Together in Advent

Living Advent: Preparing the Heart for the Emmanuel

Advent is a brief yet intense time in which the Church invites us to renew our longing for God, rekindle our hope, and prepare our hearts to welcome the One who comes: the Emmanuel, God-with-us.

In the spirituality of the Assumption, this time resonates with an incarnate faith, bold hope, and active charity. Advent thus becomes a school of interior availability and joyful vigilance.

Advent, a time of conversion and hope

Advent opens a path that leads to Christ. The conversion proposed by the Church is not primarily a moral effort but a return to the heart, an interior movement to rediscover the central place of God within us. Thus, the Church invites us to:

• The conversion of our gaze: learning to recognise God’s signs in our lives, in events, in faces, and even in our fragilities.
• The conversion of the heart: allowing the Spirit to purify our intentions, soften what is hardened, heal what is wounded, and enlighten what remains in darkness.
• The conversion of our expectations: moving from a simple desire for celebration to a deep desire to encounter the Saviour. In the Assumptionist tradition, we are invited to live this conversion with a contemplative heart nourished by silence, prayer, and openness to God’s action. Advent becomes a time of humble and patient vigilance, where hope grows like a light rising gradually in the night.

The light of Emmanuel in our daily lives

God comes in simplicity: a child in a manger, in an atmosphere of meaningful silence. This time teaches us to recognise the discreet yet real light of Emmanuel in our simple daily gestures:

• A fraternal smile
• Patience toward those who are most fragile around us
• A humble service filled with love
• Listening offered without judgment
• An act of reconciliation and mercy
• Fidelity to prayer despite our many obligations

As human beings limited in space, we are called to embody faith in every place of our lives, making each space one where God can reveal Himself. Living Advent means choosing to make the light shine where we are: in community, at work, in mission, in the hidden gestures seen only by God. Emmanuel is already here, and through grace we discover the reflection of His light.

Community and sharing: living Advent together

Advent is not a solitary journey: it is deeply ecclesial and communal. Preparing our hearts for God to be the Emmanuel means preparing a shared space where Christ may be born among us. This place is like the manger, where life breathes through community prayer, the shared reading of the Word, gestures of solidarity lived together and/or shared with those most in need, mutual encouragement in hope, and attention to the weakest or forgotten. The community is the space where God becomes visible, where we carry together our joys, burdens, and struggles. Advent calls us to become artisans of communion, builders of a “we” in which Christ finds a dwelling.

To live Advent in our Assumptionist spirit is to allow ourselves to be deeply converted, to let the light of God illuminate our simplest gestures so that we may walk together, take one another’s hand in a spirit of communion, and offer a smile as hope and charity rise on the horizon. Then our hearts become a manger where Emmanuel can truly be born, and Christmas is no longer merely a celebration: it becomes an encounter, an inner birth, a renewed presence of God in our lives.

Sister Joëline

Province of Madagascar