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In a popular musical of a few decades ago, the main character, Auntie Mame, decided that the only cure for the turmoil in her life was to make "Christmas" happen. In her show-stopping number, she proclaimed, "We need a little Christmas," while turning the stage upside down with lights, tinsel and brassy sounds.

The basic message in her fortune cookie: If you are depressed, annoyed or restless, make noise!

Noise, it has been suggested, is the home country of the now generation. Noise is where we live, whether we know it, admit it, like it or not. Evidence of this is the discomfort so many feel in the presence of silence.

I say "presence," because silence is more than just the absence of noise. It is filled with graces, where God speaks to us most directly and naturally - when we turn down the volume of our thoughts, preoccupations, worries and, yes, electronic screens and devices.

To play the radical for a moment, it might be instructive just to pose a challenge: Is it even possible, without incurring guilt or anxiety, to find a time and a place to be free of any external interruption for simply 15 minutes? Just "wasting" those 15 minutes doing nothing but letting God's silent presence embrace the heart.

Jesus Himself spent 40 days and 40 nights in a wilderness before He began His public ministry, so that He could be alone with the Father. If He needed such quiet time, maybe we do, too!

Advent is such a time - or, at least, it is supposed to be. The Thanksgiving weekend is upon us and, with that, one of the busiest times of the year, a season when we are driven by lists and duties and expectations and crowds just to keep up with the mad pace of making what many just call "The Holidays" happen.

With the wilderness so loud and jam-packed with commercial and emotional traffic, what is the chance of the "voice of one crying" in it to be heard?

Contrary to what we are accustomed to think, Advent is more than a preparation for Christmas. Its appearance in the Church's liturgical calendar actually preceded the placing of Christmas on Dec. 25.

It certainly makes sense to prepare for the coming of the Lord with a spirit of reflection and recollection. The Scripture readings in these first weeks of Advent call our attention not so much to the Lord's first coming, but His coming again - both at the end of the world (in the cosmological sense) and at the end of our own lives (in the personal sense).

Advent, literally, means waiting for something - or someone - that is coming. Waiting takes patience, especially if we are expecting something important to happen in the distant future. Whether wished or feared, a significant date that will inevitably occur places a stamp on our present life. The reality is that both the earth and our earthly lives have a limited shelf life.

In fact, it has been suggested, our lives are as fragile in the face of death as a light bulb in someone's hand that, when let go of, will smash into pieces on a cement floor. We do not know "the day or the hour" - or the minute.

No doubt it is the fear of mortality, among the other givens of contingent being, that is at the root of the contemporary world's escape into the chaos of noise and frenetic activity - especially now, the one time when we most need to do just the opposite: be still and listen!

Yes, it is true: Christians may not be in step with our times on this one. Nor should we be. Sometimes, we need to be ahead of our times instead of just keeping up with them. Might we not all be so much better off to accept that God has a great desire to get a saving message through to us?

The message is the Good News - which is what "Gospel" means - that we do not have to suffocate in the whirlwind of holiday madness. We do not have to surrender to the notion that Christmas is just another "to-do" list or that we cannot find at least some time - like an hour or two on Sunday - to pull away from the crowd and hear the Lord speaking peace to our hearts.

It will take a deliberate choice, however. Love is always a decision. It cannot be forced, only invited - and God is doing just that.

Jesus today is that "voice crying in the wilderness." He is the peace and security that we seek, if we will let Him be who He is: the only one who can save us from whatever web in which we are entangled.

There's no time like the present to accept the invitation - the only Christmas gift that costs us nothing but our heart's attention. [[In-content Ad]]

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