1. Third Week of Advent Theme : Our Joy in Christ Christ has come to redeem us! Should we not be joyful?! Do you feel this “Joy” today? OR: Are your spirits dampened by some fears that continue to torment you? Fears are not meant to remove our “Joys” of life, but to remind us of our human frailty; we are not superhuman; we cannot be in control of everything that happens to us. We all need God! This is precisely why God has decided to come to us. Should we then not have “Joy” in our hearts?

2. “The REAL Joy”: This “Real Joy” is not the “empty joy” of what the world offers – the passing “joy” of gratifying and glorifying the “self.” This “Real Joy” is to have Christ in our hearts and our homes and more so after we die – Forever! How can we have this “joy”? And so we pray, Father in Heaven, give me the wisdom to live this Advent season Your way. Give me a heart that desires this “Real Joy” that you are offering me today...

3. How can we have this “Real Joy?” We must begin from our hearts. Our hearts must learn to house God. To keep this presence of God alive within, we must develop a life of PRAYER. A prayer life that is meaningful; one that relates to God in a very personal way and finds Him in all our daily experiences. (* So that we can confide in Him, have confidence in Him, be committed to Him, and thus, be conscious of Him in all that we do.) With a meaningful prayer life, God’s presence will become more “visible;” our hearts will become more in touched with His ways. And, we will begin to feel this “Real Joy” that Our Lord is offering us this Advent season.

4. Meaningful Prayer Life: To begin this, we bring all our pains to Him... we want Him to know and feel what we are feeling. BUT, Don’t forget that He is not there simply to soothe our pains and solve our problems. We must learn to do all this out of LOVE for HIM. He will surely have a very keen interest in all that is happening to us. But again, we must know that to Love God is to have a meaningful relationship with Him. And in all mature relationships, listening to the other person is an essential part of the relationship... this is because “to listen” to the other is “to be open” to and to “respect” the other. So, how open and how often do I listen to the Lord in my daily Prayer and daily life? The “coming” of Jesus that this season of Advent celebrates then, is having this “Real Joy” of God coming into our very lives... (*To experience this reality, have a “heart-to-Heart talk” with the Lord now.)

5. Finally, let us pray: (*Pray this prayer daily to experience the “Real Joy” of Christ) Lord, teach me to be generous. Teach me to serve You as You deserve, to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labour and not to seek for reward, save that of knowing that I do Your most holy Will. ---- Prayer of St Ignatius of Loyola. Founder of The Jesuits

6. Look out for our slides Reflections on The Fourth Week of Advent in our website at http://www.jesuit.org.sg We also provide daily Gospel pointers in our website to help you find God in your daily life. If you are still not on our mailing list, send us an e-mail with your: Name, e-mail address, gender (sex), country to: seigneur@starhub.net.sg (These information are for our classification purposes and will be kept confidential.) Once you are on our subscribers’ list, we will send you FREE of CHARGE a daily Gospel e-message written by Fr Philip Heng, S.J.