The Christmas Chronicles 2025 Second Sunday of Advent – Peace
“When Stillness Learns to Breathe Again”
Jacob Mascarenhas
Dear Readers,
The second week of Advent arrived quietly, not with fanfare, but with the soft assurance that peace can grow even in the most restless soul.
I woke early this Sunday, even before the sun stretched its golden fingers across the sky. The streets outside were still sleeping. A faint fog wrapped itself around lamp posts and rooftops, like a blanket that refused to let go of the night. I stood near the window with a cup of warm tea, watching the world hold its breath before another December day began.
This morning felt different.
Last week, hope was the flame that dared to rise.
But today… Today was about peace, a peace that many of us long for but struggle to feel.
The candle of Hope had already burned brightly inside me through the week. Its light had guided conversations, encouraged prayers, and reminded me that I was alive for a purpose. But hope alone is not enough; hope must find rest. Hope must discover peace.
As I walked to the chapel for the Second Sunday of Advent, my heart carried a quiet prayer:
“Lord, teach me how to be still again.”
It had been a year of battles.
Not wars the world sees, but the private kind.
Where the enemy is the voice inside you saying:
You’re tired.
You’re overwhelmed.
You won’t make it.
I had lived through days where peace seemed like a distant shore, visible only in other people’s lives.
But today, standing under the steady gaze of the chapel’s stone walls, I felt ready to believe that peace was meant for me too.
Inside, the four purple candles and the single rose candle waited once again. This time, two would shine, Hope and Peace, side by side, like companions refusing to leave one another.
The priest began the Mass with a gentle prayer:
“Lord, quiet our worries and soften our fears.
Let us feel Your peace, not as the world gives, but as You promise.”
Families bowed their heads. Children leaned against their parents. Someone sniffled softly behind me, maybe a memory, or maybe a burden that was too heavy to hide.
I closed my eyes.
Peace didn’t come like a wave or lightning bolt.
It came like a slow exhale, a release I didn’t know I had been holding in.
✨
When the Candle of Peace was lit, it glowed differently than the first, steadier, with a calm presence that seemed to stretch across the room. I watched its flame rise just as patiently as sunrise.
A thought whispered into my heart:
Peace isn’t the absence of struggle.
It’s the presence of God in the middle of it.
After the final blessing, I didn’t leave immediately. The morning sun had finally arrived and streamed through the stained-glass windows, scattering the chapel in colours, calming blues, healing greens, soft golds that shimmered like angel wings.
As I lingered near the altar, I noticed a young man sitting alone in the corner pew. He looked anxious, constantly twisting a ring around his finger. Without a word, I sat beside him. He glanced at me with tired eyes.
“My father… he’s in the hospital,” he said quietly before I could even ask. “Doctors aren’t saying much. I haven’t slept properly in days.”
His voice cracked, the sound of a heart shaking.
I placed my hand gently on his shoulder.
“May I pray with you?” I asked.
He nodded, and together we whispered a prayer, not long, not poetic, just real.
When we finished, he breathed a little deeper. His trembling slowed. He whispered a soft “Thank you,” and for the first time, I saw a hint of peace rest upon his shoulders.
Sometimes peace begins as a borrowed miracle.
✨
Outside, the square was alive again, vendors setting up their stalls, children twirling around as though the cold only made them stronger, and somebody laughing so loudly that even the pigeons paused to listen.
I took a walk through the town, my journal tucked under my arm as always. A gentle wind brushed past, carrying with it the scent of Christmas, pine trees, warm bread, and possibility.
I found a bench beneath the big Christmas tree, adorned with ornaments that told a thousand stories. A star on top seemed to glow brighter than yesterday, not because of stronger electricity, but because my heart was ready to notice.
I began writing again:
“Peace doesn’t always shout.
Sometimes it just whispers,
‘I am here.’”
I paused.
This year had been noisy, the kind of noise that lives inside your thoughts even when the world is silent. Deadlines, worries, heartbreaks, unanswered prayers. Some nights, sleep felt like a stranger. Some mornings, even sunlight couldn’t brighten the shadows inside.
And yet…
Here I was.
Breathing.
Healing.
Finding stillness.
Not all at once.
But slowly.
Surely.
God had led me to this bench today, not to solve everything, but to let me know I wasn’t fighting alone.
A soft bark pulled me from my thoughts. A playful dog, a Dalmatian with a shiny red collar, ran up to me, tail wagging like a metronome of joy. Behind him came a woman calling out, “Rambo! Come here, boy!”
I couldn’t help but laugh. The dog ignored her completely and sat at my feet, tongue out, eyes full of mischief and kindness.
“He likes you,” the woman said, catching up and slightly out of breath. “He usually never stops for strangers.”
“Well,” I smiled, scratching his head, “I guess today I needed a little gift of peace.”
She nodded knowingly. “Dogs are good at that.”
We talked for a moment, nothing profound, just warm. By the time they walked away, I realised something important:
Peace also lives in laughter.
In connection.
In the small encounters we don’t plan,
but desperately need.
So I thought, maybe I would like to have a Dalmatian to help me find peace again.
✨
A few streets away, a small choir practised carols. Their voices weren’t perfectly harmonised, but somehow that made their singing even more beautiful. A little off-key, perhaps, but fully alive.
That’s what peace feels like.
Not perfection.
But presence.
I wrote another line in my journal:
“May peace be the gift we give, not just the blessing we seek.”
✨
Later in the day, I visited a friend, a widower, who hadn’t decorated for Christmas since his wife passed away many years ago. His living room felt dim, not because the lights were off, but because grief had forgotten how to leave.
“Would you allow me to help you put up a small nativity set tonight?” I asked gently.
He hesitated, but then nodded.
As we placed each figure, Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the angel, I saw his eyes soften. And when the little baby Jesus statue finally took its place, a tear slipped down his cheek.
“This brings back memories,” he whispered.
I squeezed his hand.
“Love never leaves,” I replied. “Sometimes peace comes by remembering that.”
He smiled, a fragile smile, but a true one.
✨
As I walked back home that evening, something stirred within me, a memory, a longing, a quiet ache. The widower’s struggle reminded me so much of my own. Five years had passed since I last made a crib… five years had passed since setting up the Christmas tree. Five years passed before decorating the house. Five long years of feeling like an exile from my own world, far away from my children, away from shared laughter and tiny hands placing little shepherds in the manger.
But this year, a dear friend from far away insisted that I bring Christmas back into my space, into my life again, even if it was small, humble, and handmade. And after hearing her voice saying Jacob, do it. Please get that Christmas tree.
I bought a tiny two-foot Christmas tree and decorated it with a star on top and warm LED lights like fireflies dancing on evergreens. But the crib… the crib was a miracle in itself. Buying a ready-made one would have been easy, but I was reluctant to buy one ready-made, for I always used to make one at home.
Buying a readymade Nativity Crib Set wouldn’t heal anything. So instead, I created one from my own hands, from scraps, from simplicity, from my old MacBook Air box that once held technology but now held the memory of Bethlehem. I cut it, shaped it, glued it into a little cradle of grace. The LED string I ordered looked too long at first, almost impossible to manage.
But I whispered, “Jesus, You help me.”
And somehow… every light fit perfectly, as if heaven measured it for me. When the final bulb glowed inside that small holy space, I stood there, in silence, in awe, in peace. That simple crib, born from what the world calls waste, gave me a sense of achievement… a sense of belonging… as though God was telling me, “Even in isolation, you are building joy… You are building a home.”
Now, as I write the closing lines of this story late at night, the Candle of Peace burns quietly beside me.
No rush. No noise. Just light.
And something inside me has shifted.
I understand now…
Peace doesn’t arrive when life becomes easy.
Peace arrives when we choose to trust, even in the middle of uncertainty.
So tonight, I leave you with a promise for this Advent:
I will seek peace, not only for myself, but for those who cannot find their own.
I will speak gently.
I will forgive quicker.
I will breathe deeper.
I will love slower, enough to notice the people who feel forgotten.
May this week bring peace into your home, into your thoughts, your rest, your family, your heartbeat.
May you remember that God’s peace is not fragile.
It is strong enough to carry you through storms.
And just like the candle that refuses to flicker out,
Peace can live in you, too.
Right now.
Right here.
The Christmas Chronicles of 2025 continue…
with hearts learning the sacred art of stillness.
May the Peace of Christ dwell with you, today and always. ✨🕊️
God Bless Us All…
— Jacob Mascarenhas
Author | Storyteller | Founder of AWritersTip
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