Today’s readings: Jeremiah 33, 14-16; 1 Thessalonians 3, 12 - 4, 2; Luke 21, 25-28.34-36.
The world is in turmoil, there is no doubt about that. Many of us will be asking what Christmas it is going to be this time round. The state of the world and what the future might hold will always subject to anxiety.
On this first Sunday of Advent, Luke’s gospel is hinting at our inner resources. Without being resourceful, we cannot cope.
Advent’s buzz word is ‘attentiveness “Watch yourselves, or your hearts will be coarsened with debauchery and drunkenness and the cares of life.” There is so much that overwhelms us in daily life that it is easy to lose awareness of what is really happening inside and around us. That explains the advice to maintain our hearts free from dissipation, drunkenness and daily distraction.
In his book Fearless, Christian preacher Max Lucado writes: “Imagine your life, wholly untouched by angst. What if faith, not fear, was your default reaction to threats. Envision a day, just one day, where you could trust more and fear less.”
Where are we to look for some of the deepest wisdom about coping with all that is overwhelming? The wisest way to cope, writes David Ford in his The Shape of Living, is not to try to avoid being overwhelmed but to live amid the overwhelmings in a way that lets one of them shape the others.
In olden times we were less technologised and yet more secure. Our institutions offered stability and certainties. But now social stability is shaken and our very foundations are shaken. It is no coincidence that on entering the Advent season Luke’s gospel speaks of “men dying of fear as they await what menaces the world”.
Fear can easily have a strong grip on us and drain from us all energy and motivation to live. It is collective fear that currently marks our way of life, and it is the fear that we feel blocking us in the depths of our hearts. It is with these feelings that we approach Christmas this year, and in the coming Sundays we will be invited to recover the internal resources we need to cope.
In the first reading the strength of a prophet like Jeremiah is that he can be the prophet of doom as he proverbially is, while at the same time he retains the capacity to discern the good times as well. His outbursts of condemnation and cursing are now over and he is no longer seeing destruction and darkness. Jeremiah, in today’s rich text rooted in an extraordinary faith, speaks of “a virtuous branch” and of “Israel dwelling in confidence”.
We need wisdom and insight to read the signs of our times and to read beneath the surface what God might be telling us in truth about the meaning of life in times of turmoil. In all this, faith should not be alienating. Faith in no way makes us ignore or forget the tribulations that mark daily life. The Church in all this is not Noah’s Ark braving the tempest and navigating without in any way being affected by what the world is going through.
From all sides and in all aspects, the Church and Christian life itself are contested. Even the catechism formularies we learned by heart and which proved soothing in the past no longer suffice. The principles of Catholic morality founded on sound philosophical reasoning and which provided certainties seem today to lack solid ground.
Our sure points of reference, our certainties are no longer of a doctrinal or apologetic nature. It is on the existential level that we need to recover stability and to ‘hold our heads high’ to acknowledge that our liberation can truly be near at hand.
This unrest itself helps us not to take for granted and as a given that our Saviour has come and that our liberation is something achieved. If that were the case we would not need the hassle of entering again an Advent season and referring back to the experience of old Israel.
In our here and now, our salvation is still work in progress, the days are still to come, the Saviour still awaits our go-ahead to be experienced, and we still need to prepare our hearts afresh to be receptive of God’s word and let it for the umpteenth time become flesh.