Carrying Christ: on the Third Sunday of Advent

"Advent is a time of waiting of expectation, of silence. Waiting for our Lord to be born. A pregnant woman...lives in such a garment of silence, and it is as though she were waiting to hear the stir of life within her. One always hears that stirring compared to the rustling of a bird in the hand. But the intentness with which one awaits such stirring is nothing so much as a blanket of silence."
--Dorothy Day

"When a woman is carrying a child she develops a certain instinct of self-defense. It is not selfishness; it is not egoism. It is an absorption into the life within, a folding of self like a little tent around the child's frailty, a God-like instinct to cherish, and some day bring forth the life...

This is precisely the attitude we must have to Christ, the Life within us, in the Advent of our contemplation.

We could scrub the floor for a tired friend, or dress a wound for a patient in a hospital, or lay the table and wash up for the family....We shall do it for just one thing, that our hands make s make Christ's hands in our life, that our service may let Christ serve through us, that our patience may bring Christ's patience back to the world.

By his own will Christ was dependent on Mary during Advent: he was absolutely helpless; he could go nowhere but where she chose to take him; he could not speak; her breathing was his breath; his heart beat in the beating of her heart.

Today Christ is dependent upon us. This dependence of Christ lays a great trust upon us. During this tender time of Advent we must carry him in our hearts to wherever he wants to go, and there are many places to which he may never go unless we take him."

Caryll Houselander from The Reed of God