Year C / Advent / Week 1 / Sunday
Readings: Jeremiah 33.14-16 / Ps 24. 4-5ab, 8-9, 10, 14 (R/v 1b) / Thessalonians 3.12-4.2 / Luke 21.25-28, 34-36.
“For you are God my saviour” (Psalm 24.5)
Here is the psalmist declaring who God is in our lives. Since Creation, humankind has yearned for God’s saving love. In Advent, we recall the Jews and their desire for the Messiah. Every Advent, Christians are invited to get in touch with our own longing for God. Do we?
Advent is anticipation. Listen to Jeremiah’s excitement: “The days are coming when the Lord will fulfill the promise...He will raise up a just shoot...He shall do what is right and just in the land…and Judah shall be safe and Jerusalem secure.”
Advent is promise and prayer. Listen to St Paul’s desire: “May the Lord be generous in increasing your love and make you love one another and everyone.”
Anticipation. Promise. Prayer. These express our Advent longing.
The child in us waits eagerly for what comes after Advent, Christmas. For lights on Christmas trees and presents underneath. For Christmas carols in the air and the Christmas manger in Church to see. For Midnight Mass and family gatherings. And for arms that will reach down to lift us up in love.
Yet, like every child, we have fears. The unknown, the unmanageable, the treacherous all around us. The fear of being hated, ignored, forgotten. Now, the worry of possibly more sick and dead and even a prolonged pandemic because of the Omicron variant.
All we want is the familiar, the comforting, and the loving in our lives. Like a parent coming home, a friend’s comforting message, and even forgiveness again from those we have hurt. Could what we really need be the opportunity to hope?
Advent focuses us on Jesus. He is our hope. He will fulfill our longing.
This is the message of today’s gospel reading. Even as Jesus speaks of the portents of the end times, he promises hope – “the Son of Man coming on a cloud.” We can indeed “stand with confidence before the Son of Man,” Jesus assures.
We associate this image of standing with God judging us for heaven or hell. But “To stand with confidence before the Son of Man” is the most appropriate image to begin our Advent with. Doesn’t the Advent journey lead us to stand before the infant Jesus, adoring him in the manger, at Christmas?
How do we get there? By attending to our longing for Jesus.
This involves waiting. We are however too busy to wait. We are all rushing about, doing everything quickly, and demanding instantaneous interaction with Whatsapp, Instagram, and Discord. Often, we don’t wait properly for things to unfold, for relationships to develop, or for people to reveal their true selves. We want everything now.
We rush about like the young boy who puts a candle to heat up a cocoon and open it, albeit gently. He wanted the butterfly to come out quicker. He was impatient that it was taking a long time to emerge. The butterfly finally came out but it couldn’t fly. The added heat had disturbed the process of the butterfly forcing its way out of the cocoon and so strengthening its wings for flying.
The butterfly would fly if there was time to wait. Instead, there was haste and no respect or reverence for the process.
Advent means waiting. Waiting with reverence. For God to come to us in Jesus. For our longing to be fulfilled. For others to share our advent journey. We have a part to play in all of this: we must make our hearts bigger for Jesus to come to birth in each of us at Christmas. What is needed is time. To wait and to prepare. We must respect this.
Yes, “before the messiah can be conceived, gestated, and given birth to,” Ron Rolheiser writes, “there must always be a proper time of waiting, a necessary advent, a certain quota of suffering, which alone can create the proper virginal space within which the messiah can be born.”* Will we wait like Mary waited?
In the coming weeks, we will be busy. Shopping for presents. Baking Christmas goodies and preparing for Christmas meals. Writing Christmas wishes. Decorating our homes. Gathering for Christmas celebrations, however, we can in groups of 5s. Even bringing Christmas cheer to the lesser. These might seem like Christmas has come and Christmas gifts opened early.
But on Christmas morning, would our longing for Jesus be fulfilled? Perhaps not because the process of advent waiting had been short-circuited. The needed time to attend to our longing had been truncated. There hadn't been enough advent.
Our readings today propose we wait and prepare ourselves properly for Jesus’ sure coming. We can begin by acknowledging the longings within our souls for God: our unanswered desire; our anxious need; the questions we don’t have answers for. Then, let us pray for God who knows everything to meet us in our longings.
If we dare do this, we will be grateful for the grace of advent longing. It is our opportunity to hope. To receive Jesus, there must first be some reverence to receive. To have a feast, there must first be some fasting. To appreciate love as a gift, there must first be some respect for Giver. This is why we must learn to wait – for God our Saviour, for love excelling to come down, for Christmas joy. Will we?
*Ron Rolheiser, “Advent - A Time to Learn How to Wait”
Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
photo: by Paul Gilmore on Unsplash
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