Today is the first Sunday of Advent, which marks the beginning of the liturgical year in Western Christianity. This day starts the four-week season of Advent, a time of preparing for the coming of Christ through prayer, reflection, and anticipation of both Christmas and His second coming. Our reflections will following the commentary on this season of waiting.
Annie Dillard shares this story about proper waiting: She had been watching a butterfly emerge from its cocoon and was fascinated by the process until she grew impatient with how long it w as taking and, to speed things up, took a candle and heated the cocoon, albeit very gently.
The experiment worked, but it was a mistake in the long run. The butterfly emerged more quickly; however, because adding heat violated something within the natural process, the butterfly was born with wings too weak to fly. Haste and prematurity had stunted and deformed a natural process. Some things can’t be rushed.
Dillard understood immediately what had gone wrong. A certain chastity had been violated. Impatience had triggered an irreverence that had interfered with and damaged the natural order of things. In essence, the Christmas gift had been opened too early; the bride had been slept with before the wedding; a process that needed an allotted period of time ha d been short- circuited. There hadn’t been enough advent.
Scripture and Christian tradition emphasize that Jesus was born of a virgin to underscore the fact that he had no human father and also to teach an important truth, namely, that in order for something sublime to be born there must, first, be a proper chastity, a proper time of waiting, a season of advent. Why?
The answer lies in properly understanding chastity. Chastity is not, first of all, something to do with sex. Chastity has to do with how we experience reality in general. To be chaste is to have proper reverence—toward God, toward each other, towards nature, toward ourselves, toward reality in general, and toward sex.
Lack of chastity is irreverence, in any area of life, sex included. And reverence is a lot about proper waiting. Chastity is about proper waiting, and waiting is about patience in carrying the tensions and frustrations we suffer as we live the unfinished symphony that constitutes our lives. We must learn to wait—for God, for love, for the bride, and for Christmas.[Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Advent-A Time to Learn to Wait” November 2025]
