Advent is a season of anticipation, which is a high mountain to climb for many of us who’ve been conditioned to expect instant gratification. But high mountains are sometimes worth what it takes to ascend them.

In December 2009 I was on a trip to Central America with some of the priests who preach for Unbound. One day our group drove up a mountain in El Salvador to visit a community located at the top. I stood, along with maybe 10 others, in the back of a truck with a rail around the bed to keep us from falling out.

We were jammed together but that was actually a good thing because it kept us from jostling around too much on the rugged road. We drove over boulders and through ruts that I would never have imagined we could get past. The drive up took about an hour, and during that slow crawl I wondered what it would be like to live in such a remote and difficult-to-access location.

When we finally arrived, the people of the community gave us a warm and gracious welcome. That’s not unusual on an Unbound trip, but this reception came with a little extra appreciation. It was because of why we’d come.

This all happened on a Sunday in Advent and we were there to celebrate Mass with the community. Their last visit from a priest had been several years earlier, and here we’d brought a whole group of them! The people were overwhelmed with thankfulness that they’d have the rare opportunity to celebrate the Eucharist.

The community taught me that one of the fruits of anticipation is gratitude, and not just polite gratitude but the kind that fills a person and spills over into joy and goodwill. All throughout that simple, beautiful and most memorable Advent liturgy, I thought about what a blessing such gratitude is.

My prayer for each of us is that we may cultivate the gift of anticipation this Advent season so as to know true, transformative gratitude and joy when Christmas comes.

Loving God, teach us how to wait. Gift us with serenity. Bless us with contemplation. Help us to overcome the clamor, greed and overindulgence in euphoria that accompanies this time of year so that when the Feast of the Incarnation arrives, we may truly celebrate. We ask this in the name of your Son, our brother, Jesus the Christ. Amen.