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On a personal note, I have really been looking forward to this Thursday for quite some time. My youngest child will be arriving home from his gap year in Canada. There has been a flurry of activity in our house as we make some of his favourite foods, tidy up his bedroom (which seems to have become the dumping zone for all of our extraneous items) and just generally make the place, and ourselves, ready for his arrival.

This put me in the frame of mind to think about our preparations for Christmas and more importantly, Advent. There are so many reflections about Advent but I have chosen one for this week that resonated with me as I wait in joyful hope for the arrival of my son.

Memory Awakens Hope Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Seek That Which Is Above 1986

     "Advent is concerned with that very connection between memory and hope which is so necessary to man. Advent’s intention is to awaken the most profound and basic emotional memory within us, namely, the memory of the God who became a child. This is a healing memory; it brings hope. The purpose of the Church’s year is continually to rehearse her great history of memories, to awaken the heart’s memory so that it can discern the star of hope.…

     It is the beautiful task of Advent to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope."

Leslie King