Second Sunday of Advent      

Gospel –  Matthew 3:1-12

Sloth Mode

Advent Calendar 2025

Back when our daughter Jaime was little, Ginger’s parents would gift her with not merely an Advent calendar but an Advent chest, full of goodies!  And every day of Advent, Jaime would open the box and pull out a present – little things like some candy or a simple bracelet.  It was a magical time of anticipation and perhaps a bit of impatience as she waited for the BIG DAY – Christmas!  Sometimes we can all be in a rush for Christmas to get here and, in the process, we miss out on the simple joy of each day of Advent!

We are all in such a hurry.  We get upset with anyone/anything that slows us down.  We drum our fingers at stop lights.  And that doesn’t even include the rigors of Christmas shopping – waiting with the crowds for the store to open on Black Friday, panic attacks when the store runs out of the one present we must have!  Add to that the rush to get our house decorated and the impatience of children for Christmas to come, for Christmas morning to dawn and running downstairs to open presents under the tree.  We remember when, as kids, we would count the days, we couldn’t sleep on Christmas Eve and we would stay awake as long as we could, hoping to hear Santa on the roof!

Matthew’s Gospel today opens with a quote from Isaiah – the coming of the Messiah.  Isaiah lived in 8th century BC.  By the time of Jesus and John the Baptist, the people have been waiting a very long time for the Messiah – they are of course more than overdue for salvation and certainly more than a little impatient for the coming of the Messiah.  And so they come to John! 

John, a wild man, clothed in camel hair, leather belt and eating honey and locusts, living in the desert, a desolate and forbidding area.  And yet they come to him!  Looking for the Messiah, looking for forgiveness, looking for faith and hope! They thought he was THE ONE!  But he tells them, it’s not me! I am just a voice crying in the desert, making way for the Lord!  He is coming, He will baptize with the Spirit.  All that waiting, all that anticipation, and he is not the ONE. 

But John does assure them.   Calm down, slow down!  He is coming; He is near!

Ginger has a rather humorous but poignant expression for how she (we) greets and manages the day – SLOTH MODE!   Whether it’s getting up in the morning, getting in the car or any of the normal activities like grocery shopping or sharing a meal – sloth mode!  What’s the hurry!  Not that we can hurry things up anyway!  So slow down and enjoy the ride as best you can.  Hence the reason for my Advent calendar gift to her.

The people coming to John had hope!  And hope is a good thing!  Hoping for the Messiah is a good thing!  Hoping for Christmas to come is a good thing!  But we can’t make it happen any quicker!  We can’t speed up the clock! We shouldn’t rush things and there is a certain value to just slowing down and catching our breath!

Paul tells us in the Reading to the Romans:

May the God of endurance and encouragement
grant you to think in harmony with one another,
in keeping with Christ Jesus,
that with one accord you may with one voice
glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our God is not only the God of love and compassion; He is the God of endurance! He is with us for the long run! So slow down this Advent season and take the time to appreciate all of God’s gifts – your loved ones, the Christmas lights, picking out that perfect tree, sharing a cup of hot chocolate as you send out the holiday card and wrap those presents, watching the snow fall (hopefully gently) on the grass and building that odd looking snowman!

In that same spirit of ‘sloth mode’, I am going to follow my own advice and take a much-needed break from my daily reflections in order to slow down, catch my breath and focus on family.  I will still post on Sundays, Christmas and New Year’s and you can still follow my daily reflections (re-visits) on my blog – https://deaconbillfrere.blogspot.com/

I will be back after New Year’s. Thank you for your continued support, your kind words of encouragement and your patience!  Continued prayers for you and your family!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
  Feast of the Presentation Gospel – Luke 2:22-40 We Are Family Church of St. Joseph, Nazareth 5 extremely short stories to start the day! Once all the people in a village decided to pray for rain. On the day of prayer, all the people gathered, but only one boy came with an umbrella. That is faith. When you throw babies in the air, they laugh because they know you will catch them. That is trust. Every night we go to bed without any assurance of being alive the next morning, but we still set the alarm to wake up. That is hope. We plan big things for tomorrow in spite of zero knowledge of the future. That is confidence. We see the world suffering, but still, we get married and have children. That is love. Faith, hope, love, confidence and trust!   Sounds like a perfect list of values/virtues for a happy family! Today’s Gospel tells us of another family – the Holy Family going up to Jerusalem with the baby Jesus to present Him to the Lord in ...
Read more
Image
  Second Sunday of Easter   Gospel – John 20:19-31 Faith and Family Us Decades ago, when Jaime was maybe 7 or 8 years old, I was having some stomach issues, bad enough to spend some time in the hospital to figure out what was going on.   Finally, one morning, with Jaime and Ginger in the room, the doctor comes rushing in to tell me in these overly blunt words – you have cancer, we will perform surgery today and start you on chemo treatments tomorrow!   After I got over the initial shock, I basically had 2 reactions!   First, how dare you blurt out such a diagnosis with our little daughter in the room without even consulting us beforehand.   How disrespectful! How insensitive!   And secondly, my personal health, or lack thereof, was the last thing on my mind.   All that mattered to me was Ginger and Jaime and how all this would affect them! Some things never change!   Truth be told, after all that stress and worry, his diagnosi...
Read more
Image
Tuesday - Third Week of Easter Gospel – John 6:30-35 Knead to Know Cooking Class Over the past month or so, I gathered together a couple groups of my altar servers for a cooking class!   They learned not only my recipe for zucchini chocolate chip muffins but how to make them from scratch!   And, YES, they took home their finished products, or at least the muffins they didn’t wolf down as soon as they came out of the oven!   It was a fun, wonderful (and messy) experience!   Who knew that cracking eggs and measuring out flour could be so ‘untidy’.   But it brought home the lesson that, in order to get those yummy muffins, it takes time, effort and a heaping cup of patience. And it reminded me not only of their loyal service but those long months of Covid when they missed their Mass ministry.   So from time to time during the pandemic, I stayed in touch with them by dropping off goodie bags filled with chocolate chip cookies, zucchini chocolate ...
Read more