Entering Advent, the season of hope

We are four weeks away from Christmas and we are ourselves puzzled why we are warned of the frightful forboding of sun and moon and stars behaving wildly in the firmaments, and on the earth we will be perplexed by the roaring of the seas and the waves overflowing. It just doesn’t seem to go with the merriment of Christmas preparation. But it is written, "They will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory." It is also written with a kind of absolute finality: "But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand" (Lk 21:27-28). The ultimate reference, however, is to His final coming at the end of time.

If we stop to consider the observance of Advent, we will find an almost exclusive concentration on the coming of the Lord at Bethlehem. The really important coming is some 2,000 years behind us. Of course, we sing "O come, o come, Emmanuel," but we feel, even as we sing, that such cries of longing are surely more appropriate for Old Testament times than for our own. When we sing it now, if we are reflective at all, we tend to "think ourselves back" into the days before Bethlehem.

But the coming of the Lord is truly and realistically an event of the present and future. What was begun in Bethlehem is still awaiting ultimate fulfillment in our personal lives and in the world at large. "Behold the days are coming," says the Lord, "when I will fulfill the promise." These words from Jeremiah are meant to have as much impact on us as they did when they were first spoken. The world as we know it is still longing and crying. What the prophet promises has been totally fulfilled neither by the ministry of Jesus in Palestine nor by His continued life in the church. What still is to come is the fullness of the Kingdom of God. It seems that more people suffer today than in any previous generation. We need to be reminded again and again that God is by no means baffled or bewildered by mankind’s muddles and madness. The world belongs to the Lord and he continues to come to it as savior and liberator.

The Advent of the Lord as Savior is not like the coming of any other person in history. It is a continuing reality, an always contemporary presence. He has already been here on our earth at a definitive point in history; He is still here among us in word and sacrament, and He is still coming to establish the fullness of the Kingdom of His Father. What is needed among Christians is a faithful adherence to the teaching and challenge of His first coming, a sensitive, loving and prayerful response to His presence among us now, and a hopeful and zealous longing for the fulfillment of His Father’s Kingdom in the future.

When we live in grace, meaning we live with the very life of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we transpose to the present everything relating to Jesus’ coming in the past and future. It is Jesus’ coming, then, which should be our true source of joyful hope. And because the Eucharist takes into its traditions all the people of the universe, we can truly say that Jesus comes to us in the person of the poor and the needy – the street urchin who is homeless, the girl drenched under the rain selling sampaguitas, the crippled both emotionally and physically, the hungry looking for something to eat in the garbage, the slum dweller who hardly has any clothing to cover his bare back, the aged languishing in loneliness, the hapless victims of abuse, the oppressed who are underpaid, the security guard on night shift, construction workers whose lives are in constant danger making high-rise buildings for the rich, the disabled, the blind, most everyone who is a victim of human suffering. In their persons Christ comes to us. Did He not say that whatever is done to them is done to Him? That is by way of calling us to be ‘other Christs’ who reveal His love by Christmas sharing with them. May our charity fill up our own longing for Jesus, for His love, for the kind of peace He alone can give. With Isaiah, let our Advent prayer be this best known in all Christendom: "Drop down dew, ‘ye heavens from above and let the clouds rain the Just; let the earth be opened and bud forth a Savior."

First Sunday of Advent, Luke 21:27-28; 34-36