The collect from today’s Mass in the Roman Missal prayed:

Stir up our hearts, O Lord,
to make ready the paths
of your Only Begotten Son,
that through his coming,
we may be found worthy to serve you
with minds made pure.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

It is a beautiful prayer to pray and contemplate during this second week of our Advent journey preparing the way of Christ’s love, light, and life to be born in our lives again this Christmas.

I found it fitting that today, the Greek Orthodox Church remembers Daniel the Stylite of Constantinople who lived in the 6th century atop his pillar near Constantinople.

The hearts of these holy saints called stylites were so stirred by love and desire to be near God, that they lived ascetic lives atop pillars praying, fasting, and preaching. Their form of asceticism is virtually extinct today.

I do not believe that we should leave our jobs and homes and build pillars and imitate their ascetic life of prayer. However, I do believe that their example and commitment to be so close to God can inspire us this Advent journey to inwardly, quietly, and invisibly to the outside world be pillars of prayer for ourselves, our neighbors, our church, our country and the world we live in.

These last few weeks the media has been bombarding us with stories of great injustice, violence, protest, destruction and torture. May we be inspired by saints like the holy Daniel the Stylite to avoid reaction but rather respond in prayer and openness to God’s grace to motivate our hearts in such a way that violence isn’t met with violence but with lives and actions that reflect God’s divine love and grace acting in the world.

St. Daniel the Stylite of Constantinople, pray for us!

Originally published December 11, 2014