Advent Letter, 2025

Dear Sisters and Associates,

Advent season is upon us once again.  The words “expectation,’ “waiting,” “stay awake,” be “vigilant” and “hope” are the usual ones we associate with this season.   This is the time when we listen for God in the silence, in the dark Advent skies, and how we hear God in the cries of the poor, in the groaning of all creation, and we are awake to the needs of a wounded world.

Hopefully we will enter this Advent with new eyes, open to change and ready to make connections with past and future generations.  If we are awake to the work of the Spirit these new eyes can reveal patterns of growth in our understanding, capacity for change, and real transformation.

Advent is the time of waiting which calls us to a loving attentiveness to the Spirit—the same Spirit that touched Mary and gave her the courage to say “Yes” to the angel Gabriel.  Her heart was open, alert, awake to the stirrings of God within her.  In fact, Dietrich Bonhoffer called the Magnificat “the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung.”  As we pray the Magnificat in Evening Prayer during these Advent nights, we might reflect on how Mary’s understanding of God’s plan speaks to us today.  It certainly reminds us that the Gospel is challenging and calls forth courage to live it.  If we are faithful to the “fidelity of waiting”[i] we, too, can expect God to be alive in our hearts.  Advent waiting and nourishing silence in our lives allows us to really hear God visiting us, speaking to us, revealing to us in unexpected ways the path forward.  

It reminds me of the presentation by Sr. Simona Brambilla at the UISG Conference last May.  She spoke so poetically and beautifully about the moon, about the lunar light as a symbol of synodal presence finding its expression in the moon and humble stars.  In speaking about consecrated life, she said: “the sun has set, and it is the time of the moon.  The real light gives way to reflected light.  It is a time when the contours of reality are not so marked.  It is also the time when slumbering ghosts awaken within and among us, taking the form of a thousand questions, uncertainty, and fears:  Who are we?  Where are we going? What will we be like?  Where will we end up?  …Will we come to an end?”[ii]  These are the questions many religious communities are asking today, as religious life continues to evolve, to change, to awaken to new ways of being in a world desperately in need of spiritual presence and a sense of belonging.

Perhaps this Advent is calling us as a Congregation of Divine Providence to “rediscover the authentic values of our consecration” as Sisters, and in our Covenant relationships as Associates.  In this season of waiting, expectation, and hope may we dream new dreams, see with new eyes, and trust that we are indeed on a holy adventure together.

Happy Advent waiting!

One with you in God’s loving Providence,

Sister Barbara McMullen

Congregational Leader

[i] Dietrich Bonhoffer, Advent homily, 1933, quoted in “Daily Reflections for Advent and Christmas,” Mary DeTurris Poust, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN, 2025.

[ii] Sister Simona Brambilla, MC.  Presentation at the UISG Plenary Conference:  “How Does Consecrated Life Represent Transformative Hope,” May 5-7, 2025, Rome, Italy.