Listen to this 9-minute video and try to reflect on what the original reason for the Christmas season was mean to deepen within us: a  truer sense of the lengths to which God is willing to go in oder to reach out to us.

AN ADVENT (OR ANYTIME) REFLECTION ON MY COMMITMENT TO GOD

Baptism, like marriage is a covenant between two parties. In marriage the covenant is between the husband and wife. In Baptism, the covenant is betwwen God and me. Just as the two parties in the marriage covenant spend the rest of their lives nurturing, strengthening and deepening their commitment to each other so that they grow to know and love each other, God and I are to work on nurturing, strengthening and deepening our commitment to each other.

Have I been striving to do this in the past and the present? What has God done for me in the past and the present? What have I done for God?

God could have created us so that we were forced to be attentive to Him. But God didn’t. God leaves us free to choose to fall in love with God and God’s goodness or to settle for what we think is our own “merry” way.

What am I really choosing?

Perhaps list the following:

What do I spend most of my time thinking about? How much time do I spend thinking about these things? How much time do I spend thinking about God? . . . about others? . . . about myself?

Then begin thinking about New Year Resolutions and what I can do to stay focused on achieving them during the coming year.

Sister Loretta