Finding Hope, Finding Myself: Advent Reflections Week 1

Finding Hope, Finding Myself: Advent Reflections Week 1 November 30, 2015

advent 1

 

When the end of the year comes around, there’s this desire to reflect on our lives. We think about our successes, our failures, and ways that we can improve in the new year. Each year seems to go by faster. Summer seems like it was just a month ago instead of almost half a year ago. In this holiday rush, I want these reflections to be a time for you and me to reflect.

The Heart of Mary Women’s Fellowship is doing a Bible study for Advent that you can subscribe to and read here. The theme of the first week of Advent is Hope with the “Prophet’s Candle.”

During Mass, the Psalm for this Sunday’s readings particularly resonated with me.

Psalm 25:4-5, 8-9, 10, 14

R. To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.
Your ways, O LORD, make known to me;
teach me your paths,
Guide me in your truth and teach me,
for you are God my savior,
and for you I wait all the day.
R. To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.
Good and upright is the LORD;
thus he shows sinners the way.
He guides the humble to justice,
and teaches the humble his way.
R. To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.
All the paths of the LORD are kindness and constancy
toward those who keep his covenant and his decrees.
The friendship of the LORD is with those who fear him,
and his covenant, for their instruction.
R. To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.

I feel like the whole Psalm is a microcosm of the spiritual journey I took this year. My trust in the Lord has changed my life in so many ways. He carried me through bad dates and broken hearts. He led me to people who understood my Asperger’s Syndrome and fellow writers who encouraged me to work on my novel. It was through the intercession of the saints and Christ’s wonderful Divine Mercy that I was able to find forgiveness and take another step forward in the process of letting go of all the things that make me anxious.

As the Year of Mercy begins, my intention is to live out the verse from Galatians. This verse is my hope for this new liturgical year as well as the year of 2016.

For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. – Galatians 2:19-20

Today, I want you to reflect on how you think Christ has changed you and how you think you can live out the verse from Galatians. It’s through Christ that I have hope. My hope for this Advent is that Christ continues to live in me.


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