by Sr. Siobhan O’Keefe SHJM                      England                            11.12.2024        

Advent is a season of preparation to deepen our awareness of God’s incarnation and
divine presence amongst us. A time when we learn of his great love for each one as he
wishes to set us free from all that blocks his divine life in our world today.
In 2024 I have witnessed this advent incarnation lived out in community prayer where
we have desired to deepen our relationship with the living God through silent
contemplative prayer surrendering all to the living God and entering deeper union with
him so that he may be Lord of all.

Through our prayer, sisters have supported each other through good times and bad….
they have embraced their call to ‘BE with each other’ in the daily realities of life helping
each other to hold onto hope and a promise of a new dawn tomorrow.

In ministry they have empowered the most vulnerable in special needs education,
service in food pantries, loving care of the elderly or the homeless and advocated for
the rights of the marginalised at local or national level. They have served as the voice
of the voiceless when they have placed their X on the ballot papers in local and
national elections calling all candidates to respond compassionately to the changing
needs of all whom they are called to serve, upholding their dignity every step of the
way. Care of the environment and respect for all of God’s creation is central to this way
of being.

Earlier this year I reflected deeply on what Advent must have meant to some people
incarcerated in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. I visited this place of
horror with Sister Gabriella from Vienna, one of our SHJM Austrian Federation communities.
She shared with me some of the challenges faced by the peoples of the Eastern bloc
countries under a communist regime. As we walked through the concentration camp,
a scene of the most horrific brutal suffering, I felt that the air was being sucked out of
my lungs by the oppressive atmosphere and I wondered how the victims coped in this
hell hole; what gave them hope as they experienced the worst of man’s inhumanity to
man.

When we arrived at the cell where Fr. Maxmillian Kolbe had lived, I recalled how
he had sacrificed his life so that the father of a family could be saved from execution
by swapping places with him in the gas chamber. A lighted candle giving glory to God
now serves as a memorial of his most humble generosity. This was placed there by
Pope John Paul 11 in June 1979 when he visited Auschwitz which is in the pope’s home
diocese. Pope John Paul dedicated his first Encyclical “Redemptor Hominis” “to the
cause of man, to the dignity of man, to the threats to him, and finally to his inalienable
rights of man.”

The lighted candle was like a resurrection scene at the foot of the cross
and confirmed my hope once more that no matters what horrors plague our world, the
true light of Advent never dims. As we share our Advent journey, I pray that we may bring a little of that light to
each other and all whom we encounter in our service of love.

May it shine ever more  brightly for all people in the Jubilee Year of Hope, 2025,   Amen.