Advent Reflections

Each day in Advent, you will receive an email from St. Barnabas with words and images to invite your engagement with the season’s themes of longing and hope, preparation and expectation, listening and silence. Many of the images will not be traditional “religious” art. Advent calls us to notice the signs of God in unexpected places.

We invite you to prayerfully contemplate the images and absorb the words. Consider returning to them at various times during the day, letting them speak into the moment. Perhaps you will hear a word meant just for you.

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December 6th, 2019

Antony Gormley, Another Place , 2005.

They watch for Christ

who are sensitive, eager, apprehensive in mind,

who are awake, alive, quick-sighted,

zealous in honoring him,

who look for him in all that happens, and

who would not be surprised,

who would not be over-agitated or overwhelmed,

if they found he was coming at once . . .

This then is to watch:

to be detached from what is present, and

to live in what is unseen;

to live in the thought of Christ as he came once,

and as he will come again;

to desire his second coming, from our affectionate

and grateful remembrance of his first.

–– John Henry Newman (1801-1890)