C.PP.S. Advent Series 2025

Behind All the Bright Lights: Advent — A Quaking Season

Fr. Ben Berinti, C.PP.S. 

Join the Missionaries of the Precious Blood as you make your way this Advent Season with a daily reflection by Fr. Ben Berinti, C.PP.S. Sister Joan Chittister, OSB, once wrote: “If you we want to do Christmas well, we need to do Advent well.” No more insightful words have been spoken about this important, but often hidden and neglected season. Advent is a “quaking season,” meant to push us a bit off center in order to see the Advent of God coming in subtle and surprising ways. Indeed, “behind all the bright lights” of Christmas lurks the powerful season of Advent!

Fr. Ben Berinti, C.PP.S., is the Vice Moderator General of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood and serves as pastor of Immaculate Conception Church, Melbourne Beach, Florida.  

First Sunday of Advent (Nov. 30)
The tone and timbre of the Advent Season is magnificent, but it mostly moves beneath the surface of the lights and glitter and economic forecasts that weigh heavy this time of year. Perhaps we think we know what Advent is all about — bits of midnight blue woven with purple, four candles and a wreath, puffs of incense smoke for solemnity, a nearly naked sanctuary, some admonitions to stop and breathe, rounding up donations for those in need, nightfall that comes ever more swiftly with each passing day. But Advent is so much more than these trifling things!

Advent I Weekday (Dec. 1)
While we claim familiarity with the movements of Advent, often nearly crushed under the weight of Christmas preparations, do we really know what its promises and perils are? No matter how many we’ve seen come and go, Advent is still a disorienting, foggy season, a quaking season that both comforts and disrupts.

Advent I Weekday (Dec. 2)
The disorientation percolating in our souls as we face the depth of Advent’s invitation springs from the significant questions that are being hurled at us in these days — questions larger than “What should I buy Grandma (who doesn’t need anything); Where are we eating Christmas dinner this year; does anyone even send Christmas cards by USPS anymore; Are there any parking spaces left at the mall on Saturday afternoon?”

Advent I Weekday and Memorial of St. Francis Xavier (Dec. 3)

St. Gaspar, the founder of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, entrusted his missionary congregation to the inspiration of St. Francis Xavier. Francis Xavier was no stranger to disquieting and discomforting questions and choices. The questions of the Season of Advent, particularly raised in the Scripture readings each day of this season, can be disorienting. Perhaps this is why we mostly ignore them!

Advent I Weekday (Dec. 4)
An oft-repeated Psalm verse flowing from our lips at worship in this season begs God to “stir up and rouse our spirit.”  But as we unwittingly sing and proclaim these words, do we realize what we are asking? This is the problem with ritual words; we say them without thinking!

Advent I Weekday (Dec. 5)
Advent is full of repetitive words that flow from the lips of the praying faithful, but despite the routine with which we approach them, they still have power; they are still dangerous! Because they are addressed to God, and God will respond to these “formalities” of ours despite our not paying much attention!

Advent I Weekday and Memorial of St. Nicholas (Dec. 6)
This Advent weekday recognizes St. Nicholas, the ubiquitous seasonal figure, spread around many cultures, although known by many different names. “Santa Claus” certainly tempers the unsettling spirit of Advent with his “jolly old elf” visage. But let us not forget that St. Nicholas was a disruptive figure in his time by going places he shouldn’t, crossing boundaries he wasn’t meant to pass through, and calling attention to the suffering poor, whom we love to push to the side, or worse yet, blame for their condition.

Second Sunday of Advent (Dec. 7)
Christmas may still be weeks away, but perhaps some of us are already “over it”! Too much going; hard to keep up; already flooded by unrealistic expectations to make this the “best Christmas ever!” The true joy of Christmas is sweeter and deeper, more honest and authentic, and more grace-full when we actual stumble a bit through this Advent season. A bump in the road, a leaning over the edge, perhaps even a collision with the God who has been known, throughout the ages, to make people wander and search before they find their way home.

The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Dec. 8)
And speaking of disorientation and upsetting expectations, here comes the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary — a shining feast that rivals the bright lights adorning over-decorated homes! God chooses the lowly and the obscure to work wonders — but doesn’t leave us to our own devices. God “prepares” us, as God did Mary of Nazareth, for the work we are called to engage — even from the time in our mother’s wombs.

Advent II Weekday (Dec. 9)
During these days of the Advent season, it is easy to become nostalgic and dreamy about the past, our past in particular. Many narratives have been rewritten (and not always with great accuracy) when in a wistful, nostalgic mood. In our minds and hearts, we relive the simple joys and pleasures of a bygone era — visions of “sugar plums” (whatever those actually are)! But Advent is primarily about God’s dynamic and imaginative future, not about the past.

Advent II Weekday (Dec. 10)
Advent-Christmas begins not with the past, but with the future! It is a season not about an annual pilgrimage to encounter a baby in Bethlehem (despite all the images to the contrary), but rather a pilgrimage to the King of Creation in the “New Jerusalem,” the Reign of God with its unending newness and expansiveness. 

Advent II Weekday (Dec. 11)
Through the winding roads of our Advent season, we are invited, in no small terms, to join in the great cataclysm of God’s future coming, of God’s adventing. We are invited to “stand erect and to raise our heads” because our redemption comes not from nostalgia sneaking up behind us nor from dusting off bygone memories of more peaceful, more serene times, but rather from a God who thunders toward us from the future and who leads us through the cataclysms into the promise of safety, peace, and security.

Our Lady of Guadalupe (Dec. 12)
One of the first responses by Church authorities to Juan Diego’s claim that he witnessed an appearance of the Blessed Mother was that “It can’t be her! She’s not wearing the correct clothes!” Talk about misguided expectations! Just as Jesus came into the world as “one of us,” so Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared as one of the native people of Mexico. So easy to miss God when God appears in plain wrapping.

Advent II Memorial of St. Lucy (Dec. 13)
As the moments of this Advent continue to unfold, like the child panting breathlessly in the face of the coming Christmas, we too may wonder, “Will Christmas ever get here?” Surely, the trappings of Christmas have been surrounding us for weeks (even months), but in our hearts and souls we know that Christmas is not really here. Jesus indeed been born in Bethlehem — but Christ is still waiting to be born and to reign as Lord and Savior.

Third (Gaudete) Sunday of Advent (Dec. 14)
“Waiting” has been one of the recurring watchwords of Advent — sounds gentle but something most of us truly despise! But waiting is center to the human condition. We are always waiting, wondering, hoping, dreaming, and wishing. We continue pleading for justice, community, healing, freedom, recovery, comfort, purpose, and joy. Advent attempts to draw us into the expectant waiting of a world pregnant with grace and favor, but one that has yet to fully give birth to these children. Can there really be any joy in waiting? When the advent of God is what we await, then clearly joy is more than possible!

Advent III Weekday (Dec. 15)
Underneath the largeness of all-things-Christmas, underneath the spectacle and expansiveness surrounding us this season, is simplicity and ordinariness. Once we’ve unraveled the strings of colored light and hung the lustrous garland; once we’ve cleaned the mixing bowls and dotted the last Christmas cookie cutout with sprinkles — and finally come up for air — what’s left? What is left is a God who comes as one of us; a God who takes our humanity so seriously that this God decided to embrace the fullness of our creaturehood and our incredible ordinariness. No wonder it is so hard to see this plain wrapper God under the glow of all the bright lights.

Advent III Weekday (Dec. 16)
Indeed, Jesus is proclaimed “Emmanuel,” God-With-Us. But what a mess Jesus once entered into and continues to enter into — our humanity! How can our humanity hold the reality of God without being overtaken by it, and therefore, wiping out our humanity? It can be messy and way too ordinary to believe in the Incarnation — God’s enfleshment — because it means that we touch the transcendent God in the particularities of names and places and events of our concrete lives — and not “in some heaven light years away.”

Advent III Weekday (Dec. 17)
In many ways, the gift of Christmas we anticipate in these Advent days is an incredibly ordinary one. Perhaps, in a strange sort of way, this is why the various angels who appear in the Bible this season keep repeating: “Do not be afraid; do not fear!” It can be frightening to fully embrace the God who fully embraces us in our ordinariness, in the messy and sloppy circumstances and events of our lives, both as individuals and communities. 

Advent III Weekday (Dec. 18)
It can be an unsettling, but hopefully, welcome truth that God penetrates and pitches a tent in the middle of our messiness, in the center of our unkempt homes. Our God is a God who dwells in the ordinariness of our everyday lives — in the bumps and grinds, the mountains and molehills, the celebrations and the tragedies, the pettiness and the grandeur, the securities and the discomforts, the setbacks and the breakthroughs — all of it is God’s because we are God’s beloved!

Advent III Weekday (Dec. 19)
I have a penchant for wanting to keep things neat and clean (thank you, Mom). Neat and clean surroundings bring a certain feeling of order and control into my life. In a world that seems to reflect more disorder than order, more imbalance that balance, more clutter than clean, I surmise that my feeble attempts are an effort to stave off these forces as they disrupt my life. But no matter my efforts, the world (and people around me) has its own rhyme and rhythm — and mess is part and parcel of the way life unfolds. But then again, Advent scriptures slowly reveal to us, prepares us for the truth that God’s entrance into our world is wrapped in a whole lot of disorder and mess!

Advent III Weekday (Dec. 20)
Try as we might to sanitize Christmas, at the first Christmas with the manger scenes we place in our churches and in our homes, there was little to nothing sanitary about it! Everything from the unmarried teenage virgin with child, to a stable full of animals as the birthing room, to a feed trough for a bed, to dirty field workers smelling of their flocks coming to pay homage, to the threat of destruction by a jealous king — all conspired to make this scene a less than clean beginning.

 Fourth Sunday of Advent (Dec. 21)
As we near the finish line of this Advent journey, we are, in truth, only arriving at the beginning of God’s hopes and desires for humanity and all of creation. It invites us, as we gaze upon our manger scenes, to allow ourselves to look beyond the tranquil figures that are set before us and to see the precarious circumstances of Joseph and Mary’s relationship, the weariness of their long trip to Bethlehem, the raunchy odors of the stable, the dark and cold of night, the grimacing pains of labor and the bloody stains of birth — and to contemplate the utter preposterousness of the promise of Emmanuel.

Advent IV Weekday (Dec. 22)
The drama of the Incarnation (and it is high level drama), of the birthing of God-With-Us is that it occurs not in plastic or precious stone, not in alabaster or mother-of-pearl manger scenes, but that it occurs in the real flesh and blood of human life and experience. This infant cries out to us as any other newborn would. This infant makes demands on our time and attention as any other infant does. 

Advent IV Weekday (Dec. 23)
While we coo with awe in the face of infants, remember that this God-child, whose birth we witness and testify to this Christmas, eventually grows into the man who will call us to follow paths we fear to tread upon, yet will accompany us every step of the way; the one who will tell us that “unless the grain of wheat falls to the earth and die, it will remain just a grain of wheat.”

Advent IV Weekday (Dec. 24)
Let’s be clear this December 24, that as Advent ends and we celebrate Christmas tomorrow — Advent never really ends, for God is always coming toward a waiting and weary world. May the drama of the birthing of Jesus be for all of us an experience of God’s willingness to risk with us God’s very life! May the days we have journeyed together this Advent prepare us better meet the fragilities, the wrinkles, the groanings, and the vulnerabilities of our lives with just a bit more hopefulness. May we know in the depths of our spirits that we are being carried in the womb of God — awaiting a new birth!