December 2013

The Hebrew sacred scriptures are brimming with the expectation of the justice and peace, the Messiah and the reign of God that will one day come to this world. The Christian sacred scriptures are full of the same expectation and hope. We hear the word “Emmanuel” in our readings twice this Sunday, first in the reading from the prophet Isaiah and then in the Gospel from St. Matthew. It means “God-is-with-us.” St. Matthew not only begins his Gospel with this theme but also ends with it: “And know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.” Everything in Jesus’ life – His mission, teaching, miracles and healing, His chasing away of evil, and the events of His last days – are an expression of this “God-is-with-us.”

Advent is a time to prepare not only materially but also spiritually for the coming of the Lord. It is an opportunity to take time out of our busy lives, our tasks and appointments, and simply recognize God’s loving presence in all humanity and in the natural world. Pay special attention to the gift of family and friends, and bless God for all these things. As Christmas draws nearer, we may have a heightened awareness of God’s presence among us and openness to being changed and blessed by it. Become aware of moments, events, encounters, and things you hear, touch, smell. Complaining comes easily to many of us, but as we build up to Christmas Day let us develop a positive approach, appreciating what we have and acknowledging the quiet presence of God in our lives. Recognizing our blessings can change how we look at the day and transmit it. Let us develop a sense of gladness and thankfulness. Let us discover our capacity to praise, making peace with ourselves and with God.

The most famous story of Charles Dickens is A Christmas Carol published in 1843, whose central character bears the name that has come to personify all that is mean and misery – Scrooge. The surviving partner of a London firm of moneylenders and now an old man for whom life means no more than making money, when Christmas comes is is all “humbug” and only begrudingly does he let his clerk, Bob Cratchit, take the time from work to celebrate with his family. But that night Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his former partner, Jacob Marley, then by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come, who take him on journeys into his own past, into the present, where he is shown a world of hardship and poverty which he has ignored, and finally into the future. The night ends in the dawn of a new life for Scrooge: his heart has been truned and he has regained his ability to love and to care for others. All ends on high note of happiness.

Seven year earlier, Dickens’ story “The Goblins who Stole a Sexton” was published as part of The Pickwick Papers. Here we find Gabriel Grubb, sexton and gravedigger, “a morose and lonely man, who consorted with nobody but himself”, and who deicdes one Christmas Eve to raise his spirits by digging a grave. Preferring the gloom of a dark lane to the cheerful sights and sounds of the old street as people prepare for Christmas, he enters the churchyard and sets to work, completing the task with “grim satisfaction”. It is then he is confronted by a goblin and then by a crowd of goblins who transport him to a goblin cavern where he is presented with visions of poor people who, faced with life’s adversities, maintain hope and serenity. He awakes in the morning, convinced that it was not a dream; but cartain that no one will believe his experiences, he resolves to seek his living elswhere. He returns 10 years later to find that indeed very few believe him and many attribute his experiences to drink. But he is changed and better man, and A Christmas Carol is partly modelled on this story.

Truth can be found through experience. Scrooge and Grubb discovered the truth about themselves through their “Other-world” experiences. But in the Gospel, when John the Baptist’s disciples ask Jesus if He is the “one who is to come,” He tells them that by experiencing His deeds they will discover the truth of His identity. Those who awaited a Messiah of worldly power stumbled and fell against unfulfilled anticipation. That is why Jesus says that anyone who does not lose faith in Him is blessed.

The ghostly visit of Jacob Marley was a warning to Scrooge to find life’s meaning before it was too late. It was too late for Marley. His ghost was fettered with a chain that he had “forged in life” by never letting his spirit venture beyond the narrow limits of his business, instead of making his “business” the needs of others, especially those who were poor. Thomas Merton, in his book No Man is an Island, says that our purpose in life is to discover its meaning and live according to it, and “that each individual has to work out his own personal salvation for himself”. This means the “full discovery” of who I really am. As the days draw nearer to Christmas, may we find ourselves in Christ and not lose faith in Him.

The realities of planting and growth are never very far from biblical texts. The prophetic vision of Isaiah sees the coming Messiah as just that kind of kingdom and is compared to that ruthlessness that all farmers and gardeners know: what is fruitful is nurtured, but what fails to bear fruit is harshly treated. Images of plants and growth are not only beautiful images of God’s mysterious providence; they are also a summons to some hard laboring in the fields. It is in this way that we can hear John the Baptist’s call to prepare the way – and, in particular, his demanding call to repentance and the confession of sin. This turning over of our lives is like the toil of the plough turning over cold, hard ground; it is a necessary work for the blessings of the Holy Spirit, which Jesus brings us, to take root and grow in us. As St. Paul makes clear, it is “when we refuse to give up” that we learn the meaning of hope, and become able to befriend one another properly in Christ. This Advent hope is no passive, weak optimism. Christian hope is what makes sense of the hard labors of our daily life – the digging and the pruning; it is a hope that drives us on to build friendship and unity, to make crooked ways straight, for the coming of Christ into the lives of all people.

The Advent hopefulness that we celebrate today is not only a virtue built on God’s sure promises, but also a hope that calls to action – to the hard work of repentance, of changing the direction of the ways we live. St. Augustine is attributed with saying: “Hope has 2 daughters: their names are anger and courage. Anger that things are the way they are. Courage to make them the way they ought to be.” Augustine knew that, in the face of our own sins and those of others, we are not, as Christians, lamely to say, “Well, I hope it gets better.” Rather, we are to hope with that passionate action which grows from being rooted in the Father’s will for justice and peace, and conversion towards the kingdom. If we are to really learn hope better, let’s allow ourselves to be properly challenged by John the Baptist’s call to repentance – to know our sins, to repent of them and seek forgiveness from these we have hurt, and from the love of Christ expressed in the sacrament of reconciliation. Let’s actively treat others with the friendship with which God has treated us in Jesus. Perhaps there are 2 or 3 small changes of routine – small “conversions” – which can make this hope a concrete work of preparing the way for Christ to come into the lives of all we meet.

Perhaps on this day we want to pay particular attention to the first reading, because not only is this the first scripture passage to be proclaimed today, it is the first passage for this liturgical year; and, because this is year A, it provides the first words of scripture we read in the entire 3-year cycle. We are told of the “vision” of the prophet Isaiah about Judah and Jerusalem. We are told that something will happen “in the days to come.” Now, for a prophet to be recognized as a genuine spokesperson for the Lord, the prophet’s word had to be fulfilled among the people for whom it had been spoken. Isaiah forsees the day when true peace will come about – a remarkable vision, given that all of Jerusalem is in fear the powerful Assyrians will destroy their city. Peace will be so complete that people will turn their swords into ploughshares, spears into pruning hooks – weapons of war converted into tools for cultivation and growth. St. Paul is even more insistent about something that is coming “soon.” Salvation, he says is nearer at hand than when he and his readers were converted, and “the time” has come; time to “wake up.” Waking up is a metaphor for action, for accepting the Gospel as genuine.

Waking up demands action. The Gospel sounds a note of even more immediacy, when Jesus insists, “stay awake.” Taking the example of the total unawareness about the impending flood in Noah’s time, Jesus urges His disciples to remain awake. His words to them are directed to their preparation for the return of the Son of Man, and let last sentence of today’s Gospel makes it explicit: “you too must stand ready because the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

There is, however, something puzzling about the mixture of ideas in today’s Gospel. It is one thing to stand ready for the future return of the Son of Man, but to stay awake is something we can only do for the present. We are people who profess the belief that the Lord is truly present in the Eucharist, in the proclamation of God’s word, where even as few as two or three are gathered in God’s name, and in each of our brothers and sisters who are children of God. To stay awake is to be alert – to be aware of what is going on and to be the lookout for the Lord among us.