Architecture of living

Today’s readings: Baruch 5, 1-9; Philippians 1, 3-6.8-11; Luke 3, 1-6.

Our alertness to God in the present gives us the patience to hope for the future. This is the basic pattern to follow in Christian living, the key to remain always in perspective in the face of all that continuously overwhelms us in life. This is an important theme in Advent-time when the Scriptures set the tone for us to reconcile world pain with the advent of a Messiah.

The advent of the Lord who saves is already prefigured in the exuberant words of prophet Baruch who in the first reading speaks of Jerusalem no longer dethroned, widowed and in distress. “Arise Jerusalem!” says Baruch, speaking of the beauty of the glory of God that manifests itself in time.

This is poetry at its best, flying high over the harsh reality of ancient Israel but which reaches out to a climax in God’s revelation of his power to save and change things.

It is poetry in stark contrast with the narrative in Luke’s gospel where John the Baptist is still crying in the wilderness to make straight the paths for the Lord to come. Luke felt the need to date the narrative when “the Word of God came to John in the wilderness”.

As often happens even in our times, the beauty and splendor sung by Baruch are obfuscated by “winding ways” in need to be straightened and “rough roads” in need to be smoothed.

Dostoyevsky perceived the relevance of beauty to the question of redemption from evil when in The Idiot, with an enigmatic Christ-figure, he poses the radical question of evil as a permanent challenge to the existence of God. The scandal of the world’s pain always puts the beauty of God’s love under the permanent siege from nihilism.

On this second Sunday of Advent, what the Scriptures proclaim and highlight is that the faith process that has its start on the inside and in the heart of the individual life, if and when it is authentic, should necessarily be externalised towards society at large.

The shift in Baruch from Jerusalem dethroned to Jerusalem in splendor should be reflected in life in our cities.

We very often ask about the relevance of God, of Christ, of religion, of the Church in our culture because we feel something is missing and as believers we often lose connection.

As David Ford writes in his book The Shape of Living, we need “an energising vision that can face both the living God and the modern world in its worst and best aspects”.

How do we shape our lives in the midst of a world that overwhelms us with challenges and changes all the time? How are we coping creatively with the people and the forces that influence us, the rhythms of work and leisure, and the intense experiences of life?

These are focal questions which help us remain focused on what can keep us going.

As believers, these questions call for more accountability with ourselves, with those around us and with the God we believe in. They call on us, through John the Baptist, to acknowledge the deserts we very often find ourselves in, to straighten our paths and render smooth the rough roads that connect us with each other.

Sure, we all want to save the planet. Our increasing awareness about this is a blessing. But we will never be in a position to do that adequately if we ignore the planets within.

We need inner ‘Columbuses’ who can help us charter territories yet unexplored and discover the right routes that take us straight to the nature of the problems and the logic of the responses needed.

It is in this sense that Ford, quoted earlier, calls for an architecture of living in time that can restitute aesthetics to our living in the face of whatever threatens us with overwhelming urgencies, with dissipation of time and energy, and with the disruption of our gratitude and forgiveness for the past.