As the year draws to a close.....both earthly and divine

 As Catholics we stand in an interesting place: we follow two calendars that are not always in sync. There is the liturgical calendar according to which our year ended with Christ the King and the every day, everyone calendar (in more cases this will be according to the old Gregorian calendar), which has the year ending on the 31st of Dec. While this might appears as if Catholics live torn between two worlds it is really a reminder of the call we have to maintain a balance. A reminder that while we are not of this world we are in it and in being in it we are called to bring God into it so that it can return to God. 

Catholics are constantly exposed to both the earthly and the divine through the liturgy, it is the divine entering our everyday lives. This is enacted in a very real way by the intertwining of the liturgical calendar with the everyday calendar even when they do not align with each other perfectly. This is especially visible during Advent and Christmas. We prepare expectantly lighting each Sunday a candle of the Advent wreath. Maybe you read a passage from the Bible or sing a few songs after you have lit the candle. Children especially enjoy these traditions but we adults are called to be like children, to try to recover each day more and more an innocent wonderment at that beauty of God's creation and of His grace reflected even in something so seemingly small as the lighting of a candle. God in His infinite wisdom has gifted us these small traditions, these symbols of His wondrous grace to make it visible to us in a way that everyone of every age and culture can understand. 

The profound longing in the human heart, imprinted in us at the moment of conception by God, is found in the intersection between the earthly and divine worlds. It is there in our hearts that the intersection visible in things such as the two calendars we live by, meet and remind us that in this passage through earth God calls us to be a part of this world but always retaining our eyes towards whom we have come and towards whom we are always moving.