Advent meditation: God created man from the dust of the Earth and gave him a soul. Thus, man contains within himself both Earth and Heaven. In this Adam foreshadowed Christ, who would unite Heaven and Earth more fully through the union of His human and divine natures. Adam was drawn forth from the virgin Earth, that is, the Earth before it had been tilled, as a sign of how the new Adam would be drawn from the Virgin Mary.
Prayer: O Lord who fashioned us from the dust of the Earth and gave us the breath of life, let us continue to live through You every day until we return to the dust of the Earth.
Scripture: In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Genesis 2:4-7)
