Here we are, on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, standing on the very edge of Christmas. The waiting has almost run its course. The lights are up, the plans are mostly made, the noise of the season is reaching its peak. And yet, this final stretch of Advent invites us not to rush forward, but to pause more deeply than before.
In the Cistercian tradition, Advent is not a countdown to an event but a schooling of the heart. It teaches us how to wait—not passively, not anxiously, but attentively. The monks of the early Cistercian houses knew something we are in danger of forgetting: that God does not usually arrive with force or spectacle, but by quiet approach, asking for room rather than attention.
By the Fourth Sunday, the focus of Advent narrows. The long sweep of history, the promises and the yearning, gather themselves into a single human space. God’s coming into the world does not begin with power, but with consent. Before there is a birth, there is an inner yes. Before there is joy proclaimed, there is silence held. This is deeply Cistercian ground.
Cistercian spirituality has always insisted that God is found not by climbing upwards, but by descending inward. Not by adding more, but by stripping back. The simplicity of their churches, their lives, their prayer, was not aesthetic minimalism—it was theological truth. God chooses what is small enough to be overlooked. God trusts what is humble enough to listen.
For us, living in twenty-first-century Ireland, this message is both difficult and urgent. We live surrounded by noise, urgency, performance, and self-construction. We are encouraged to curate ourselves, explain ourselves, defend ourselves. Advent—and especially this final Sunday—asks something radically different. It asks us whether there is any unclaimed, undefended space left in us where God might quietly take flesh.
The Christmas story tells us that God does not wait for perfect conditions. He enters a world still messy, politically unstable, morally confused, personally fearful. That has not changed. What has changed is our tolerance for stillness. We struggle to be alone with ourselves, let alone open to God. And yet the Incarnation depends precisely on this: a human life that makes room, not by control, but by trust.
In Cistercian terms, this is the work of humility—not humiliation, not self-loathing, but truth. To be humble is to stand where we actually are, without illusion. To admit our limits, our fears, our unfinishedness. God does not bypass these things. God enters through them.
As Christmas approaches, the temptation is to fill every remaining space: with food, with social obligations, with distraction, with nostalgia or pressure to feel something. But this Sunday gently resists that impulse. It suggests that what God desires most is not our effort, but our availability. Not our certainty, but our willingness.
The monks used to speak of the heart as a cloister—a protected inner space where God could walk freely. In our lives, that cloister may be very small. It may only exist in brief moments: a quiet cup of tea, a walk in the cold, a breath taken before reacting, a prayer offered without words. But that is enough. God has always worked with little.
As we move into Christmas, we are not being asked to manufacture joy or holiness. We are being asked to stay present. To let God come as God chooses, not as we expect. To trust that even now—especially now—God is closer than we think, quietly taking flesh in the ordinary, fragile reality of our lives.
So this Fourth Sunday of Advent invites us to stop striving, to soften our grip, and to listen. Not for a dramatic announcement, but for the gentle weight of God already among us. Waiting, not because God is absent, but because God is arriving in ways that can only be recognised by a quiet, consenting heart.
That, in the end, is the Cistercian gift to Christmas: not more words, but deeper attention; not escape from the world, but God entering it—patiently, humbly, and very near indeed.
May we remain near, this incoming Christmas season. Amen.