Those who look for the fulfillment of God’s promises out of a sense that they are entitled to them because of their intelligence, their virtue, their achievements, often discover to their cost that they were looking only for themselves – and it is themselves that they find. Those who look for God in their poverty and need find themselves seeing what many longed to see but did not and many longed to hear but did not. Poverty and need are Advent attitudes.

Magnificat, Reflection before Psalm 12 during Evening Prayer, December 5, 2006