Impatient for the New Year?

Available for over a year

Spiritual reflection with Ronnie Convery, Director of Communications for the Catholic Archdiocese of Glasgow. Script: Hello, good morning to you — and let me start by wishing you a very happy New Year. No you’re not hearing things … it might be just the first of December, but in the Christian calendar, today is the first weekday of Advent and Advent marks the start of a new Church year. Advent is best described as the season of waiting. I remember when I was a wee boy it was super exciting to open the first window of the Advent calendar and burn down the first number of the Advent candle at home – we didn’t have smoke alarms at the time thankfully! Waiting was thus transformed into something ‘fun’. Waiting isn’t something we’re very good at these days though. We live in a world of instant delivery pizzas and real time mobile phone apps, where even a buffering screen can make us impatient. We’re used to filling in every break in a movie or wait at the checkout by checking our messages, ticking off lists, moving on to the next thing. But Advent suggests something very different. It’s an invitation to stop rushing toward what’s next, and to pay attention to what’s here. What’s inside. There is so much of life to be discovered in that ‘in-between’ space -while we wait for the pizza to arrive, of course … Maybe we need to move away from ‘enduring’ waiting, to ‘exploring’ waiting — looking inside and learning to let patience make us gentler, more aware, more ready. Today we can pray for patience … When life feels uncertain or slow to unfold, let’s try to practise patience— with others, and with ourselves. And if you follow the shape of the Christian year, remember to wish someone a Happy New Year today, and be patient if they don’t quite get it!