Good
Morning Gentle Readers
Well
I have taken my family to Church, it was a nice mass and it was
wonderful to see my 19 month old son trying to sing along with the
congregation. We came home and I took out the cheesecake, my gorgeous
Cindy Lo did the chocolate over the top, it looks just fantastic.
Now its time for and advent reflection….
The
coming or arrival, especially of something extremely important: the
advent of the computer
The
word "advent," from the Latin adventus
(Greek parousia),
means "coming" or "arrival." The Advent Season is
focused on the "coming" of Jesus as Messiah. Christian
worship, Bible readings, and prayers not only prepare us spiritually
for Christmas (his first coming), but also for his eventual second
coming. This is why the Bible readings during Advent include both Old
Testament passages related to the expected Messiah, and New Testament
passages concerning Jesus' second coming. Also, passages about John
the Baptist, the precursor who prepared the way for the Messiah, are
read. All of these themes are present in Catholic worship during
Advent, which the catechism succinctly describes:
When
the Church celebrates the liturgy of Advent each year, she makes
present this ancient expectancy of the Messiah, for by sharing in the
long preparation for the Savior's first coming, the faithful renew
their ardent desire for his second coming. By celebrating the
precursor's birth and martyrdom, the Church unites herself to his
desire: "He must increase, but I must decrease" (524).
Since
Advent looks forward to Christ's birth and Incarnation, it is an
appropriate way to begin the Church Year. However, Advent is not
part of the Christmas season itself, but a preparation for it.
I
have always looked at advent as waiting, waiting for Christmas,
waiting for a time of celebration with family and friends, but while
advent is in a way about waiting it is a different kind of waiting,
it is more about preparation.
In
the book of Isaiah we hear "I am the LORD, your God who grasp
your right hand;
It is I who say to you, 'Fear not,
I will
help you.'" (Isaiah 41:13.)
Much
is made of how the Old Testament prophets were seemingly quite ornery
and usually harbingers of the message of God's judgment against
Israel, often due to a lack of following the covenantal prescriptions
of the law and for oppressing the poor and vulnerable. However this
is but "one side of the coin" of what prophetic ministry is
all about.
Prophet's
were very basically persons who were called by God to share to some
degree in the vision of God's plan for all creation. The covenant
laid out by God with the Israelites, and that continues to be handed
down even to this day, isn't a "quid-pro-quo" arrangement
or "rulebook" for how to curry divine favor. In other
words, following the prescriptions of the covenant, Ten Commandments,
or Jesus' teachings doesn't entail "checking the blocks" in
our relationship with God so as to reap temporal rewards! Rather,
abiding by God's promises means sharing in God's vision for
creation that the covenant points to as possibilities for a world in
desperate need of healing and radical reorientation.
When
one begins to share in God's life and the vision that God has for the
world that surrounds us, one can't help but become a "harbinger"
of concern for the world and hope for the world. In other words,
seeing the world more and more as God does, in all of its grandeur,
pain, difficulty, glory, brokenness, and hopefulness cannot help but
stir the impulse to respond by critiquing what doesn't mesh with the
divine vision and pointing to what does coincide with God's plan.
The
crux of the matter really comes down to opting to be drawn into
divine life, opting to share in the divine way of envisioning, and
then opting to work toward making that vision a reality for our
world. (5 min)
The
question becomes then how do we go to about finding that vision, how
do we “see through God’s eyes”. I was recently reminded that
prayer is not a ATM, you know insert your credentials, make your
request and then wait for the response, it has never worked that way,
that’s a very human way of looking, a human way of seeing but I
don’t think that it’s God’s way, and in this time of advent
perhaps we need to take a look at how we look.
In
the past I have heard a lot of metaphors for what prayer is and some
of them were just lovely but the one that I think is the most
accurate is that prayer stills us enough so that we can act as a
tuning fork and tune in and resonate God. “Everything exposed to
the light itself becomes light” says Ephesians (5:13) in prayer we
are trying to look at that light, trying to reflect it, to become
attuned to it, “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the
Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with
ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
(2 Corinthians 3:18). So prayer transforms the person, prayer becomes
the fuel, the vision, and hopefully the courage to act upon that
vision.
When
I look at advent I see it as a time to prepare, a time to change, a
time to “make ready” but I also see it as a time to build, a time
to capture that vision, to use the gift that God has already given,
his indwelling spirit, it is a time to take a hold of God’s right
hand, a time to “thresh the mountains and crush them, and reduce
the hills to chaff.” A time to know that “The poor and needy
search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with
thirst. And it is God’s gift to us to be able to “make rivers
flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys” to bring
water to the desert.
