Shaping the Advent Heart

Sr. Margaret Kerry, FSP, ponders how our hearts need two types of time to be shaped by God's eternal love.

This time of year, our kitchen counter is a staging place for the holidays: pie shells, apples, pumpkins, flour, sugar, and butter fill up all the normally empty space. Soon the ingredients will be mixed, and the oven heated. In little over an hour apple pie, apple turnovers and pumpkin bread will fill the room with marvelous aromas. They just wait for the ingredient of time.

Shaping the Advent heart is like this. Ingredients for shaping our heart are readily available: the Word of God, the Mass, sacraments, and spiritual books. The Liturgical Year provides seasonal ingredients. Advent adds the ingredients of meditation books, candles, prayers, and resolutions. We gather these ingredients, placing them on the counter of our lives. There is joy knowing that these will turn into something beautiful and nutritious. Where do we find the time?

The ancient Greeks had two words for time, Chronos and Kairos. Kairos is the right or opportune moment. Chronos refers to chronological or sequential time. While the demands of Chronos seem to drain us of time, Kairos is cultivated when we recognize God’s presence guiding us to abundant life. Kairos moments are woven throughout our day. They include others who step into our precious alone Chronos-time. Kairos is cultivated when we take Kairos-time to listen, to be with someone, to recognize that time is not our own. Paul reminds us that what we see is temporary while what we don’t see is eternal (2 Corinthians 4:18). Not grasping temporal time allows us to enter eternal time. Our perspective changes. Our is heart is shaped with ingredients that are eternal, stirred in with Christ who rises in our heart (2 Peter 1:19) so that we become the aroma of Christ (2 Corinthians 2: 15).

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Mother Church provides the Advent ingredients for shaping our heart into the heart of God’s eternal love. #catholicmom

Sure, it takes Chronos-time to bake a pie, along with a timer to get it just right. I think the reason Mom’s baked goods taste better than all others is the ingredient of Kairos. You can taste it. It is nourishing for body and soul. Mother Church provides the Advent ingredients for shaping our heart into the heart of God’s eternal love.

Copyright 2021 Sr. Margaret Kerry, FSP
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