Anticipating the Messiah

Interview with Julia Greenwood

Part One from our “In Need of A Savior Day by Day” Series

Photo by Chelsey Shortman

Julia Greenwood is a graduate of Georgetown University and is in her second year of Notre Dame’s Echo Graduate Service Program, living and serving in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. She harbors special affections for toast, pasta, going to the grocery store, the United States Postal Service, and Saint Raphael the Archangel. She may or may not have chosen her high school basketball jersey number to correspond with a particular song of Taylor Swift’s.

Julia’s Interview

Tell us about your past experiences with Advent. Is it a busy season, a time of intimacy with Jesus, or something else?

Honestly, it’s always been a pretty busy season, especially because the weeks of Advent have, in the recent past, been consumed with finishing up the final weeks of the academic semester prior to final exams.  This year, though, I am not presently taking any classes, so I’m grateful for the opportunity to enter more deeply into Advent.  I hope to focus on making my preparations for Christmas with the joy that I imagine Mary and Joseph had while making their own preparations for the birth of their son.

Have you or will you pray with an image, song, or other piece of art during Advent? Tell us about it!

I have long loved Handel’s Messiah; my parents had a CD of it, and I have fond memories of the trumpets and the “Hallelujah” chorus blaring out of the speakers while cozied up in front of our fireplace. During college, I twice attended Messiah at the Washington National Cathedral.  It was completely breathtaking to experience that music in such a grand house of worship.  Following along and concentrating on the words of the score during the live performances, I came to appreciate that Messiah actually tells the story of the epic of Christ’s life – it’s not just the story of His birth.  In fact, it was not intended as a Christmas oratio at all; only the first third tells of the Nativity, while the second and third portions tell of His Crucifixion and Resurrection. While I still listen to Messiah pretty much exclusively during Advent and Christmas, it now serves as an invitation to contemplate the Incarnation within the whole of Christ’s life – and as an antidote to the tendency to allow Advent to become something sweet and cuddly rather than something utterly shocking and transformative.

Also, last Advent, I came across this lovely meditation written by Father Edward Looney, a priest up here in the state of Wisconsin whose writing on Our Lady of Good Help I really appreciate. This particular meditation uses Christmas carols to invite imaginative prayer on the Nativity. I lead my roommates in praying with the first three songs that Father Looney offers reflections for.  It helped all of us, I think, to enter into contemplation of the Nativity in a new way, and also helped me to approach Advent/Christmas hymns not only as vehicles of praise, but also as invitations to prayer and contemplation.  I very much recommend this meditation, and I definitely intend to pray with it again this year!  (I used Marty Haugen’s Night of Silence / Silent Night, The Light the Heat’s O Come All Ye Faithful, and Josh Groban’s O Holy Night, which worked beautifully – and I definitely recommend!)

Consider Mary and Joseph’s communal anticipation of their Son. How does their very real anticipation inspire yours?

For a couple of months now, I have been praying with the image of the disciples awaiting their baptism “with the Holy Spirit” at Pentecost (Acts 1:5).  Specifically, I’ve been focusing on this particular line in Acts 2:2: “And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind.”  Jesus had been preparing these disciples for this moment, their missioning, throughout His whole ministry, although the disciples never quite understood what He had been prophesying.  They had been awaiting this moment without really understanding what it was they were waiting for.  And yet, when the Spirit comes, the disciples are “filled” with His power, and they set out for the ends of the earth to do what the Lord asks (Acts 2:4).  You see, this present season of my life is very much one of waiting and uncertainty, as were the days following the Ascension for the disciples.  I am in the second year of a two-year graduate service program, approaching my graduation this coming June, and I am very much seeking to know where, precisely, the Lord is calling me to serve Him in the years following this program.  I am seeking to make myself present to Him, awaiting His direction – like the disciples, too, were waiting to be sent out on His behalf.  I had been taking a great deal of comfort in that, when the time came, “the Spirit gave them ability,” enabling them to do what He had called them to (Acts 2:4).

As Advent descends upon us, though, contemplating Mary’s anticipation of the coming of her Son has deepened my appreciation of the disciples’ anticipation of the coming of the Spirit, and enriched this imagery that I have been dwelling in.  

First, while spending time with the Gospel of Luke one morning, I was struck by the importance of the places in which Mary waits.  She spends three months, of course, with Elizabeth in the hill country, and then ultimately gives birth in Bethlehem, thus fulfilling messianic prophecy.  I noticed too, then, the importance of place in the disciples’ own waiting: Jesus orders them “not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father,” (Acts 1:4).  Considering the significance of the places in which both Mary and the disciples await the coming of the Son and the Spirit, respectively, has attuned me to the particularity of this particular place in which I am waiting, here and now.  I have become more attentive to the work that God is doing in my heart here: how my heart is being stretched through the experiences of this place, and how Jesus is speaking to me through the consolations that I have been afforded here, in this time.  That is, I am coming to more deeply understand how it is that it is through this particular place that the Lord is readying me for what He desires of me in the future.

Secondly, meditating on Mary’s preparations for the birth of Jesus has made me more attentive to the preparations of the disciples – and, too, to the ways that I should be preparing myself, as well, to receive the Lord’s call in my own life.  Considering how Mary’s lifelong relationship with the Father had prepared her all along to give her fiat when the time came, I have come to a new appreciation of how the disciples’ “constant” devotion to prayer likely played a role in their ability to receive the Spirit as they did (Acts 1:14).  Though the Spirit comes “suddenly,” violently, I have to imagine that the disciples’ continuous prayer was important in preparing them to accept Him and their missioning (Acts 2:2).  Thus, I am reminded of the importance of constant prayer and devotion – like Mary and the disciples – as I, too, wait.

So this Advent, while awaiting the coming of Jesus Christ with Mary, I am also awaiting – with the disciples – the knowledge of the path that the Lord is calling me to. Together, Mary and the disciples show how to wait – faithfully, trustingly, while also continually preparing to receive Him.

As we anticipate our Savior, it can be difficult to be present or attentive to what God is calling us to in our everyday lives. How do you make space to be present in Advent and Ordinary Time?

This is definitely something that I’m still growing in, and learning how to do better.  I am guilty of filling the space in my day with music, so I’ll consciously turn off the music while driving, or while getting ready in the morning, and seek to spend that time in openness to the voice of the Lord.  Also, because I work at a parish, I am blessed to be able to steal away into the church occasionally throughout the work day – to quiet my heart when I’m stressed, or to seek guidance on a project, or to ask for blessing on a specific endeavor.  This has a way of sanctifying my work, I think, and helping to redirect my eyes to the One whom I’m serving.

And I love the song “Speak to the Silence” by Will Reagan and United Pursuit; sometimes I’ll start off a period of prayer with this song, and then sit in silence with the Lord, seeking to make myself present to Him.  (Definitely recommend!)

This interview was compiled and edited by Ashley A. Hinojosa

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