At this beginning of Advent, let us receive this invitation to get our hearts and all our being ready to let the Word mould us.  As our book of spirituality says on page 43:  To live a spirituality of the Incarnation is to let Jesus Christ continue in us his incarnation... and in the words of St. John Eudes, we have to let the Spirit  "allow him to live in us ," to "continue his life on earth."       

On this road to Christmas,  we contemplate and pray in particular with Mary and Joseph, two people who made the Incarnation possible through their faith, their availability, their search for God's will and their ability to welcome the God of surprises, who jostles and disturbs us.   
 
Mary, by her yes, allows God to realize his project of love: to send his Son to the heart of our humanity, to be our way, our truth and our life, to bring us into the very life of God.

Mary, the Way who moves God forward.

Mary, the Boundary through whom God comes into our lives 

Mary the House whose door opens  to let God enter, to give birth to a boy...          (Gabriel Ringlet in Praise for Fragility

Mary, 

Today, with you, we want to put ourselves  in the presence of the Father;

In faith we want to feel within us, Jesus with all his vitality,

To allow the Spirit to fill us with his Presence so that his way of being may becme more and more real within us.

May our eyes see like his,

in   our  attitudes and gestures, give us his tenderness,        

in our  words give us his message of peace,        

in our  hearts give us his fire of love.
May all that we are always become a little more a reflection of his merciful and liberating love by which  our sisters and brothers feel recognized and loved in the depth of their being, under the gaze of God. 
Mary, ask this of your Son, and of the One who is his Father and our Father, and who, through his Spirit, has given fruitfulness to your simple, humble and open life.  Teach us to live like you. J.B. - Christmas 1996
 
In a homily delivered in Yaounde, Cameroon on March 18, 2009,   Pope Benedict XVI  speaks of Saint Joseph as the one who delivers the secret of a humanity in the presence of mystery. ...

I invite you to turn your gaze to St. Joseph. When Mary receives the visit of the angel at the Anunciation, she is already promised in marriage to Joseph. By addressing Mary personally, the Lord already intimately associates Joseph with the mystery of the Incarnation. He agreed to bind himself to this story that God had begun to write in his wife's womb. He then took Mary home. He welcomed the mystery that was in her and the mystery that she was herself. He loved her with this great respect which is the seal of authentic love. Saint Joseph teaches us that one can love without possessing.
 
Joseph, 

You who had the project deep within your heart 

to marry Mary 

to build a home, 

to be the father to her children,

You accepted that the God of surprises bursts into your life and changes, shatters your project...

First you wanted to retire, to leave to God, the true Father of the child, his place.

You then renounced a son 'according to the flesh' to receive him as a 'gift' in faith, as the 'son of promise'.

You agreed to take Mary home, but otherwise...

You married her in her faith, her availability, her search for the Father's will.

And it has given your life an unheard-of fertility for generations to come.

Teach us  to embrace God's plans, as confusing and unexpected as they are... Let God make our  life fruitful, according to the desire of his heart.                                                                                                                           J.B. - Christmas 1996
 
In the account of the Anunciation, the angel says that nothing is impossible to God... but the whole story also testifies to the fact that God wants and needs us to make the impossible possible. God needed Mary and Joseph so that his Son could become incarnate and set up his tent among us.  What are the possibilities I offer God so that Jesus can continue his incarnation where I am? What is my availability, my openness to God's will? We know that this can be very confusing and destabilizing... It is revealed to us by others, at the heart of events.  ... In an active search for the Father's plan of love for you and the world, you will discover that every event is bearer of God   (cfr    Const . No.4).
 
May the celebration of Christmas be for each of us a renewed awareness of what God expects of us so that, through us, His Son may continue his incarnation and his presence of light and life in the heart of this world.

Sister Josett Bijloos