Search
-
November 23, 2021Happy New year!! Wait...it's not January 1 yet is it!? No...but it is the new year for the Church and Advent! So happy Church New Year! Advent marks the beginning of a new cycle of our traditions, liturgical seasons, and journey through the Word of God together. It begins, oddly enough, with a Gospel reading about...the end! Jesus’ words carry a strong apocalyptic tone.
We hear that there will be signs and that “...on earth nations will be in dismay.” Our own time is wrought with reasons for dismay. The pandemic lingers, neighbor is set against neighbor in political disagreement, and our earth is crying out in pain from our impact on it. Migrants seek refuge, and violence rages in Chicago and in cities across the country. Dismay is a reasonable reaction...as is anger. But Jesus calls us in the Gospel to “...stand erect and raise [our] heads.” While he is referring to the end of days in the Gospel, something tells me he would call on us to stand and raise our heads today too….he would call on us to stand tall, to hope and, even more, to be hope for the world.
The first reading is from the Prophet Jeremiah. His prophetic message is full of dismay as well. He is talking to a people on the verge of being exiled from their homes by the superpower of their day and taken away in captivity to a foreign land. But even though Jeremiah spends a lot of time prophesying about this, we also have today’s reading from him:
The days are coming, says the LORD,
when I will fulfill the promise
I made to the house of Israel and Judah.
In those days, in that time,
I will raise up for David a just shoot ;
he shall do what is right and just in the land.
In those days Judah shall be safe
and Jerusalem shall dwell secure;
this is what they shall call her:
“The LORD our justice.”
Jeremiah gives reason for hope. Even in the midst of dismay, we can raise our heads because God does not go back on His promise. In the end God provides justice and security. God cares. Saint Paul gives us a roadmap for how to be ready for when Jesus returns, and it's simple: love. Saint Paul says that loving one another and all people will strengthen our hearts and make us more holy. Loving people is anything but clean and simple. The people we love can frustrate us, confuse us, even hurt us. Loving involves taking a risk, rolling up our sleeves, and entering the messiness of another’s life. This, says Saint Paul, is how we are to prepare our hearts.
This season of Advent is all about preparing our hearts. What are we preparing them for? The straightforward answer is Jesus’ coming at Christmas. But why is his birth so important? What exactly did Jesus do through his life, death, and resurrection? You are invited to Saint Joe’s Advent Series titled: Good News to explore this!
