During the holiday season, we may get in touch with people from way back when. I recently asked an old classmate, “How are you doing?” and he replied: “Pretty well, thanks. But this old house in which I’m living is becoming almost uninhabitable and I think soon I will have to move out of it. Otherwise I'm doing well.”
I like the image: his body is in decline but he himself is doing well. Now I can empathize with that?
Yes, one day we will have to “move out” of our earthly bodies but happily we have another home to move into: our heavenly dwelling place.
The holiday season is here -- Advent, Hanukkah which begins Thursday, and Christmas which Christians celebrate soon after. During this blessed time, many people search anew for the secret to happiness. Someone wrote that all it takes is to do the following: forgive, apologize; listen for good advice; check your temper; share the blame; make the best of every situation (perfect endings are rare); and put the needs of others before our own.
My advice: practice as many of those “secrets” as we can, and we’ll have a more positive outlook. That’s what Advent is about: hope in the future. Science shows that hope can heal. Hope releases endorphins that can relieve pain and ease stress. Hope increases longevity...hope for a glorious future!
So, we pray during the Advent season: Come, Lord Jesus (that's the so-called “maranatha prayer” in the Book of Revelation). Transfigure us into new creatures; and re-create this universe into a “new heaven and a new earth.”
To celebrate Advent, some families create a wreath with four candles, and pray in their own words for the coming anew of the Messiah into their own lives. Others make a Jesse or genealogy tree to trace the history of our salvation in the bible. Still others set up a Nativity scene and invite family members to take turns telling the meaning of Christmas or God-with-us, Emmanuel. These are but a few traditions that can help us keep alive the meaning of Advent as the prelude to Christmas.
The word of God takes us back in our imaginations to the sixth century before Jesus to a man named Third-Isaiah. The author acknowledges how the Hebrews often broke their covenant with God through their many infidelities. He describes who they really are—mere clay in the imaginative hands of God, their maker.
The author then prays that God will reappear to the Hebrews now, as he did at Mount Sinai centuries before, and will find them doing good. That prayer might well be ours!
Saint Paul, in his letter to the Christians in Corinth in Greece, prays that God will bestow his gifts of grace and peace upon their community. And as they wait for the appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ, Paul prays that God will help them stay the course. Surely Paul’s prayer is ours as well.
In the Gospel, the author challenges us to always be alert and watchful for the Lord’s coming. Yes, always live a life worthy of our calling as sons and daughters of God, our Father.
The Advent season is about waiting. We do plenty of waiting, don’t we? We wait on the phone. We wait in an office or a store. We wait in airports. In the bible, the Hebrews did a different kind of waiting. They often waited for the Messiah to rescue them from their hardships, from the follies of their kings, from their exile, from their sufferings.
We, too, often pray to God to rescue us from a crisis of one kind or another. We beg God to suddenly appear and make things right for us. Some would say that this is the story of everyone. Where was God when a loved one was in harm’s way? Or when we got worrisome news? No earthly answers can satisfy us. Yes, we pray for God to rescue us. And yet God can seem so silent, hidden. But is that so?
We profess that God is indeed in our midst. Not in a manger. That happened centuries ago in Bethlehem. But where is God today? Within us, all around us! In nature, in a sunrise and a sunset, a landscape and a waterscape, in people, and even in our beloved pets.
God is with us as we ache with growing pains and as we groan in prayer. He is especially with us at mass within the Word proclaimed and the Eucharist celebrated where we sacramentally encounter the living Christ.
Saint Paul wrote that God’s favor, God’s grace has been revealed to us in Jesus. And so, we wait and sing, “O Come, Emmanuel,” God with us. God transformed the earthly Jesus into a new heavenly reality and one day He will transform us as well, but until then we are called to continue the saving work of Jesus Christ.
Let us pray as we begin this Advent season that the Spirit of God, who overshadowed the Virgin Mary and brought forth the Word made flesh, will reenergize us to become more pleasing for God: better instruments of faith in God, of hope in eternal life, and of love for one another. Let us pray in particular for the grace to become better channels of forgiveness and compassion and service to one another until Jesus Christ comes again in glory at the end-time. Amen.\
