“Rejoice in the Lord always.  I shall say it again:  rejoice! Your kindness should be known to all. The Lord is near. Have no anxiety at all, but in everything,  by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 4:4-7)

What a wonderful passage for Advent!  Be kind to all…have no anxiety…make your requests known to God…then His peace will be with you.

I reflected recently at daily Mass that it made me laugh how often I have read in daily Advent devotional books how “overwhelming” the season of Advent is for all of us.  We might read things like this… “in this busy season of many tasks…” or “…this season may make us experience exhaustion.”  While this is very true, I believe it is very true for us in every month of the year.  Perhaps the hope of this season is in looking for ways we can begin to live a life of peace, hope, love and joy amidst the overwhelming seasons of life and how we can bring those practices into every moment of our year.

I rediscovered one of those practices that helped me to reduce my anxiety and increase my peace while on retreat a few weeks ago.  In the room where I stayed, I found a small statue of sleeping St. Joseph.  Pope Francis is well known for his devotion to the sleeping St. Joseph.  All you do is simply place all your troubles, anxieties, problems, etc. on a piece of paper and place them under the sleeping St. Joseph statue and give him permission to work while you sleep on it.  St. Joseph was known to figure out his dilemmas while sleeping as he received dreams and messages from the angels that helped him live his life of holiness.  For me, while I was dealing with a few matters of the heart, it wasn’t until the statue caught my eye a few days into retreat that I finally wrote the issues on paper and placed them under St. Joseph.  And at that moment, I experienced great peace as I, in a real way, was giving God permission to work on my problems too!  What are your problems that need solving, anxieties that need peacefully resolved?  Make them known to God—and St. Joseph too—trusting that he will help you and give you peace that surpasses all understanding.

Rejoice in His Peace,
Fr. Jeremy