Advent 2025
November 29, 2025
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The message intended just for you
Tomorrow the Christian world will begin its annual vigil for the birth of the Christ child on December 25 – Advent.
As the season beginning the Catholic Church's liturgical year, Advent (from, ad-venire
in Latin or to come to) encompasses the four Sundays that culminate in the celebration of Christmas.
Like Lent, Advent is a period of penance – in the sense of preparing, quieting, and disciplining ourselves for the full joy of Christ’s nativity.
Mercy by the Sea Retreat and Conference Center in Madison, Connecticut, asked me for a poem to help dress their Advent 2025
website. I obliged by writing a poem I titled “Advent.”
Poet Henri Cole has likened poetry to holding a seashell to your ear and listening for the message intended just for you.
I invite you to hold that seashell to your ear as you read my poem, and hear the message intended just for you:
Advent
By Peter W. Yaremko
We live in dim light.
Brightness forever
fills the next room,
or so it seems,
while ours is to wait
at a window and watch.
Difficult to teach kids
to prosper in such shade,
much less be patient.
Difficult for us to discern
so much as yesterday,
much less tomorrow.
But for the watchful,
dark gives way to dawn
soon enough. Teach them
this certainty. The light
comes to us. Yes,
the light always comes.