Diagnosis to cure

Today's readings: Jeremiah 33, 14-16; 1 Thessalonians 3, 12 - 4, 2; Luke 21, 25-28. 34-36.

Jeremiah is a good kick-off for this year's Advent. Peter Kreeft writes that "if God allowed reincarnations, Jeremiah would be the prophet He would bring back today". The people of Jeremiah's time listened to popular false prophets. Judah's disease was so far advanced only radical surgery could dealt with it, the shock treatment of the Babylonian exile.

How would Jeremiah diagnose our civilisation? That would be an interesting exercise of the imagination. To a large extent, there is parallelism between Jeremiah and Luke's Gospel today. In both readings, we have an almost threatening voice, sounding like a warning, demanding that we open our eyes. There is also a sense of urgency. "The days are coming," says Jeremiah. The writing is on the wall, implies Jesus.

The world has just been through one of the worst recessions and now there is a feeling of reassurance that our economies are emerging from their dark night. But what assure us that the worst won't come back again?

Confronted with the troubles of his time, Jeremiah's hope was clearly messianic. And we need to re-examine ours to see whether it is a hope that remains exclusively closed in upon itself.

How can we redirect our hearts today to bow down again to God and let His promises be fulfilled. The messiah has come; but we are here to look forward, not backward.

We live in times when we've lost the certitude and stability our institutions used to give us. Including the institution of the Church itself. We need to go back to the source of light which is the heart. This is the "watch yourselves" warning of Jesus that should pave the way for this year's Christmas.

"Watch yourselves, or your hearts will be coarsened with debauchery and drunkenness and the cares of life, and that day will be sprung on you suddenly, like a trap."

In the midst of our worldly distractions and pride, what can make us hear his voice again whispering the forgotten secret that God is love and that He is possibly our source of joy and liberation? In all that is distressful today, we are invited to discern the voices of hope and light from the voices of doom and darkness.

There is still so much on the world's agenda that is urgent but which we are dealing with lightly. One gets the feeling that what we've just went through can easily happen again.

Thomas Aquinas poses a basic and simple question when he asks what is the most powerful, convincing and constructive in our lives: the power of kings, the effect of wine, or the force of truth?

It is still a very pertinent question, given that there is so much falsity around us. Although some of the ancients felt detached from the world, they didn't feel alienated from it, for their science had not yet reduced it to something out of all proportion and unconnected to the human spirit.

Pascal writes that "there are only three sorts of people: those who have found God and serve Him; those who are busy seeking Him and have not found Him; and those who live without either seeking or finding Him".

And he adds: "Let man, returning to himself, consider what he is in comparison with what exists; let him regard himself as lost, and from this little dungeon in which he finds himself lodged, let him learn to take the earth, its realms, its cities, its houses and himself at their proper value."

Given what we read in Luke, the sense of "men dying of fear as they await what menaces the world", we need to discover wisely how to move from the bad news to the good news, from problem to solution, from diagnosis to cure. This is the Advent strategy.