As we follow where the Church leads us during these weeks of Advent to encounter the Son of God as He comes into the world as a human being, how do you feel about the way He came? About what He did or didn’t do? Where do you feel seeds of disappointment that maybe it could have or should have been different?
Ask God to help you to be honest with Him about where you’ve felt disappointed in His efforts to fulfill His promises to you, to fulfill your desires. Allow Him to give you the grace of faith that He can address those areas of disappointment. Ask Him to help you to see anew how His coming as man may actually fulfill the deepest desires of your Heart.
It can often be difficult to understand why Jesus’ death was so necessary and important, why it is supposedly the central event in all of history. And, we can often be afraid to ask, assuming that we’re supposed to know, coming up with the textbook answers we’ve been taught since childhood. But, as with His disciples, Jesus wants us to understand it, to receive it, to be overwhelmingly fulfilled by it. He doesn’t want us to be left in the dark or feeling afraid of our lack of understanding.
In your prayer, ask Him for a greater understanding of why He chose to come to die, and ask for the grace to truly rejoice in that, not out of obligation but out of actual joy and gratitude.
Jesus yearned for us. He yearned to accomplish the act that would remove all that separates Him from us, regardless of the depth of pain and suffering it would require. Do you believe that you are worth yearning for? Do you believe that He yearns for you? Ask Him for the grace to get just a taste of His yearning for you, for His willingness to accomplish this “baptism” for you, not just for “humanity”, but for you and the individual people you know and love, in the midst of your sinfulness, your ignorance, your immaturity, your limited faith. This doesn’t scare Him or scandalize Him! He is yearning to come to you this Christmas, even more than you are yearning for Him!
They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it, for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him. (Mark 9:30-32)
There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished! (Luke 12:50)