We’re in a season of getting ready: getting ready to celebrate the holidays, getting ready to start a new year, getting ready to welcome Christ.
What does it take to “get ready?” We might think of preparations and chores, from cleaning house to writing cards and purchasing presents to planning parties. But in the spiritual life, “getting ready” has as much to do with what we set aside as what we take on.
There’s a prayer that we sometimes use during the Eucharist service in Advent that speaks to me of what it truly means to make our hearts ready: we do so by letting go of the things that make it impossible to actually see Jesus. In the Eucharistic preface for Advent, we pray that we may without shame or fear rejoice to behold his appearing.
That, to me, is what it means to make my heart ready: to notice where my heart is held back by the impossible burdens of shame or fear, and then let them go so that my heart can be ready.
Where do you see shame in our world? Where we diminish others, or we internalize that diminishment and thus dim the image of God in ourselves? Where we get so focused on something in the past that we cannot see the goodness in ourselves, today? Where we treat others as the sum of their worst moments rather than beloved, imperfect, and beautiful children of God?
Where do you see fear in our world? From violence and oppression to fear for our safety and well-being, chronic fear keeps us from resting in God. Fear leads us to see the world as a zero-sum game, which draws us from union with our neighbors to a perceived competition for survival.
Shame and fear keep us from seeing, and knowing, the Holy One.
In the weeks leading up to our celebration of the birth of Christ, we are given the opportunity to get ready by unburdening our hearts of the very things – shame and fear – that keep us from seeing Jesus.
May these last days of Advent be moments free of shame and fear, that you may be ready to see God in the days that follow.
