"The Gift of Hope"

Advent and Christmas reflections in the Holy Cross tradition.

In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord.”
—Isaiah 2:2–3

When it came time for me to learn how to drive, I took lessons from the same instructor who taught my older siblings. He had one golden rule: “Keep your eyes up.” He even had a mirror attached to the dashboard so that he could monitor from

the passenger seat where we were looking with our eyes. He knew from years of experience that young drivers tend to focus on the road just in front of the car, thereby limiting their overall vision and not allowing for the proper perspective to see where they are headed.
His mantra of “keep your eyes up” is also a theme for these first days of Advent. The day-to-day busyness of our lives—the demands and pressures of work, school, family, and a host of other things—can easily cause us to lose the perspective that we are on a journey and that this world, while very important, is not our ultimate home.
— Rev. Peter Jarret, C.S.C.

Excerpted from The Gift of Hope: Advent and Christmas Reflections in the Holy Cross Tradition, ed. by Andrew Gawrych, C.S.C.
Copyright © 2009 by Priests of Holy Cross, Indiana Province. Used with permission of the publisher, Ave Maria Press._

Explore other examples from this book:

Reflection one
Reflection two
Reflection three
Reflection four