The following is the meditation for Day 7 (December 22) of the Advent Novena. For the full text of the novena, click here.
Day 7:
Let us now consider Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem, on which the Blessed Mother carried, still unborn, the Creator of the universe made man. Let us contemplate the profound humility and obedience of the Divine Child, who though he was of the Jewish race and favored his chosen people with an unfathomable love, chose to make himself obedient to a census decreed by a foreign prince, as if there were for him in such circumstances something attractive. It was as if the Divine Child were in a hurry to be enrolled truly and officially as a subject at the very moment he was coming into the world. Is it not strange that such humility, which man the creature finds so repugnant, seems to be the one created thing that holds appeal for the Creator? Can the humility of Jesus fail to teach us how we too must love that beautiful virtue?
Ah, let the moment come in which the one desired by all nations will appear, for all things cry out for his coming! The world, mired in darkness and disquiet, seeking but not finding relief from its afflictions, sighs for its Redeemer. Joseph’s longing and Mary’s expectation are things that human language fails to express. The Eternal Father is—if we may licitly use the expression—wonderfully impatient to give his only Son unto the world and see him take his place among visible creatures. The Holy Spirit burns with the desire to present to the light of day the beauty of that Holy Child whom he himself has formed with such special and divine care. As for the Divine Child, himself the object of such great longing, let us never forget that he approaches us just as he approaches Bethlehem. Let us hasten, through our desire for him, the moment of his coming. Let us purify our souls so that they may become his mystical abode, and our hearts that they may be his earthly mansion. Let our penance and our detachment from worldly things “prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.”
