MARANATHA: COME LORD, JESUS
This Sunday marks the beginning of a new liturgical calendar in the Church. In the secular world, we start the year with the celebration of the New Year on the first of January; the Church enters into a new liturgical year with the celebration of Advent. The images of light and darkness are helpful symbols for us to understand the
significance of the liturgical calendar. We enter the season of Advent during winter time, a period where daylight gets shorter, while darkness gets longer. But in the midst of darkness, there is a joyful expectation for the arrival of the Sun of Justice, Jesus Christ on Christmas day. He will transform darkness into a luminous light. If we look at it closely, the Church starts her calendar with a period of waiting to transform darkness to light and ends with the celebration of Christ’s glory and triumph as King of both heaven and earth in the Feast of Christ the King, which we celebrated last Sunday.
Advent, from the Latin word Adventus which means “coming”, is a season of waiting or a joyful expectation for the coming of Christ. It calls to mind the first coming of Christ more than two thousand years ago but, at the same time, it also highlights our own preparation for his second coming. Our own lives are in many ways shaped like Advent. Though we are people of the present, we are also a people who always look forward to the future. We are a people in waiting. But, in this season of Advent, we are waiting and
expecting someone beyond the ordinary. We are waiting for Christ himself to be born again in a special way in our own lives and to transform us anew. Advent is our own preparation to become the new stables of Christ, taking flesh into our own persons. And, before Christ can be born again in the manger of our own persons, we need to do the necessary preparation in order for us to worthily welcome and receive Christ into our own lives.
In our secular world, waiting is slowly being eliminated due to our busyness – at times one hardly stops to look around or to examine deep within what’s really going on in our lives. We need to slow down and respect the regular rhythm of our humanity. Why is waiting so much part of being a Christian? Why can’t God give us now what we long for, justice for the poor and perfect happiness for us all? Almost 2,000 years have passed since the resurrection, and we still wait for the Kingdom? Why? One reason why our God takes so much time is because he respects our humanity. God doesn’t come like a battalion of army rescuing us from the outside. God comes from within, inside our deepest interiority. God comes to us like a child comes to a mother, in the depth of her being, through slow transformation of who she is. Anything else would be violence and a violation. We are bodies, and bodies live in time. God comes to us not as an
external agent, but in the very intimacy of our bodily beings, which live in time. A pregnant woman may be eager to see her unborn child and can't wait to hold her baby in her arms. Yet, her joy and excitement may be replaced with fear and anxiety if the baby arrives prematurely and needs medical care. Or, a young couple may think it's okay to have premarital relations since they are so much in love. But, they totally miss the point of physical intimacy or love as a total self-giving within marriage and, hence, miss out the
anticipation and poignancy of consummation had they waited till they were married before the witness of God and the community. As St. Augustine said, God is closer to us than we are to ourselves. That is why slowing down is important, quiet time is important, a period of reflection at the end of the day makes us more aware on how God works in us. That is why silence is a prerequisite in the celebration of the Mass – the priest is asked to pause for a short period of silence when he says “let us pray”, before he starts reading the gospel, etc.— signaling or giving us the cue that “hey, God is about to talk to us, listen.” But, at times, periods of silence become an awkward moment, a time of panic if we don’t know how to deal with it. I would like to strongly suggest to foster the atmosphere of silence as soon as we enter in the church until we leave the church. Pope Benedict XVI spoke of the importance of silence numerous times: “Advent, this powerful liturgical season that we are beginning, invites us to pause in silence to understand a presence. It is an invitation to understand that the individual events of the day are hints that God is giving us, signs of the attention he has for each one of us.” Do you want to know yourself better? Then, discover silence.
– Fr. Cary