This Sunday – Dec. 24th – is the Fourth Sunday of Advent.  It is also Christmas Eve (and, three days after today, the darkest day in the Northern Hemisphere – a time to bring light into the world).  This Sunday, we light all four candles on our Advent wreaths.

Advent is a time for us to reflect upon, engage in, and renew our faith.

Four topics associated with Advent (i.e., faith-renewing reflections) are hope, peace, joy, and love.  Last week, I reflected broadly on these four topics in a blog post that can be viewed here.  This week, I reflect on these same topics, but in such a way to challenge each of us to personally and meaningfully engage with these topics:

• Hope: What can you do this week to bring hope into someone’s life?  When I volunteered in the prison system, I co-led a study about people who successfully “left-crime-behind” following incarceration. 100% of the formerly-incarcerated people we interviewed who “left crime behind” after incarceration reported having someone in their life who made a difference in their life, a person who helped them change their lives change for the better (made time for them).  What tangible form of support can you provide for someone you know who is experiencing a challenge in their life?  Spend time with them?  Help them navigate a challenging situation?
• Peace: What can you do this week to contribute to peace in the world? Contribute $$ to a charity that provides civilian relief in war zones?  Start volunteering at a local charity that serves challenged individuals (like volunteering at a local jail)?  Be the person “who gets off the merry-go-round” in a situation of endless and/or senseless discord (i.e., workplace disagreements, family disputes, etc.) and “take the high road” to support another person in that situation?  As indicated in last week’s post, peace is the result of sacrificial love – Christ’s sacrificial love for us and our sacrificial love for other people.
• Joy: Be the joy in someone’s life this holiday season.  Drop off a surprise holiday gift, do someone’s task for them at work, bring Christmas cookies to the office, go Christmas caroling……  We can all find something to do to bring some joy into someone’s life!
• Love:  Who can you bring some “loving care?”  When Jesus was asked which of the commandments is greatest, he said “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and most important commandment. The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’” (Matthew 22: 34-40).  It’s easy to love the people we like and with whom we enjoy spending time.  It matters just as much that we bring love to the people who might seem harder to love – a relative or friend who is in a time of need (we’re busy!), the irritable relative, the difficult co-worker we’d rather not work with, the homeless person who perennially displays challenging behavior outside the grocery store, the socially-isolated person we know who doesn’t seem to be able to connect with the people around them….  Loving someone involves a time commitment – time well spent!

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a “Content Creator/Individual” member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog post, please share it with them (thank you!). You can also support this blog by clicking here when you are going to shop on Amazon (that lands A Parish Catechist a commission on Amazon sales).