One Last Advent Prayer

And a Question for your Year

Every Advent is different. Every year there’s something fresh that shapes my experience of these four weeks of watchful waiting, something that colors my understanding of the season. This year it was the voices.

Advent began this year, for me, in the summer, when I was immersed in daily lectionary readings as I was working on my part of the Pax Christi Advent devotional. I would drop my son off at pottery camp each morning and head over to the community center across the street, setting up at a plastic table in the lobby outside the gym. I got to know the staff and the people who came in every morning to shoot hoops and the traffic directors who would stop in on their breaks from the construction project down the street. The whole time I was thinking, “This is a miracle.” A miracle that a place like this exists, where I can walk in and greet people and clack away on my keyboard, with no expectation of purchase (though I did sometimes grab an Americano from the tiny walkup coffee window across the street.)

I’d work at the community center until the library was open, and then I’d set up at a creaky wooden table in the stacks, surrounded by the sounds of story time and public printers and librarians directing people to resources or books they were seeking. The whole time I was thinking, “This is a miracle.” A miracle that a place like this exists, where I can walk in and greet people and clack away on my keyboard, with no expectation of purchase (although you better believe I support both the library and the library foundation because some debts, while they can never be repaid, can at least be acknowledged.)

Every time I think of this Advent, every time I look at the devotional, I will remember that community center, that library, and the voices and faces of the people who accompanied me through those weeks of composition.

Advent is about community: that’s what I realized this year. And I heard it built in the voices of our readings, most especially in the Magnificat, in Elizabeth’s greeting, and in the breathtakingly tender words of Our Lady of Guadalupe. As I read and reread Zechariah’s canticle, the preaching of John the Baptist, the words of Simeon in the temple and the wise presence of Anna the prophetess, I thought about how all these voices were woven together that first Advent.

And I thought about all the voices that weave us together, even now. The laughter from the basketball court. The singing of the children in the library. The helpful responses and laughter of the community center staff and the librarians. And I can’t help myself, I feel held by those voices. As held as Mary and Joseph and Elizabeth hopefully felt that first Advent.

When the Maryknoll Sisters reached out to ask me to spread the word about their giving campaign, I offered to write them a prayer, a prayer about the voices of the women in Advent, and about the voices of these sisters who are living Advent every day.

If you aren’t familiar with the sisters, they are women out there getting it done all over the world, working for justice and peace in healthcare, education, environmental protection, economic development, civil and human rights, women’s advocacy, and much more. Everything they do is rooted in Catholic social teaching and the bedrock belief that we are all one human family, in relationship with each other and with all creation. They are a wildly inspiring bunch of people. If you are looking for a place to support at this year comes to a close, you can rest assured that your donations will go toward the work of love, justice, and peace with the sisters. If you make your way over, tell them I sent you!

Here is the prayer I wrote for them and for us:

As this year draws to a close, we’re about to enter one of my favorite weeks: that still-officially-Christmas stretch before New Year’s when we have a) no idea what day it is and b) possibly some time and space and inclination to think more expansively about the past and the future, and about our desires, in an Ignatian sense. The kids are off school for these few weeks, so the jury’s out on how much quiet time I’ll find for reflecting, but I do expect to at least have a few moments of open-handed wonder and wondering.

There is a question I return to every year during this week, and it comes to us from powerhouse anthropologist and novelist Zora Neale Hurston. It’s Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God who expresses it: “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”

Every year I ask myself: Was this a question year or an answer year? I’ve had a steady mix of both in the last decade, but this year? This is an answer year. That’s not to say that there have not been questions (How can human beings treat each other this way? How much further can our society and democracy disintegrate? These I ask every year).

But I am turning into 2026 feeling more clear on who I am and what I am doing, where I am, and what is mine to do. The peace of that is overwhelming. Wherever you find yourself at this moment of transition, caught in a question or resting in an answer, I hope that peace finds you and warms you in these winter days.

Wishing you all the merriest Christmas,
Cameron