Rest makes room: This season of waiting teaches us receptivity to Christ**

**Excerpted from an original article appearing in The Catholic Times on 12/23/2025.

Although the Christmas season calls for reflection and stillness, many Catholics struggle to slow their hearts and minds. Ironically, the peace and renewal promised by the arrival of the Christ Child can seem far away amid their social demands, planning, and travel.

Advent — and Christmas in particular — provide a markedly different narrative. Rather than urging us forward, they call us to wait and rest, even while others rush ahead. The Jewish people waited generations for the Messiah; Abraham and Sarah waited long for the fulfillment of God’s promise; and Mary herself carried her child for nine months in patient trust. Even prophets like Simeon and Anna watched and waited in the temple for God’s salvation to appear. “Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,” Isaiah reminds us (Isaiah 40:31).

This rhythm of waiting and receiving in the interest of strength is part of a larger pattern that the Church has long embraced. Rest and holiness are companions; not opposites. Stillness and pause are woven into God’s design for human life.

Practically speaking, this means resisting the urge to fill every free moment, loosening the habit of measuring our worth by productivity, and letting go of the assumption that rest must be earned. Each pause, instead, becomes an opportunity to “watch and wait” as Advent teaches, and to encounter Christ anew.

**Read the rest of the article here.