Today’s readings: Isaiah 2,1-5; Romans 13,11-14; Matthew 24,37-44.

The opposite of belief is not unbelief but a joyless, tired religion. When we are tired and bored, our defence system weakens and it is easy to be taken by surprise by the least of things. It is against this that Jesus warns on this first Sunday of Advent, with the gospel accentuating, among other things, the unplanned in the midst of normality.

Unfortunately, much of what happens around us numbs our spiritual sensibility and weakens our ability to face reality and assume responsibility for our own lives and for that of others. Catastrophes will continue to happen in life, both on the personal and the collective levels, and it is normal that they always find us unprepared. Yet the ‘stay awake’ of the gospel is not meant only for what is negative in life.

Each and every moment in time is a mystery in itself. To live decently, as St Paul exhorts, means to manage time with wisdom. It happens very often in life as it comes across, that someone is alert to something others are doing nothing about. This is what the tale of Noah points to. He was building an ark not to flee the disaster but to advise how wise it is to be with eyes open in life.

In the first reading, the prophet Isaiah provides a dose of freshness, joy and vision. His text is a bold and daring piece of imagination. Jerusalem is the place where the concrete clues for our well-being are given. Isaiah envisions Zion as the womb of God’s presence in time and in the concrete story of Israel. Mount Zion for him symbolises stability; it is the mountain of the Lord from where He teaches us His ways so that we may walk in His paths.

The mountain of God as envisaged by the prophet necessarily brings into question all claims to political power and is a place where political priorities need to be realigned. Belden C. Lane, speaking of Mount Zion writes that “God chooses to be revealed there, beyond the range of Canaanite and Syrian sovereignty, at the place where a broken company is made into a community of promise”.

The sacred mountain also symbolises this sacred time of Advent, when the daily choices we make are challenged and when God’s irruption in life puts to question so much of what we consider business as usual. Whenever the Scriptures recall the future, it is only in view of reminding us of our responsibility for the present time. Failing to make the right choices at the opportune time makes us simply drift away with the ebb of time and lose focus and stability.

Isaiah sounds utopian, but he is suggesting that we embrace high ideals in order to be able to properly manage our lives. Utopia need not mean ‘head in air’, because in some sense the worst that is happening to us is that we are easily letting ourselves be overwhelmed by crude reality and renouncing to believe firmly in ideals.

The inaccessible mountain stands for our human limitations. It shares in the mystery that C.S. Lewis once described as ‘Joy’, the full and wondrous recognition of the object of one’s longing without ever being able to possess it. Each visible mountain nonetheless remains a door to the invisible, because in pursuing our deepest longing there is always the seen and the unseen.

So much in life becomes hard and difficult to bear because we do not dare have the openness of mind and heart and the courage to face it. This is the charge we need and that today comes from Isaiah. As we read in The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, “What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well”.

To go up to Jerusalem on top of Mount Zion, is to have one’s heart turned into a yearning to Yahweh. It is in this sense that the imagery of the mountain seems to transmit that sense of stability that contrasts heavily with the hectic mobility of our daily lives.

The mountain thus becomes a sort of centre of gravity in our reaching out to the Lord.

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