On the Saturday weekend in which we celebrate the start of the Advent season, Jesus is always telling us to wake up, to stay awake, to be vigilant, to be more alert to a deeper reality. What’s meant by that? How are we asleep to depth? How are we to wake up and stay awake? Fr. Rolheiser asks, “How are we asleep?” All of us know how difficult it is for us to be inside the present moment, to not be asleep to the real riches inside our own lives. The distractions and worries of daily life tend to so consume us that we habitually take for granted what’s most precious to us: our health, the miracle of our senses, the love and friendships that surround us, and the gift of life itself. We go through our daily lives not only with a lack of reflectiveness and lack of gratitude but with a habitual touch of resentment as well, a chronic, grey depression. We are very much asleep, both to God and to our own lives. How do we wake up? An awareness of our mortality does wake us up, as does a stroke, a heart attack, or cancer, but that heightened awareness is easier to sustain for a short season of our lives than it is for twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty years. Nobody can sustain that kind of awareness all the time. None of us can live seventy or eighty years as if each day was his or her last day. Or can we? Spiritual wisdom offers a nuanced answer here: We can and we can’t! On the one hand, the distractions, cares, and pressures of everyday life will invariably have their way with us and we will, in effect, fall asleep to what’s deeper and more important inside of life. It’s for this reason we need to begin each day with prayer. None of us live each day of our lives as if it were our last day. Our heartaches, headaches, distractions, and busyness invariably lull us to sleep. That’s forgivable; it’s what it means to be human. So we should ensure that we have regular spiritual rituals, and spiritual alarm clocks, to jolt us back awake – so that it doesn’t take a heart attack, a stroke, cancer, or death to wake us up.