The Season of Advent - Preparing Spiritually

 The Season of Advent - Preparing Spiritually

Good evening everyone, my name is Kirk Altenhofen, Deacon Kirk Altenhofen. I am a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Seattle, and my current assignment is at St. Pius the tenth parish in Mountlake Terrace. It is my honor and it is my privilege to be here this evening to spend some time with you. Deacon Leon asked me if I might be able to share some thoughts on the Season of Advent, and how we might prepare ourselves spiritually, and what that means for us who want to progress in the Spiritual Life during this time that the Church sets aside for us each year.

The great prophet of Advent is Isaiah, and his most famous prophecy is this: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel.” Is 7:14

Advent is a season for waiting. We are spending a period of four weeks, waiting, patiently waiting. Bishop Barron calls Advent a time of “Sacred Waiting.” So we have a time of waiting, and when we say that, our question might be, “waiting, waiting for what?”  Well, the quick answer is that we are waiting for the coming of Jesus Christ at Christmas. But let’s talk about that. What does that mean for us, here and now in the year two thousand and twenty-five? Because, after all, Jesus was born a long time ago: one and done, as they say. So what does it mean when we say that we have the Season of Advent every year to await the coming of our Savior at Christmas?  Here is one way to understand it:

Well, we all know, or maybe we don’t all know, every year the Church celebrates all of the major events that tell the story of Salvation History, that is, the story of God’s intervention for us in time: starting from the time of creation; the story of the people of Israel, who are called the chosen People; through the time of the coming of Christ, with his Passion, his death, and his Glorious Resurrection; his Ascension into heaven; the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost; the growth of the Church, right up to the final celebration of each year, the celebration of the Christ the King of the Universe. So what does that mean for us to recount Salvation History? Why does it matter that we re-tell this story each year? What this means is, that every year the Church celebrates, every year the Church re-tells the story of how (and why) God intervened in human history. The Church retells how God intervened in human history to save us. And every year this story begins fresh when we enter into the season of Advent, which always begins somewhere near the end of November.

It is extremely important for us to recall and re-incorporate the story of human history and God’s interaction with us; it is extremely important to retell the story of Salvation history each year. The reason it is important for us to recount the story of Salvation each year, is so that we do not forget. We retell the story every year so that we NEVER forget. Because if we don’t re-tell our story, if we don’t make our story a matter of importance for us and for our children, then there is a real possibility that we might forget how God intervened for us, we might forget how God continually intervenes for us; then there is a real possibility that we might forget how God steps in; we might forget, figuratively, and literally, how God steps in to save us, to save us from ourselves. But what does that mean? 

I have heard some people say things like, “saved from what? Things are going pretty good, what do I need to be saved from?” I actually hear that question quite a bit: Saved from what? Once again, the quick answer is, we need to be saved from our sins. Saved from our sins. 

St. Paul said in his letter to the Romans, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all, inasmuch as all sinned. (5:12) But we need to keep in mind, we as Christians do not think as the world thinks, at least we should not. Since our world, or more accurately, our culture, has lost its sense of sin, or in fact, the culture has distorted the sense of sin; so we all need to pause, we all need to take time in our lives every so often to focus on God; and by focusing on God, we re-orient ourselves to grow in holiness; we make a firm effort to push sin out of our lives. “A firm purpose of amendment,” it is called in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. And I want to stress one point here: whenever we attempt to grow in holiness, whenever we attempt to grow closer to God, we will experience an opposing force, we will experience a force against us to try to make us fail. This can be ever so subtle, so subtle in fact, that we might miss it altogether what is happening to us. And that is all by Satan’s design, that we might totally miss what is happening.

Let me tell you a story about something I saw: I saw a short reel on the Internet a while ago, and then, as they do, the reel popped up again just a few days ago. In this little scene, there was a middle-aged man who was talking with a very elderly woman. We don’t ever learn their relationship, but it appears as if this is a grown son and his mother. Whatever the relationship may be, the man had a look of disdain on his face, and as he spoke to her he said, “look at you, you’ve spent all your life saying endless prayers; you’ve spent your life denying yourself countless good things; you’ve gone out of your way to attend to the needs of others, many times even for strangers - all the while neglecting your own needs. You’ve spent all your life trying so very hard to be ‘good.’”

“Meanwhile,” the man continued, “I have done just about everything that you consider “evil.” I’ve done whatever it took to make a great deal of money; and I’ve purchased just about every kind of pleasure that my money can buy; along the way, I’ve collected a number of honors; and now I can call on people whenever I want something, and they jump at my word.” Then he summed it all up by telling the older woman, “I’ve lived the perfect life so far, while you’ve lived your life in misery.” He paused, then he continued to talk to the woman. “You sit here in this small apartment with next to nothing to your name.” Then he asked her this question, “what good has that done you? Can you explain to me how this makes any sense?” 

The older woman paused a long while before answering. After a time of silence she said to the man, “sometimes the devil arranges for someone to live such a comfortable life, that they would never think of calling on God. They don’t see a reason to turn to God, because they think they have everything they need. So they never think to ask God to be part of their lives. But I have allowed God to build a relationship with me, that is what I have, and this relationship with God is what many people lack. A proper relationship with God is what we need the most. We all need God in our lives whether we realize it or not. We all need to live in relationship with God.” 

This little video, this little throw-away video left me almost speechless. I was stunned to hear the simple truth of the woman’s observation, posted on social media, no less. We do need God, we do need to enter into relationship with God in order to become who we were intended to be. It is our “destiny,” so to speak. It is the reason we were made, it is our “purpose” in life. We came from God, and we are designed to be with God. Anything else is a misdirection of our purpose. St. Augustine said it this way, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until we rest in Thee.”

This is the truth, this is our spiritual truth. We might remember the old cartoon drawings of a pilgrim making a difficult and dangerous climb up to the mountain top, in order to encounter the guru, in order to ask him the question, “what is the meaning of life?” This seems to be a troubling question for our generation, a troubling question that appears to have no easy answer. It might remain unanswered, because as a society, what we have is a massive identity crisis. As a society, we have forgotten who we are; we have forgotten where we came from, and we have forgotten where we are going. We find the answer to our question only in Jesus. We find the answer to our question when we recall the teaching of the Catholic Church, we find the answer when we recall a different question, the question of the earlier catechism, the question, “why did God make me?” 

The answer, of course we will remember, is that “God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, in order to be happy with Him forever in the next world. How profound, but how simple. This is our identity: We came from God, we are intended to be with God. Anything else will frustrate us.

Theologians speak of a giant empty space which each human person has inside of us, a “God-sized hole” so to speak, within each of us. And all the time, all the time, we feel the ache of this emptiness, we feel this ache, and so often, we spend our lives trying to fill this hole with so many other things that are not God, we try to fill this hole with so many earthly things, and when we do this, it causes so many of us so much misery, so much pain, in so many ways. 

There are many earthly things that we try to fill this hole with. St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of four types of things that we try to stuff into this emptiness, into this God-size hole, in order to try to fill the misery that we feel. St. Thomas says that the things that we try to fill this hole are these four things: we try to fill it with Power; we try to fill it with Pleasure; or with Honor; or with Wealth.

All these things sound like success in life, all these things seem like worthy goals to pursue in life, and in one manner of thinking, they are. But without proper focus on God, without proper perspective, none of these things will fill the emptiness; not even ALL four of these things together will ever begin to fill the emptiness of this God-sized hole within our hearts. So many well-meaning souls spend countless years of toil and effort trying to fill up this hole with the wrong things. And as a result, so many lives have been burnt up and lost in this effort to find happiness in the wrong pursuits.

What then, are we to do? How are we to live, how are we to live our lives in order to be faithful to the call of our Lord to our proper destiny, while at the same time, properly take material care of ourselves and our families?

*****

The Church gives us time each year to meditate on these thoughts. The Church gives us this time of Advent each year at the beginning of the Church calendar so that we can examine ourselves, so that we can meditate on the direction of our lives, so that we can prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ. Each year we begin with the story of how Jesus Christ, the second person of the most Holy Trinity, entered time and space; each year we begin with the story of how our blessed Lord was born of the Virgin Mary. As we contemplate, we might ask, “why did God do this?” Why did God, who lives outside of time and outside of space, why did God enter our world? Why did God enter our world at all? And when he did enter, why did He enter our world at the particular time that he did, and why did he enter our world at the particular place that he did? St. Paul calls this time “the fullness of time,” St. Pope John Paul the Second called Christ’s birth “the focal point of all human history.” The Church Fathers regard the time that Christ was born, a time of world-wide peace known as the Pax Romana, this was what they called the “fullness of time” which was the proper time for God to intervene for us. Regardless of timing, God intervened, God intervened for us by becoming Man in our world two thousand years ago in the Holy Land.

Jesus was born in the area of the world the people of Israel called the “promised land.” Briefly, the people of Israel were chosen by God to be an example for the nations, to be an example for the world. This was not because they were better than everybody else, they weren’t. But through the faithfulness of Abraham, the people of Israel held the firm belief in “monotheism,” that is, they held the firm belief that there is only One God, and there is One God only. This teaching is a radical difference from the beliefs of all the other nations of that time. All the other nations worshiped a multitude of gods, mostly based on nature, based on the sun, the moon, on animals, reptiles, snakes, and so on. Israel held firm to the truth, the truth as it is said by the prophet Isaiah, that “God alone is God, there is no other.”

In addition to this essential truth that there is only One God, there is another truth: in all other forms of religion, their gods created the world out of the material that was already floating around hapharzardly. In their creation stories, their gods simply established some kind of order out of the chaos of jumbled material that was already in existence. The people of Israel alone, anchored in the Righteous Faith of Abraham, the people of Israel believed that the one God created the world out of nothing. The belief that something, everything, was created from nothing. This is a radical idea, an unprecedented idea, that initially there was nothing, then God spoke, and then suddenly, there was something. 

In 1894 a man was born who later became a scientist and a mathematician. This man was also a Catholic Priest and his name was Georges Lemaître. Father Lemaître studied astronomy and physics, and based on his observations, he developed the theory we now call the “Big Bang.”  Father Lemaître began to understand that the universe must have begun with an instantaneous explosion of an extremely tiny, but extremely dense point of physical matter, sending this matter moving outward in all directions. This outward movement continues to be observable. In recent years, the development of "quantum physics” has changed our understanding of how our universe might work, causing new explanations of the older theories. Physists are now starting to believe that energy was created first, not matter. This fits remarkably well with our faith, because we will remember God’s first command: God said, “let there be light!” And there was light. There was light! Electromagnetic energy: out of nothing, light came into existence. And this energy which is light, has puzzled astronomers and physicists and philosophers for centuries. They can describe it, they can measure it, but they really cannot tell us what it is. But regardless, there it is. Einstein said, “I can’t wait to meet God,” he said, “I want to ask him, “what were you thinking?” I myself am interested in knowing the answer to that question. 

This question of light is important for us, because the great prophet of Advent, Isaiah, made a prophecy. He said in chapter nine, that at the time of the coming Messiah, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;

Upon those who lived in a land of gloom a light has shone.” We know that this prophecy has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ, because he tells us in John chapter 8 “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

God created light, then he created matter, then he set it all in order. It is important to look at the order of creation, because creation culminates with Man and Woman. Let’s look at this: in the void of nothing, in the vast emptiness of nothing, Scripture tells us in the very first line of the Bible, that “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” This is a far more powerful statement than we might think at first. What this means, that in the void of nothingness, by the command of God, time was created, (in the beginning) a when for our universe was created. A space was created (the heavens), a place for our universe was created; and matter was created (the earth), the “stuff” of our universe was created. So, out of nothing, by the command of God, we have a time for creation, the “beginning,” we have a place for creation, the “heavens,” and we have the material for creation, “the earth.” In this order, the earth came into being, and therefore, in due time, also water, and land, and plants and animals came into being. Finally, in what the Church calls “the crowning glory of God’s creation,” MAN was created; male and female, God created them.

Male and female, Adam and Eve were placed in the earthly paradise of Eden. They had everything they needed, and they had everything they could imagine, Paradise. So what could go wrong? Why would man and woman, placed in the garden with every desire fulfilled, why would man and woman, who existed in a perfect relationship with their creator, God; why would they risk destroying everything in this perfect setting? The answer is SIN. What entered into this setting was SIN. The fact that we even have to talk about this thing we call SIN is the reality of our existence, the fact that we are plagued by this force called SIN is the reality of our existence. Let’s look at this thing called SIN. 

What is this thing we call Sin? Sin is a conscious decision that we make to do something that offends God. What does that mean? What it means is that, despite God’s goodness, despite all of God’s blessings, despite the happiness we were meant to enjoy, there are times that we decide that we know better than God. It is as simple a way to explain it as any; there are times that we decide that we know better than God. There are times that we decide to do something, when we decide that we will choose to “worship” something – to worship something other than God. 

Adam and Eve were placed in Paradise, but even in Paradise, because of the gift of Free Will, they were susceptible to temptation. Adam and Eve, in the earthly Paradise, in perfect relationship with God their creator, with every spiritual need and every physical need supplied for them, Adam and Eve were still susceptible to an outside force, they were susceptible to the whisper of Satan, who told them there was even more that they could have. Let’s look at the text in Scripture: in Genesis 2:16 and 17 we read:

“The LORD God gave the man this order: You are free to eat from any 

of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 

From that tree you shall not eat; when you eat from it you shall die.” 

The frightening thing about this command is that man and woman were in Paradise, and in addition, they were created in the image and likeness of God: they were immortal. Imagine that state of being! Immortal, and in eternal happiness. Why would they put that at risk? The answer is that Satan had decided that living in subjugation to God was not for him. Satan decided that he would rather “reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.” Satan was threatened by God’s new creation, these “human” beings, made of matter and spirit. For Satan, this new order of creation, of a material body and a spiritual soul, Man and Woman were something new and something threatening. The animals, which were made of matter only, were without a spiritual soul and were no threat to Satan. But this new creature, Man and Woman, they had been created by God with a unique fusion of a material body and a spiritual soul; and they were deemed by Satan to be a unique threat to him and to his band of angels who rebelled against God. Satan knew he had to disrupt this “Paradise,” and disrupt the lives of Man and Woman placed there in harmony with God the creator.

Satan decided to introduce “doubt” into the minds of Adam and Eve. This is when he decided to use “temptation” to disrupt the bliss of Paradise. Satan approached Eve first, and suggested to her that happy as they might be, God was “withholding” even more from them. Satan placed a subtle thought in the mind of the woman: “surely you will not die. Rather, you will become like God, and have the knowledge of good and evil. The great English poet, John Milton, when he wrote “Paradise Lost,” said that Satan first placed the suggestion in Eve’s mind in a dream! We all know the power of a realistic dream, when we wake up and feel that reality has changed because of the power of a dream. At the very least, this demonstrates the subtlety of temptation: a dream, a thought, a whisper.

Let’s read Genesis chapter three, verse one:

“Now the snake was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the LORD God had made.He asked the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat from any of the trees in the garden’?”

The woman answered the snake: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, or else you will die.’”

But the snake said to the woman: “You certainly will not die! God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and evil.”

The woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.”

The eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked: this is the loss of innocence. Before their fall, they were naked, but they felt no shame, but now they could feel that something dreadful had occurred, they could see, and they could understand their nakedness. All right, Man and Woman sinned. They chose to disobey God, and they chose to exert their own will over the Will of God. 

Okay, so what, some will ask? What’s the big deal? We will hear the question, “why is this such a bad thing?” I will tell you, this is such a big deal because Adam and Eve decided to listen to the voice of the serpent; Adam and Eve decided to act on the thought that, however good they might have it, there might be more that God was withholding from them. The sin of Adam and Eve is called “Original Sin” because when they chose to turn from God and decided to follow their own will, this caused a fracture in their relationship with God; but this sin also caused a fracture in the relationship of all future generations of humanity and God. Original Sin is inherited from Adam and Eve, and each new person that is born has a “mark” of that original sin. The effects of this inherited sin is called “concupiscence,” which is the inherited inclination towards sin. It is true that the Sacrament of baptism cleanses us from Original sin. However, even after baptism, some of the effects of Original Sin remain in us.

I remember one time hearing an atheist speak of the impossibility for him to understand Christian doctrine. He cited the “innocence” of a new-born child. He said when he looked at a new-born child, he himself was shocked to think of the Christian teaching that this young child was “stained” by Original Sin. But let’s think about that. I have been around little children almost the entirety of my life. I am the oldest of my parents’ six children. I married at 21, and my wife and I started our own family right away. We were blessed with five children of our own, and now we are blessed with eleven grandchildren. So from my own personal observation of little children, I have my answer for this atheist. Yes, of course beautiful new-born children appear innocent and unstained by Original Sin. But I would like to say to this atheist, “just wait until this child is two years old.” 

I have witnessed children who are the sweetest, kindest, loving  children imaginable. And yet, in a room full of toys, this kind, sweet-natured loving child, with full intent, will brutishly club another child, and swipe back the toy that the other one has taken from him. In my observation, the most desirable toy in the entire world is that one toy that another child is playing with.

One other way we might think about the inherited stain of Original Sin that we all get from Adam and Eve is an overwhelming “self-absorption.” And sadly, our culture reinforces this self-absorption constantly: “Pay yourself first;” they say. Or, “go ahead, treat yourself, you deserve it.” My smart watch even pops up a message at regular intervals, “take a little time for yourself.” We are born necessarily self-absorbed, that is how we gain the attention we need to survive. But if we never grow out of that self-absorption, if we never get past that, then how can we possibly follow the command of our Lord, that we “must deny our very selves, pick up our cross, and follow him?” And we can be so very easily convinced to abandon crosses that come our way in life. But, as we mentioned earlier, temptation does not come to us with an outright disdain for the cross, temptation comes in a much more disguised way. Most temptations come to us in extremely subtle ways. The decadent media, and all the sinister stuff on the Internet, peer pressure, and all of that bombardment all come to us “after the fact.” What I mean by that is that all of those things come much later to us, after we have allowed ourselves to be softened, after we have allowed our wills to entertain the idea of following a different path than following God’s path. 

What usually comes first, is the quiet, subtle idea in our minds, “hey, what if I were to try “a different way” to fix my problem, to fix my stress, to fix my whatever? And this is the precise POINT of my remarks this evening. Temptation starts for us just as it did with Eve, with a quiet, subtle suggestion that pops in our minds, and it seems so harmless; and it seems so very desirable to us.  

And may I mention, during this season, during this season of Advent, during this special time when we are trying to prepare our hearts for the coming of our Savior, we are extremely susceptible, extremely susceptible, to these kinds of temptations. This is the very meaning of the phrase, “spiritual warfare.” Spiritual warfare is not like the fourth of July, with flashes and bangs and colorful sparks, like the “rockets’ red glare,” so to speak. Instead, temptation will more likely be a quiet, almost imperceptible thought that has the power to turn us from our path we desire to travel towards God. It is not like a person who jumps into our lives to persuade us that we ought to break one or more of the ten commandments. It is not like a powerful type of force that pushes us into one of the seven deadly sins. All of that comes later on, after we have entertained that initial little thought that comes out of nowhere, and causes us to think of wrongdoing as something right. 

We need to recognize that this exists, and we need to know how to dismiss it immediately, and not let our imaginations develop the little spark of an idea. If we don’t allow it to take hold, all the other flashy temptations will likely not come to us. If we can learn to call on the power of Jesus Christ to dismiss the little subtle thoughts immediately, we are safe. St. James says “resist the devil and he will take flight.” (James 4:7)

And it is during these Holy Seasons, it is during times like this season of Advent, when we are trying with all our meager ability to advance in spiritual holiness, that some little subtle idea will pop in out of nowhere and we must be prepared to deal with it with adamant swift force.

But we are not to lose heart, we are not to despair. We are not strong, but God, we know, is all-powerful. By the mercy and grace of God we are not lost. Even though Adam and Eve allowed the whisper of Satan to take root, and they committed Original Sin, God’s grace abounds, as St. Paul said, “where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.” (Romans 5:20)

Because immediately, and I do mean immediately after the story of the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis, the very next lines in chapter three, there follows God’s promise of a Redeemer who will come to save us from our sins. Let’s look at the text: After Adam and Eve eat of the forbidden fruit of the tree, they realize that they are naked, and they hide from God, who asks Adam, 

“where are you?” 

Adam answers God back, and says, “we are naked, and so we hid from you.” 

God knows they have eaten of the fruit of the tree, and ask him, “Who told 

you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I had 

forbidden you to eat?” “The man replied, “The woman whom you put here 

with me—she gave me fruit from the tree, so I ate it.” The LORD God then 

asked the woman: What is this you have done? The woman answered, “The 

snake tricked me, so I ate it.”

What follows next in the story is God’s rebuke of Satan, in a passage that is called the “Proto-evangelium” which is Greek for the “first Gospel” This is called the first Gospel because it is God’s first promise of a Savior who will come to pay the price for this Original sin. One line after the Fall of Adam and Eve, the LORD curses the serpent, and the Lord gives His promise to humankind that a Savior will be born one day who will save humanity from their sins. This is the passage from Genesis 3, verse 14:

Then the LORD God said to the snake:

Because you have done this, cursed are you among all the animals, 

tame or wild; On your belly you shall crawl, and dust you shall eat 

all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and hers;

He will strike at your head, while you strike at their heel.”

This passage is seen by the Church Fathers to be the prediction of the birth of a Savior who will strike at Satan’s head, while all Satan can do is strike at the Lord’s heel. Each year at the Easter Vigil, there is a beautiful chant called the “Exultet” which is chanted usually by the deacon, without any musical accompaniment. The Exultet proclaims the mercy of God’s saving power in Jesus Christ, who has conquered death by his glorious Resurrection. The Exultet, by the way, is proper to the Deacon. My first year after ordination, I tried learning how to sing it, and singing is not one of my gifts. I was practicing at home alone, when my wife came back from her errands, and heard me. She stopped me and said, “okay, that is simply awful. Go back and tell them to find someone else who can do it right, and have them sing it.” Anyway, there is a line in the Exultet that praises God the Father for intervening. Let me read this line:

O love, O charity beyond all telling,
to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!
O truly necessary sin of Adam,
destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!

l have to admit, it took me quite a long time to let that phrase sink in, “O happy fault” and only after hearing the Exultet chanted properly in the context of the Easter Vigil, amid the Joy of Easter, I was able to grasp the concept of a “happy fault,” But having experienced the fault, the result for us is that we have gained Jesus as our Redeemer, Jesus who has triumphed over death to save us.

I want to leave you with some final thoughts of our Advent meditation:

-The Original Sin of Adam and Eve is passed on to every human person.

-“Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.” Romans 5:20

-Christ the Redeemer is the fulfillment of God’s promise to send us a Savior.

-Advent is the Church’s annual period of waiting for our Savior.

-It is prudent to use the season of Advent to try to advance in Holiness.

-Anytime we try to advance in Holiness, we will experience Satan’s attempts to push us back.

-Anytime we try to advance in Holiness, we will be tempted in very subtle ways.

-Resist the subtle temptations immediately. If we entertain them, stronger temptations will follow.

-Trust in God, but row to shore. (Do what we can do with God’s help)

-Make use of the Sacraments: Go to confession and receive the Eucharist as often as possible.

-Meditate on Scripture: The Messianic Psalms, the Prophet Isaiah, other prophets

-Make time to pray. Pray for strength, but also pray for peace.

-Do not get discouraged, and do not give up!