Writing this in the first week of Advent, I see around me the world’s impatience for Christmas. Christmas trees are already up in homes decorated with bright coloured lights, Christmas songs being played in shops, even the village Christmas trees lit up with Christmas Carols being sung and Father Christmas arriving in towns. The shops are busy with people buying presents and stocking up on food. All around us the world is rushing towards Christmas without waiting patiently for the King to be born. But Advent is a time for waiting, a time of preparing ourselves for the coming of our Lord. The mood in churches changes as they are dressed in purple as we await the changing of night into the glorious coming of the day. Not until Christmas day will they be dressed in gold and decorated with cribs and flowers and joyful Christmas carols sung. Every day, here at the Priory, we keep the 5-fold Office, Mass and an hour of prayer in our chapel where Our Lord is present in the tabernacle but Our Lady was the first tabernacle, carrying the body of Christ in her womb for 9 months. During this time of waiting, she didn’t sit at home but rushed to visit Elizabeth. And when the two women met, John leapt in Elizabeth’s womb, being the first to recognise Our Lord. ‘This holy time itself comes to remind us, that He…………..for nine long months (was) in the womb of the Virgin, to be born in a stable, the poor inn of the poor town rejecting Him; to take that winter journey, when Herod sought the young child to destroy Him. To wander despised and rejected of men over Judea and Galilee and Samaria, not having where to lay His head, to be called a man of gluttonous and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners, to have His miracles ascribed to Beelzebub, finally, to be betrayed by His Apostle, forsaken by all, to be sold for a slave’s price, to be scourged, to be crowned with thorns, to be reckoned among the transgressors, and to be made a spectacle to the world.’ (Sermon Advent 2 1860 by J.M. Neale) J.M. Neale tells us to ’look at Our Lord’s patience; all the patience of those thirty- three years of humility and suffering – all the patience of that bitter ascent up Mount Calvary, all the patience of the Cross, all the patience of those forty hours in the grave.’ He tells us that ‘when we are tempted, as you assuredly will be, to be impatient, not only with yourselves, but with each other’ to remember that ‘He could wait patiently, lovingly, joyfully; and you must learn of Him. …..Wait you must, the Bridegroom has not yet come’ (Sermon Advent 4 1858). Carol Elizabeth SSM