The holidays are here. In downtown St. Petersburg there are lights galore, a Nativity crib, a menorah, and the Christmas tree.
While many people enjoy this festive time, some may experience the so-called holiday blues or grieving. Here’s one bit of advice: look for the good everywhere: in yourself, in other people and in the situations in life you encounter. If you are grieving for a loved one, be grateful for that love.
The Advent season begins the Christian liturgical calendar by anticipating a life-changing adventure: the birth of Jesus. The Advent Wreath features four candles, representing four weeks of preparation and the emerging light of Christ's presence at Christmas.
So, we pray: Come, Lord Jesus to transfigure us more into the likeness of God; and re-create this universe into a “new heaven and new earth.” “Come, Lord Jesus” is the so-called “maranatha prayer” in the Book of Revelation.
Advent invites us to contemplate the threefold coming of Jesus. He came to us centuries ago; He comes to us now sacramentally in this liturgy; and He will come again with great glory at the end-time.
How might we celebrate Advent? Some people create a wreath with four candles, and light one candle at the dinner table during the first week, two candles the second week, and so on. Upon lighting the candle, they pray for the coming anew of the Messiah into their own lives.
Others make a Jesse or genealogy tree to recapture the biblical story of our salvation.
Still others set up a Nativity scene and share in their own words the meaning of Christmas, Emmanuel, God-with-us. These are but a few customs keeping alive the profound meaning of Advent. Our redemption is at hand.
The word of God carries us back to Jeremiah in the 6th century BC. In the midst of catastrophic collapse of Israel, pessimists were saying things couldn’t get worse. Others were saying yes, they can.
But Jeremiah, a significant prophet, spoke about hope: God will one day raise up a new king who will do what is right for his people. We might ask ourselves: do we try our best to do the right thing?
Paul in his letter to the Christian community at Thessaloniki in Greece urges people not to focus so much on the “world to come” that they forget how to live here and now.
Yes, care for one another, pray fervently, please God and be ready when the Day of the Lord comes. Paul might say to you and me, seize every opportunity to do all the good we can today.
The Gospel speaks dramatically about signs that will signal the coming of Jesus Christ with great power and glory to transfigure us and create an indescribable new heaven and new earth.
We gather around the table of the Lord to hear God’s voice in the bible, to re-experience the sacrificial, life-giving death and resurrection of Jesus and to become one with the living Christ in communion. Through this mystery, we encounter the living Christ who has already made us by grace sons and daughters of God in the waters of baptism.
This great truth of our faith (God within us, sons/daughters of God) challenges us especially this Advent season to look for the good in every situation.
Remember the magnificent hymn of the Virgin Mary:
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior. Because He the Mighty One has done great things for me.
Mary rejoiced in the gifts God gave her, and so too should we rejoice in the gifts God has given to us for others.
Look for the good in people. If you ever studied a wildflower, you would discover its delicate veins, the fragile petals. Turn it toward the light. The wildflower has a beauty all its own. So do people.
Think of all the people that Jesus met; he recognized goodness in each of them. We are called to see, beyond appearances, the image of God. God so loved us that he became one of us. We surely wouldn't want Christ to chide us:
“I was hungry, and you bought another luxury item. I was thirsty, and you hoisted another brew. I was lonely in a hospital or nursing home, and you were too busy to see me.”
Yes, let each of us embrace a God-centered, other-centered life, in the myriad situations of life.
Pray this Advent season that God will help those who doubt to find faith; those who despair to find hope; those who are weak to find courage; those who are sick to find healing; those who are sad or depressed or angry to find joy; those who wander to find the way; and those who have died to find eternal life in God.
Amen.
