Advent Novena Meditation: Day 4

The following is the meditation for Day 4 (December 19) of the Advent Novena. For the full text of the novena, click here.

Day 4

Even from His mother’s womb, the Infant Christ already practiced that perfect submission to God that would characterize His entire life. He adored his Eternal Father; He submitted to his will; He faithfully accepted the lowly state in which He found himself, knowing all the weakness, hardship, and humiliation it implied. Who among us, having full use of the powers of reason and understanding, would willingly regress to such a helpless condition? Who could knowingly undergo such a prolonged martyrdom—one so painful in every respect? Yet that is the Divine Child began his painful and humbling journey. In such a way, he began to make Himself as nothing before the Father; to teach us what God deserves from His creature; to expiate our pride, the origin of our sins, and make us realize its fundamental evil and disorder.

We long to make a true prayer. Let us understand what such a prayer would be by contemplating the Child Jesus within his mother’s womb. The Christ Child prays there in the most excellent way. He does not speak; He does not meditate; He does not melt into fits of emotion. Rather, his condition of utter dependence is his prayer, a state He accepts in his willingness to honor God, and through which He reveals to us everything God deserves and the way in which He ought to be adored.

Let us join this prayer made by the Divine Child within the womb of Mary. Let us imitate his profound self-denial, and let this abatement of ourselves be the first effect of our sacrifice to God. Let us give ourselves to God, not in order to be something—as our vanity demands—but in order to be nothing: to be eternally consumed in Him, to renounce our selfish desires and our hunger for greatness over others—even in a spiritual way—and forsake every stirring of vainglory. Let us disappear before our own regard, that God may be everything to us.