Advent is soon upon us.  Are you ready? I must say I had planned to write a nice post on ways to live out an intentional Advent, but then this tweet from Cardinal Dolan popped up in my feed and it got me thinking. It began “I’m sorry for the frightening readings at the end of the Church year, but they are meant to make us think about the end of time…” Let me say up front that I really like Cardinal Dolan, and I think his heart is in the right place, but I honestly feel that we shouldn’t apologize for the frightening readings this time of year. In fact, I think we should be encouraging people to dive deep into these readings and ponder what God is trying to tell us through them. And they should frighten us on first glance — actually, they should scare the heck out of us. I mean, angels tossing people into everlasting fires, sickles cutting down sinners and throwing them in the press of God’s fury, plagues, cities hurled into the seas in everlasting flames, the great Beast that seemingly defeats God’s messengers — let’s just say, the Book of Revelation ain’t no walk in the park. The truth is, it is so easy to grow lukewarm in our faith. I think these Revelation readings are there to wake us up out of our lethargy, and who among us doesn’t need to be woken up every now and then? Sometimes we focus so much on God’s Mercy that we forget about His Justice.  Sometimes we figure that as long as we’re “nice” people we’ll be fine — but I’m sorry to say that being nice is not enough. Being “nice” can sometimes be more about wanting to be liked than about loving the person in front of you — in fact, sometimes loving somebody means we have to say the hard thing, the “not nice” thing because you want the best for the person in front of you. We need to aim for being a Saint who loves heroically, not just a “nice” person. I don’t know about you, but there is a lot in my heart that needs work — an awful lot — and quite often I run from that reality and just fill my thoughts with all the noise and all the distractions that are so readily available to me. I fill my life with all the things — All.The.Things — until I have managed to drown out the voice of God who is calling me back to Him. It reminds me of a dream I had years ago.  In that dream I was in a field,  throwing a graduation cap with friends and family, as if it was a frisbee.  (Hey, it was a dream, it doesn’t need to make sense.) What none of us seemed to notice was that we were getting closer and closer to a precipice with every throw of the frisbee — a precipice so deep, so wide that there would be no surviving the fall. Upon noticing the danger, I ran back to a building with pillars — pillars like St. Peter’s in Rome — when suddenly, day turned to night in the blink of an eye. Then, God began to speak words of a warning to the whole world — warning that many were on the edge of a precipice, their souls in the balance. The thing was, there was so much noise in the world, that barely anybody could hear God calling to them. They couldn’t hear His warning. All of a sudden, the stars began to dance in the sky. It was beautiful — that is, until they began swooping down to Earth, as if they were going to crash right into the Earth and become flaming balls of death and destruction. There was no time left to change our lives. What can I say, I have weird dreams. But that noise in that dream has been coming back to my mind these past few days.  Our lives are so full of so much noise:  Not just audible noise, but visual and emotional noise. All the noise seems to have cluttered our lives and distracted us from what is really important. God is calling to you and me because He loves us, but it’s like we can’t hear Him anymore. He wants us to avoid that chasm that is slowly closing in on us — but if we don’t start turning off the noise and listening to Him, we may not hear His warnings to us. Don’t take my word for it.  God makes it quite clear: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” Matthew 7:13-14 Which is why I don’t think anybody should apologize for the frightening readings of Revelations.  We should be encouraging people to take them very seriously. Our souls — the souls of the people we love — are lying in the balance. It’s time to wake up. In fact, this Advent would be the perfect time to pull those readings from the Book of Revelation and be reminded that one day we will die and we will be judged for all of our actions. Jesus wants to save you and He wants to save me — but we need to say yes.  We need to examine our heart and make some changes. And, for the love of all that is good in this world, we need to learn to shut off all the noise in our environment and in our heads so we can hear Him calling to us to come back to Him with all of our hearts. We have two Seasons of Penance in the Church: Advent and Lent.  They aren’t there to ruin our fun.  They are there to prepare our hearts for the final judgment. They are there to break some bad habits and to learn to love silence and stillness — because it is there that we will find God. Guys, your heart is supposed to be a place where you can retreat from the world and the noise and meet Christ. It is meant to be a place of light and warmth and incredible peace — because Jesus is there, just waiting for you to meet him. How amazing is that?  Jesus is right there, deep in your heart, and he is waiting for you. But here is the catch, if you take time to meet Him every day, you will eventually take a look around your heart and see a lot of clutter and mess and maybe even some sludge that needs to be cleared out of there. We can’t clear that clutter away if we don’t take the time to see it — so take the time this Advent to see it and vow to begin to do your part to remove the clutter and the sludge that is there. It’s time for some housekeeping.  Go to confession, but don’t stop there. Find ways to make little sacrifices so that you can actually begin to feel your hunger for God again. Don’t just say “no” to some good things this Advent and leave it at that, because saying no, denying yourself, will leave a void where those things once occupied. Fill that void with God. I’m all for a good Hallmark Christmas movie and Festive Christmas music, but can we take some of those moments we might fill with those things to go out into the silence of an adoration chapel and meet God face to face this Advent? Can we do that?  Because guys, I am afraid if we don’t treat this Advent as our last Advent we aren’t going to live out this season the way that we really should be living it. If you would like to know some practical ways to make advent more meaningful this year, check out this post here. A word of warning:  Don’t turn Advent into a time of judging everybody around you for their choices.  If you do that, then you, my friend, have lost the grace that God has for you in this Season. Give the people around you the benefit of the doubt — Christmas can be a very sad time of year for a lot of people. Let’s try to push ourselves a bit this Advent.  Let’s take sacrificing seriously, and I promise the joy of Christmas will be all the greater because of that effort. Don’t forget, Christ is waiting for you.  Make time for Him this Advent and see what happens. Here’s to our best Advent yet.   Sharing over at Kelly’s