What a strange beast the English Language is! Advent literarily means “to come before”, so far so good. But what about the lovely prayer, “Prevent us, O Lord in all our doings with thy most gracious favour.” Now in modern English ‘prevent’ means ‘stop’ so the prayer would become “Stop us Lord in all that we do”. The ancient meaning of ‘prevent’ is ‘go before’. Now the prayer becomes, “Go before us, Lord in all that we do with your gracious favour.” Suddenly the prayer becomes a beautiful one to say daily in Advent as we prepare for the coming of Jesus at Christmas.

Our readings today give us pointers to what the season of Advent is about. The Isaiah reading encourages us to search for peace and as Christians we are looking forward to the birth of the Prince of peace. But and it is a big BUT the world is still wrapped up in violence. The war in Ukraine, the fighting going on in parts of Africa, the Middle East, indeed on every continent of our world. We still have a long way to go in the search for peace but remember it is in the person of Jesus that we will find the ultimate answer.

Paul writing to the Christians in Rome wants to encourage them to walk to the Light, and by inference encourages us to walk to the Light. For we believe that with the birth of Jesus the Light of the world came down to earth from heaven. Again it is in the person of Jesus that we find the ultimate answer. As we move towards the last month of the year we are reminded daily of the darkness - there are more hours of darkness than there are of light, let us turn to Jesus.

The reading from Matthew’s Gospel provides us with the challenge for Advent. “Keep awake.” No it isn’t telling us that we can’t sleep in Advent but it is saying when you wake up keep alert, pray and allow God to lead you in whatever you are doing, thinking and saying. The tongue is not always good at this - how often do we speak without thinking? It is so easy to hurt people, to put them down when we should be encouraging each other. As many of the great saints have said, ‘do not gossip’; Benedict in writing his rule of life called it ‘murmuring’.

So let us pray:

Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings, with thy most gracious favour, and further us with thy continual help; that in all our works begun, continued, and ended in thee, we may glorify thy holy Name, and finally by thy mercy obtain everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Andrew SSL