Advent: Catholic ReflectionsSampel

Our wait to celebrate Christmas is almost at an end, and as each day passes the anticipation grows. The entrance antiphon for today's Mass reads, "Soon the Lord God will come, and you will call him Emmanuel, for God is with us." In this prayer you can hear the yearning to be close to God. In our Bible readings today, the passage from Song of Songs again echoes the joyous anticipation of the lover who is to come. For it is the Lord's great love for us that we anticipate; that he chose to be so close to us that he became one of us. Luke's Gospel tells of Mary visiting Elizabeth, the two women filled with the Holy Spirit, the two children in their wombs intimately connected. We are encouraged to trust in the promise God has made to us, the promise of his love, mercy, and forgiveness, and invitation to join into the intimacy of love of the trinity.