‘…stand up and raise your heads.’ (Luke 21:28)
New
Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of
the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All
rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
Year C: First
Sunday of Advent, 28 November 2021.
In a strange way the readings we have just
heard seem timely. We are living in a
time of unease. We are trying to make
sense of what has just happened. We have
no idea what the coming weeks hold. Right now, we hold a mix of thoughts,
feelings, worries and hopes. We may
cling to anything that gives short-term comfort: a phone call, an upcoming
visit, a planned holiday next year, the Toy show on RTE player later today, the
family coming home from Christmas, the companionship, the fun as well as the challenges
and the hard work that Christmas entails for many. Perhaps, Christmas is not
something we necessarily relish in navigating family politics and remembering
loss and pain over an empty place at the table.
Whatever our thoughts and feelings right
now we do well to acknowledge them honestly. We are where we are and the world is
as it is today. The only thing we can change right now is ourselves, our
relationships, our responses today, now, here.
I suggest three things that we can do right
now:
- Stay calmly grounded in the here and now
- Remain steadfast in love because this is the only thing that matters
- Keep moving forward towards some goal or destination no matter how dim it seems.
Staying calm
meanings trusting that God has a plan for this world and our lives in it just
as we heard from the Prophet Jeremiah witnessing some 6 centuries before the
birth of Christ.
Remaining steadfast means living our lives to the full in the here and now
that we may ‘increase and abound in love for one another’ as it says in the epistle
for the first Sunday of Advent (1 Thessalonians 3:12). The best way to prepare
for death is to live life to the full now and to live it well so that we leave
a good memory and example and find our well-being in this thought.
As Chiara Lubich of the Focolare movement
once said:
Precisely because we do not know the day nor the hour of His coming, we can concentrate more easily on living one day at a time, on the troubles of today, on what Providence offers to us now. Some time ago I spontaneously uttered this prayer to God. “Jesus, make me always speak as if it were the last word I say. Make me always act as if it were the last action I take. Make me always suffer as if it were the last suffering I had to offer you. Make me always pray as if it were the last opportunity I have here on earth to converse with you”.
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