There is nothing so tantalizing as the smell of freshly baked bread. When you walk into a store and you can smell that bread, you immediately want to go and get a loaf of it. I think there is only one thing better than the smell of freshly baked bread in the store and that is having the smell of freshly baked bread in your own home. There is something about it. It waifs through the whole home and fills it up with the smell of freshness of ready-to-eat, ready to gather around for the meal.
But the difference between buying bread at the store and having bread at home is that it takes time and discipline. The ingredients are very straightforward. Bread really has only a handful of main ingredients. You can make it more complex but fundamentally there is a flour, liquid and a rising agent: The flour can be ordinary plain flour or wholewheat flour; the liquid can be either milk, buttermilk or just water, and then the rising agent is either yeast or baking soda. Now you can put an egg in it or you can do without an egg, you can put salt in it or you can do without the salt. You can do lots of other things, but those three main ingredients are fairly common and those are certainly not difficult to find in the store. Yet most of us will not find the time nor have the discipline to do it.
Some of you know this but I love to bake my own Irish brown soda bread. I have my mother's recipe that I have adjusted over the years. Yet I also have a struggle with the time and discipline. However, I find it so important that I make the time and have a routine now. So what I have done is I make my life easier. I have a special shelf and it has all the ingredients right there: a drawer with all the different flours and dry ingredients ready to go. All I need is to get buttermilk and eggs at the store. With all the ingredients already there, it makes it easier. I just uncap all the containers add the flours and boom, boom, boom and within about five minutes, I have all the preparation done.
The reason why I bring that up is because Christmas is always a great time of year but there is only one thing better than regular Christmas is when we are ourselves have prepared really well for it. It's the difference between home baked bread and store bought bread. When we take on the journey of Christmas for ourselves and really use this time we call Advent as a true preparation time. But just like baking bread, it requires discipline. All the ingredients to have a great Christmas are always in place. All the ingredients to have God in our life are always there and all we have to do is put it all together. If you would, the three main ingredients of this time of Christmas is the Trinity: God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All we need to do is have the time and the discipline of putting things together so we have a fresh Christmas celebration. So how do find the time and the discipline?
Fundamentally, what we have to understand is Christ is always with us. Just like the ingredients for home baked bread is always there, we need to find the time to prepare it. Advent is the time in which we set aside four full weeks of preparation. We say we are going to set a discipline, we are going to make ourselves be aware of how God is present in our lives and so we commit to making Christmas better. We have the four different candles that represent the four different weeks. And each week, we light a candle as a remembrance of the light of Christ in our life. We emphasize that we are preparing, we spend time and we pray. This is not just going to happen without our effort. Just like we don't get freshly baked bread in the house without making a huge effort. There are things that you can do ahead of time, just like baking bread, which will make it easier. And one of those is the regular prayer time in our life. Now I know you have heard me go on and on about this but yet little success do we have. So few of us seem to have committed to a daily two minutes or four minutes of prayer in our life. Why? Why have we not decided to make this a commitment in our life? Is it that we don't believe God is present in our life? Or are we afraid that God will show us something different from what we are already doing?
I suspect that it's because we do not have a routine or a discipline of prayer. We have to make it a discipline first before it becomes a habit. Christmas is a time when we recognize Christ present in our lives. Once in history and again each year to remind ourselves and we do this by each week lighting the candles, getting a little more excited and having a little more discipline.
So this week as we begin a new year, a new liturgical year, and we may have lost some discipline over this last year but we focus on a new year, a new beginning for us; may we decide to commit to prayer again. May we commit to the time and be aware of that Trinity in our lives, to add the yeast or soda of the Holy spirit, that brings effervescence and rising to our life; to be aware of God the Father, that constant supply of water in our life and to be always present to the flour who is the Christ, there waiting for us to recognize him.
So this Advent, may we prepare for - not bread, but the Lord's coming by preparing our hearts and cutting out some time each and every day for prayer. If we have not started with the two minutes, then maybe we can start with the two minutes. It is the same challenge for students in school, whether it be elementary school, or high school, all the way to seniors. It does not make any difference who we are or where we are at, we need to be in constant communication with our God. So, today, may we be prepared by our time and discipline of prayer. Make ready the way of the Lord and be alert and watch.
