In the last of her meditations for the journey through to Christmas Eve, Sr Teresa White finds the prayers of the season lift us into the light of God’s presence

God comes into our everyday lives, into the peace and the turmoil, the joys and the sorrows, the hopes and the disappointments, and often this happens in a gentle, low-key kind of way through prayer. The Mission of the Messiah, the Anointed One, whose coming we await in Advent, is to give good news to the poor, to open the eyes of the blind, to set captives free, to bind up hearts that are broken, to comfort those who mourn. As followers of Jesus, we share that mission, and praying is an important part of it.

Prayer, its practice, its essence and its spirit, crosses all faith boundaries. Some years ago, listening to “Thought for the Day” one morning in December, I heard Professor Mona Siddiqui, a Muslim, say that prayer was “a taste of eternity, where Heaven and earth meet”. I was so struck by her words that I wrote them in my notebook – which is why I am able to quote them here (accurately, I hope). For me, they express something important about praying during the season of Advent. I have often noticed that our liturgical prayer at this time has a distinctive tone, a unique quality, which I would readily call “a taste of eternity”. I have found that this is also true of personal prayer in Advent, for it is a special time, when “Heaven and earth meet”. God lifts us from the darkness within us to the light of his presence, from despair and depression to hope and love, from anxiety and bewilderment to a refreshing serenity, from the fears of today to the hopes of tomorrow.