Into our Hearts

Renée Antrosio – December 3, 2024 2 Comments

What is my personal journey of Advent? Together we light the candles, sing songs of waiting, and prepare our homes for Christmas. But what is happening in my heart? 

It is a vulnerable question. Do we dare to take time, make space, to look into our hearts to examine where we need Jesus to come more fully? For the first time, I accepted my nun’s invitation to engage in the “Advent Busy Person’s Retreat.” The questions in the booklet from Creighton University’s online ministries Praying Advent have been unexpectedly moving. They prompt me to examine “the place in my heart where Jesus is missing, where His style, His way, and His heart are not like mine. It is an opportunity to feel the absence, to feel the emptiness, or perhaps the shallowness of certain places in my heart.”

This is not a comfortable process. To engage in it authentically is to look deep into myself and see my lack, my need, my inability to save myself. The personal work of Advent is to allow ourselves to discover again our need for a Savior. 

“We don’t want to skip over this step. To pray, ‘Come, Lord Jesus,’ without knowing what I’m asking for will ultimately not be the best way to make that prayer…. What is feeling ‘empty’ in me? Where do I feel I’ve not let Jesus into my heart? In what areas might I have walled Him out? Into what pain, loneliness, fear, or anger have I not invited him?”

This is an intimate conversation of the heart. I imagine Bethlehem as a metaphor, and myself as the innkeeper making room in my own home, with my own animals, for Jesus to be born again in my heart today. I am drawn to the familiar words, hearing them anew

O holy Child of Bethlehem,
descend to us, we pray;
cast out our sin and enter in;
be born in us today.

In Advent, if we are willing, we can experience again the deep desire for Jesus to come into our lives. Our personal need and longing, not just for the world, but in the private depths of our heart. 

“Our desire for Jesus to fill us will make Advent a season that truly is about the Incarnation- the coming of Jesus , in the fleshly reality of our day-to-day life.”

May we have the courage to look into our hearts and experience our need for Jesus, our need for a Savior. May our longing meet God’s longing for us, that we might experience grace. May we sing again, like little children

Come into my heart, Come into my heart
Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.
Come in today, Come in to stay.
Come into my heart, Lord Jesus. 

-Renée