Part 4 of a 4-week Advent series released every Sunday.

There comes a point in the spiritual journey where effort quietly runs out.
Where striving no longer works.
Where something in you longs not for improvement, but for rest.

If you’ve ever felt like love was something you had to earn—through goodness, productivity, spirituality, or self-control—this final Advent episode is for you.

Welcome to the fourth week of Advent on the Holy Rebels Podcast, where we make space for grounded spiritual practices, nervous system awareness, and the deep wisdom of the Christian mystical tradition.

This week is all about Love.
Not romantic love.
Not approval.
Not love as a reward.

But the love you don’t have to earn—the love you can rest in.

Nina Hirlaender OFS brings together Franciscan spirituality, mystical theology, and psychology to explore Love not as a feeling we chase, but as the ground of being itself—the presence that holds when joy rises and falls, when faith feels strong or thin.

Across the contemplative tradition, love is not something added to life after we get it right. It is the deeper reality already giving itself to us—before achievement, before repair, before worthiness. This episode traces how Advent has been gently leading us here all along: from trusting, to resting, to tasting… into abiding. 

What you’ll take away from this episode:

• the meaning of Love as the fourth and final theme of Advent
• why love is not a wage, reward, or outcome—but a given
• the difference between original sin and original grace—and why it matters
• why receiving love can feel unsafe when the nervous system is burned out
• a practical re-script for the belief “If I’m good enough, then I’ll be loved”
• how love takes flesh in ordinary life—boundaries, giving, receiving, and rest

Love isn’t something you rise up to. It’s something you lean back into. It is already here—beneath the noise, beneath the effort, steady as your breath.

Advent doesn’t end by asking you to try harder or become better. It ends by inviting you to rest in what has been holding you all along.

Press play to enter the final week of Advent with more spaciousness, more honesty, and a deeper trust in the love that does not withdraw. 

This is the love you don’t have to earn.

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Show Notes: www.holyrebelspodcast.com
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