, in the middle of the crater. Work the ingredients together very fast until they are crumbling together (see notes).
• Add the sugar, the egg yolks, the vanilla and the salt and continue working together with all the ingredients until they are perfectly combined. Place the dough in the refrigerator and let it rest for 1 hour.
• Just before taking out the dough from the refrigerator, preheat the oven at 320°F (160°C).
• Roll out the dough with a rolling pin to a ½ inch thickness and then cut as many forms as you can using Christmas cookie stamps
• Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper, place the cookies on top and cook them in the oven for 15 minutes until golden (see notes).
• Let them cool down on baking rack. Once cold, cover them with icing sugar and serve them.

Notes

• Work the dough fast to avoid the butter to melt at contact with you hand. Try to keep your hands cold, wetting them under cold water or passing in your hands some ice cubes.
• In order for your cookies to have a nice uniform golden aspect, turn the tray clockwise halfway of the time in the oven. 
• These cookies will last 3-4 days in an airtight container.
• You could do the recipe using a food processor, follow the same steps when adding the ingredients.