Advent

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.