Preparing our home for a Special Guest

I love Advent! True it is a time of penance and sacrifice. For me each year Advent carries with it an opportunity to focus more intently on preparing my soul for Jesus, and I find the spirit and focus of penance and sacrifice that much more fulfilling. As I "clean house," removing the bits of dust and dirt from the corners of my soul, I find that I am also doing the same for our home, which is after all like the soul of the family (the "Domestic Church").

And so, in preparation for a very special guest's arrival on December 25th, we clean, we dust, we organize, and we decorate. In the spirit of Gaudete Sunday (celebrated yesterday) we rejoice at the looming coming of Jesus! For us, decorating our house and tree during advent help build this focus for us. We excitedly prepare our home in a very special way, just as we are busy preparing our souls. For us, Advent is characterized by plenty of prayer and service, but also by periodic occasions of decorating and arranging our home. On the 1st Sunday of Advent, we pull out the house decorations (we call them "Advent decorations"). Around the 3rd week, we purchase, trim, and decorate our Christmas tree, and as Christmas nears, we tidy, organize, wrap, and reflect on the meaning of the coming birthday party.

Tonight we will decorate our tree. We find that "Gaudete" week is a joyous time to practice this tradition. Decorating our tree as a family during Advent, with music and candles surrounding us, builds our excitement all the more for Christmas, and propels us even more intently to make the most of these last 2 weeks of Advent and prepare our souls well! Tonight we will do a special blessing of the tree as well, to draw our focus even more inward and bring the greater purpose of our merriment to the forefront of our minds. For us, it is a good "mid-Advent" re-focusing in a way.

Coincidentally, we will also celebrate the feast of St. Lucy tonight, since my husband will be away tomorrow and this is the first year we choose to celebrate this feast in light of our daughter, named for St. Lucy. We find it particularly significant that we will celebrate St. Lucy, the bearer of Light, on the same night we will light our Christmas tree. Seems more than coincidental! St. Lucy will light up our home tonight, bringing our focus even more intently on preparing our home to be a special resting place for Jesus, significantly related to how we at the same time are preparing our souls, our inner home, to be a resting place for the Lord.

Its as if our decorating and preparing of our actual house is an outward expression of what is going on inwardly. As we clean our home, we clean our souls through Confession and examination of conscience. As we adorn our tree, we adorn our souls with more focused expressions of prayer and added devotions. As we light up our tree, we ask the Lord to inflame our souls with his Light so we may more clearly see our faults and more willingly keep our eyes focused forward on the Light.

Wishing you all a blessed and focused remainder of Advent!