Advent is a season when we’re expected to realize “it’s time” to put things in order and for restoration.  

Sister Leonia Nastał (1903-1940) was a Polish nun of the Little Servant Sisters of the Immaculate Conception. The Servant of God’s cause was approved by the Vatican in 2016.  

Sister Leonia kept a spiritual journal, “I Believed in God’s Eternal Love,” which also included her visions. One of those visions saw God as the Divine Restorationist in search of material worth restoring:

“Jesus, living in your soul, works with you like an artist who completes a planned work. Jesus knows the plans of eternal love for you. Jesus sees how you have been in the eternal plan of God, and all his actions tend for you to be as God saw you in his womb. Already, with the creation of the first man, God said: ‘Let us make man in our image and likeness,’ but that likeness of soul was destroyed by original sin and deformed by numerous personal sins. Do you know what Jesus does? Like an artist who finds a dusty and damaged painting, one past which everybody goes, ignoring it indifferently, he cleans it and washes it, uncovering all the delicate traces of the strokes of the paint brush that attests to its masterful Creator, until he fills in all the lacunae and wins first prize for discovering a valuable antique.”

That “valuable antique” is the human person, the human soul, so loved by God (John 3:16) that he is ready to lavish all sorts of riches on the person to make him as beautiful as possible.  

The work of Advent is the work of restoration. The original Advent, leading up to Jesus’ incarnation, was a work of restoring the image of God in human beings disfigured by sin. That work continues here and now through its application to individual human souls.

It’s no generic application to souls. The work of salvation is a work for me, so I need to step up, put out my hand, and say, “Yes.”  

The petitioner is never refused. So what are you waiting for?

The work of Advent looks to future restoration: restoration of the individual soul now; restoration of the whole cosmos at the end of time.  

Pope St. Pius X made “to restore all things in Christ” his program, but it was Christ’s program first:

^“Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.  The last enemy to be destroyed is death.  For he ‘has put everything under his feet.’ Now when it says that ‘everything’ has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all” (I Corinthians 15:24-28).

God will have the final word: that is the end of history. That is what the universe is waiting for:

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:22-23).

God is ready to undertake the work of your restoration, if only you would let him discover you, catch you and work with you. 

That’s what Advent is about: a time to let the Divine Restorationist clean, wash, dust, patch the holes and fix the tears. He might even reframe that painting of you, if you’re willing to think outside the box.  

Sure, restoration can sometimes be expensive, but he’s already assumed the costs — “you have been bought, and at a price” (I Corinthians 6:20).