We invite all to enter more deeply into the calls of Chapter during Advent.  Elizabeth Bookser Barkley’s reflection, Open Wide the Doors To Christ*, echoes this invitation.  She writes …

Doors send a mixed message:

dividing or joining, protecting or welcoming, withholding or revealing. Closed, bolted, locked, doors make a powerful statement about our need to separate ourselves—from strangers, annoying salespeople, anyone making demands on our dwindling time. Unlatched, flung open, doors suggest how far humans will go as they draw others into their private space, to listen, to hurt, laugh, cry and heal.

Doors suggest mystery. In corners of musty cellars, at the edge of an attic, in the labyrinths of pretend haunted houses, they tempt us to explore the unknown.

Doors invite hope. We sit expectantly, and often anxiously, in hospital lounges for word of new birth or successful surgery, the door to the operating room or emergency room the focus of our gaze and attention.

At the dawn of the millennium, Advent is a door to a new era.

Let us open our hearts to the call of the 2009 Chapter during these days of Advent by supporting each other in prayer.  Let us discuss what we perceive to be the significant challenges we are called to face.

We invite all to enter more deeply into the calls of Chapter 2008 during Advent.  In support of this invitation, an Advent Reflection will be posted on the RSCJ website for each week of Advent.  These reflections will be prepared by members of the province who have been asked to offer their own insights into Advent and the calls of the Chapter 2008.

The Steering Committee’s hope is that as we enter into the season of Advent, we will support each other through prayer.  May our conversations about the implications of Chapter 2008 awaken in us the possibilities of renewal and rebirth.   And may our hearts be filled with the courage and confidence of all who have gone before us and all who will follow us.

* Elizabeth Bookser Barkley, associate professor of English at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati, is author of Loving the Everyday: Meditations for Moms and Woman to Woman: Seeing God in Daily Life (St. Anthony Messenger Press). She, her husband, Scott, and their three daughters are members of Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish.