Fr. Frank Majka, SJ – The Bridge

Advent Clean Up

When I was growing up, whenever we had out of town guests come to our house, we cleaned the place up. Sometime all it took was a little dusting and some vacuuming; but sometimes it involved moving the couch out from the wall or waxing the kitchen floor. But one room in the back hallway seldom got cleaned because we didn’t intend for guests to see it. It was the room where we stored boxes of things that we seemed unable to throw out.

Advent is a season for cleaning up for the arrival of Christ. We want our lives to be nice and presentable when the Son of God comes, but most of us have a private back room where we keep things like old hurts, resentments, grudges, and regrets, things we have no real use for but hold on to, nonetheless.

This Advent why not ask the Holy Spirit to help us get rid of some that junk we’ve stored away? Then, when Christ comes, we can invite him to make himself at home, not just in some of the rooms of our lives, but all of them, including the one in the back hallway.