Prayer After Communion 4 Sunday Advent

This week we Lectio the Liturgy with the Prayer After Communion for the Fourth Sunday of Advent.

Having received this pledge of eternal redemption, we pray, almighty God, that, as the feast day of our salvation draws ever nearer, so we may press forward all the more eagerly to the worthy celebration of the mystery of your Son’s Nativity. Who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

If you’re looking for something to meditate on, look no further than the first line of this prayer. In it, we learn that Holy Communion is a sign of God’s pledge of our redemption.

A pledge is defined as guaranty or as proof of a promise. God has given us many promises. Sometimes He gives us a pledge as proof. In Genesis 9:13, God gave us pledge that we can see when He told Noah, “I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.”

We are promised a powerful and invisible pledge, namely, the Holy Spirit, in Ephesians 1:13. Paul writes that when we hear the word of truth, the gospel of our salvation, and we believe in him, we “were sealed with the promised holy Spirit…”

The Eucharist is a pledge that is both seen and unseen. It is a visible sign of our invisible eternal redemption.

This pledge is what gives us the strength to eagerly press forward to Christmas. Christmas has two descriptions in this prayer: the feast day of our salvation and the celebration of the mystery of your Son’s Nativity.

We celebrate Christmas as a day in history, but we also need to remember that this feast is a mystery. This is the day that God became man.

As we enter this last and short week of Advent, we look forward not only to the food, the presents and the presence of loved ones, we look forward to celebrating the birth of Jesus.

What makes Christmas so special? Good Friday and Easter morning. This week we do not celebrate a baby being born. We celebrate a Baby born to live and die to bring us eternal redemption. 

Thanks for praying with me,
Julie