Consider all the people and events you have waited for already this day. Perhaps it was for a child to come home from school, or a spouse to call from the office. You might have waited for something unimportant, or maybe for something as important as a medical diagnosis or the birth of a child. Waiting is part of our everyday lives.

Advent is the Church’s season for waiting. While we wait, we recall that Jesus has already come as our Messiah. We also wait as a faithful community for Jesus Christ to come to us again on Christmas. And, we believe that Christ will come to us in majesty at the end of time.

Advent waiting is not idle waiting; it requires our faithful attention and all of our patience. We must be willing to listen for God’s voice in all the noise and in the silence of our lives, to watch with eyes of faith for Jesus’ face among the holiday crowds.

Jesus Christ comes to us when we least expect. We might hear him in the merry greetings of friends and neighbors or in the anguished cry of the hungry and the homeless. We might even stumble upon Christ in the silence of our own hearts. If we only wait and believe.

Family Activity

	Read an Advent-like storybook together. Choose any child’s book that has a theme of waiting or preparing for a special person or event, such as Waiting for Amos by Monica Kulling (Bradbury Press, 1993).

	•		Discuss together how the characters in the story waited or prepared. Connect Advent waiting and preparation with the way the story characters waited and prepared. Help the children recognize that we wait and prepare for those people who are important to us, or for those events that are important.
	•		Continue your family discussion by talking about the kinds of things Mary and Joseph might have done while they waited for Jesus’ birth.

See the Liturgical Calendar on this site for additional information.
See also Catechist—Lent or Teacher—Lent for Liturgy.