Day 5 – Ask not, doubt not

Ask not, doubt not.  You have, my heart, already chosen the joy of Advent.  As a force against your own uncertainity, bravely tell yourself, “It is the Advent of the great God.”  Say this with faith and love, and then both the past of your life, which has become holy, and your life’s eternal, boundless future will draw together in the now of this world.  For then into the heart comes the one who is Advent, the boundless future who is already in the process of coming, the Lord, who has already come into the time of the fresh to redeem it.

Karl Rahner

Day 3 – Give of yourself

Here is your Advent: Make the Christ who has come a reality, a living light in your life and in some other life. Give of yourself … to one dark soul … with no conditions.

Walter Burghart

Day 2 – Rousing

Advent is a time for rousing. We are shaken to the very depths so that we may wake up to the truth of ourselves. The primary condition for a fruitful and rewarding advent is renunciation, surrender. We must let go of all our mistaken dreams, and conceited poses and arrogrant gestures, all of the pretenses with with we hope to deceive others and ourselves. If we fail to do this, stark reality may take hold of us and rouse us forcibly in a way that will entail both anxiety and suffering.

Alfred Delp