From his cell in prison John the Baptist had heard stories about Jesus, and he sent some of his followers to find out if Jesus is the messiah. Are you ‘He who is to come’ or do we look for another? they asked Jesus.
Jesus had to reply in such a way that John would have no doubt about the genuineness of his messianic activity, and the message he sent back to John was about the blind receiving their sight, the lame walking, the lepers being cleansed, the deaf hearing, the dead being raised, and the poor having good news brought to them.
He did not say a word about people praying more or going to the synagogue or making God the center of their lives: The age of the messiah, as expressed in this report, does not concern “religion” in the traditional sense of the word.
One knows that the messiah has come because a real change has taken place in society, a change that involves the liberation of those who have always been cut off from the ‘main branch’ of society.
Jesus is the messiah because those who are blind, crippled, diseased, and poor have been liberated from the things which make them the victims of injustice.
We can turn the statement around to say that if the dregs of society do not experience liberation, then Jesus is not the messiah.
But Jesus is the messiah, and so the dead have come to life: those who have been unable to ‘live’ in a society that has written them off, are now alive with hope.
“The gospel has truly been a leaven of liberty and progress in human history, even in its temporal sphere, and always proves itself a leaven of brotherhood, of unity, and of peace. Therefore, not without cause is Christ hailed by the faithful as ‘the expected of the nations, and their Savior’ (Antiphon O for Dec. 23).”
Vatican II, Decree on the Missionary Activity of the Church (1965) 8
When people are going through a hard time we sometimes search for words to comfort them. "There, there, everything is going to be okay." They probably appreciate our attempts to commiserate with and comfort them. After all, in a truly difficult situation or calamity there often is not much we can do to fix things. So, we speak the most heart-felt and assuring words we can. But in the back of our minds we and the person we are trying to encourage, know they are just words. They don’t have the power to get rid of or solve the problem. We speak our words and hope for the best.
The Israelites are in Babylonian captivity. Things couldn’t be worse and mere words could not bring much relief. "There, there, everything is going to be okay" just doesn’t cut it. The most powerful nation in the world has enslaved them and mere words are not going to get them out; nor will empty promises give them much to hope for.
But the prophet Isaiah is not speaking to them on his own. He is speaking for God and the promises he is making have God to back them up. He addresses the exiles in images reminiscent of the Exodus. Their Creator God, who led them out of Egyptian bondage and formed them into a chosen people, will do it again for them another Exodus. God, the Liberator, is coming and going to free them from their oppression. Once again, despite their doubts and temptations to give up on God, they will experience God’s personal love for them.
The people are in a weakened condition, so God is going to make the trip as easy as possible. The parched desert will be transformed for them and bloom. The people will be restored: feeble hands strengthened and weakened knees steadied. More than physical strength will be given them, for the frightened of heart will be emboldened. How could the enslaved exiles not be encouraged, they will have their mighty Creator accompanying them! God is coming, the prophet announces, you have nothing to fear!
The prophet is promising salvation for the people. Notice what is envisioned, not just an inner spiritual rebirth. Salvation will encompass all of creation; nature will be transformed; people’s flagging bodies restored and they will be made fully whole. The blind will see, the deaf hear and the mute will sing.
The way out of slavery is a holy highway, a direct and freeing road with no detours or delays. You can almost see the jumping, skipping freed slaves on that God-prepared road. It looks like a jubilant religious procession and so it is, with God leading the way home to safety and a new future.
We used to call today "Gaudete (Rejoice) Sunday." Note the Entrance Antiphon from Philippians (4:4-5): "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice! The Lord is near." We might despair if we were left on our own in our own guilt and captivity. What could we do for ourselves? But we can celebrate, "Rejoice Sunday" because, "The Lord is near." Or, as Isaiah points out, "Here is your God, who comes with vindication...." Our just God is going to set things right. That should give us hope and determination to continue (or, begin!) our efforts to set right the things in the world around us. We are not relying on our own efforts, because God is close, "Here is your God."
Jesus obviously knew today’s quote from Isaiah for he referred to it when he responded to the question put to him by the emissaries of John the Baptist: "Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?" Jesus doesn’t just quote biblical passages, he points to the tangible signs that give him authenticity. People then and now, didn’t need pious words and best wishes to free them from their captivity: they needed visible proof that the promises God made through the prophet were actually coming to pass.
One of my chief delights in giving parish retreats is the people I meet good people who are trying to live as prophetic signs of the kingdom of God’s presence in the world. Though they would probably not describe themselves in such terms! In any of these parishes one might meet: a middle aged single mother who is also caring for her mentally challenged 50-year-old brother; a lawyer who took a huge pay cut to take cases for undocumented immigrants; a mother and father who take their three children to the parish pantry to give food to the poor. Plus, all the many every-day good people who like the Good Samaritan in Jesus’ parable, see a person in need, are moved with compassion and do something to help.
They, like Jesus, manifest visible signs that the day Isaiah promised has begun when: the eyes of the blind would be opened, the ears of the deaf cleared, the lame leap like a stag, and the tongue of the mute sing. While all that Isaiah promised has not yet come to fulfillment, Jesus has begun to lead us along the "holy highway" on our journey home to our God. Along the processional way, God’s Spirit is with us and so we have already seen visible results that salvation has begun for us. In Jesus we have the promise that we will enter the holy city, "leaping like stags" to be "crowned with everlasting joy." Our sorrow will be no more.
Can we trust those words and our God who backs them up, to sustain us when the "highway" we travel in life doesn’t feel so "holy" but, is instead, filled with potholes and cracks like a neighborhood street in Chicago after a particularly cruel winter?
John the Baptist’s disciples asked Jesus for authenticating signs to prove he is the one whose arrival they have been anticipating and whom John has been announcing in his preaching. We, the members of Christ’s body, are called to be a messianic people who take the prophet’s and Jesus’ promises seriously enough to put flesh on them in our daily lives. We demonstrate that their words are believable and livable and not just pious and pat-on-the back empty words.
Just as Jesus was faithful to his mission, the Spirit makes us faith-filled witnesses. Like Jesus we can bring about a revolution in thinking, judging and acting in a non violent way. We can offer loving service to one another, even to accepting the pain and many dyings that accompany such service. We can meet the evils of the world and heal them and persevere in hope even when the concrete signs of our discipleship are not always obvious, or when they seem defeated.
We are a messianic people who pray today to be faithful signs to the world that the ancient longings of an exiled people have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. We try to follow Jesus’ example so that we can also say to others what Jesus said to validate his witness, "Go and tell [others] what you hear and see, the blind see... etc."
People will never believe us until they can see our lives as authentic sign of Jesus’ on-going presence in the world: until they see us guiding the footsteps of the blind; carrying or car-pooling the crippled to places where they can receive help; finding ways to help the voice of the poor be heard. To the question of inquirers, "Was Jesus the one who was to come?" The witness of our lives should be a resounding, "Yes!"
Jude Siciliano, OP
This Sunday we will light the second candle and that will make sense if darkness is real. A light shining within light does not do much for either light. We have all been afraid of the dark since we were little persons. We have been afraid also of our own personal darkness since we began bumping into our self-disappointments.
We can prepare for the coming of the Light by our sitting within the context of all that we and our culture urges us to run from. Lighting a little candle might be an encouraging setting for a little comfort.
REFLECTION
The reading from Isaiah a prophetic poem, is very long. There are some familiar images which we will be reading on Christmas cards, but for all the words and pictures, there is one important promise made.
David is the eighth and last son of Jesse. The poem paints a picture of the Messiah who will come from the lineage of David, the great king of Israel. This person will have prophetic wisdom, a sense of what is right and just. His very breath will be that of the creating God.
Much of the poem has a strong backdrop of the biblical Garden of the “uninjured” creation. All of God’s creation lived without fear of each other or of itself. What we call “natural enemies” were “natural friends”. Animals and humans lived with “integrity”, the word comes from the Latin “integer” meaning “whole” or “Uninjured”. This Messiah person will reverse the consequences of the original injury.
The ending of the poem makes a quite surprising prediction. This person of justice and peace is not to come only for the people of David’s stock, but for even the gentiles who will seek for this peace and harmony in and through the Messiah’s life and words. The first creation was from the chaos and this Messiah will come to again bring peace, justice and integrity out of a second chaos, our human complexities.
John the Baptist makes his first Advent appearance in today’s Gospel. At this time John is conducting a purification ritual in the Jordan River. The Jews had fled through water and were purified from their state of slavery. Baptism was a cleansing from their not living perfectly as the unslaved and now free people of God. This baptism was the occasion of a visit from leaders of two separate religious parties. They were both suspicious of anything not within their control and John confronts their merely ritualistic and perfectionistic approach to God and God’s people. They were aware also that people were coming to John for purification and not relying on their old rites. We hear John’s harshest words for them.
John warns them of a coming “One” Who asks for fruitful lives not self-righteous conformities. They say they have Abraham for their father and that is enough. If they were living as children of the faith of Abraham they would repent from their insides and prepare for the Messiah of Whom Isaiah spoke. This Messiah will lay the axe to the roots of pretense and blow away the cheep-chaff while collecting what is alive.
The Pharisees seem to be fear-based and spread perfectionism as religion. In the time of Jesus, orderliness, exactness, was a reflection of the orderliness of God. Holiness of God was meant to be lived in a rigidity and rule-based performing. There is a certain sense of security in our being perfect. God would just have to let us in with all the right tickets we would have accumulated. Ah, but there would always be the fear that we didn’t have enough of the right ones. In a sense, we would be adoring ourselves.
The Advent question then is what should we be doing and what is Advent doing for us? It is hard to love God, fearing God is easier. We can love the experiences of God’s creation, but the very person of God is too out-there. We can love persons in whom we see how God loves and that helps. We can feel unreligious, because we obey God kind of okay, but we are not much for feeling love for God.
In the movie, Talladega Nights, Ricky, the racecar driver, leads the Thanksgiving Day dinner Grace by praying to “Sweet Baby Jesus in the Golden Fleece diapers with a balled up fat little fist.” He is challenged by his wife who tells him that Jesus grew up. Ricky tells her that she can pray to a grownup Jesus or a teenage Jesus, but he prays to a sweet baby Jesus.
We are moving prayerfully toward receiving the birth of God-Made-Man and perhaps this mysterious God gives us this Baby to attract our hearts. He does grow up, but not to frighten us or bind us to legalistic conformity. John the Baptist sounds angry and severe toward the Pharisees. The grown-up Jesus can frighten us as He speaks to them during His public days. We find it difficult to have affection for authorities who rule with the harsh tone of power. We can admire the strength of heroes, but as for having love for them, that is not easy. Jesus possesses power and we might find Him gentle only a few times.
This Advent we long to do more than admire and stand off in wonder. He will be born again with all the love we can receive. The poverty of the stable reflects the poverty we are experiencing in our love for Jesus in return. Fear is easy to be experienced in our hearts; power can do that. These days of Advent we can hope that our love for the very person of Jesus can enlighten the darkness of our fear of God.
“Rise up, Jerusalem, stand on the heights, and see the joy that is coming to you from God.” Bar. 5. 5
“Now is the hour.”
Symbols are rarely unambiguous. Even the image of the dove or the lion has its shadow. Water is life-giving, but it can take away your life just as surely. It may cleanse, but it is also treacherous. Fire is furious; fire is comforting. Clouds have silver linings. Countless images have their positive and negative faces.
So it is with night. Nights have starry skies that inspire philosophers like Kant and artists like van Gogh. The night brings rest and quiet. It signals not only endings, but expectancy.
But night, at least in Advent-time, has less ambiguity than most imagery. It is something to escape. Utter night, without the promise of morning, is deepest gloom. Endless night, without the glow of candle or star, is a void. Even ordinary and partial night is more scary than starry.
It is best we sleep in the dark. At night violent armies clash. Streets clatter with shouts and gunfire, sometimes even until the break of dawn. Debaucheries, betrayals, carousing are heard faintly in the distance. Nearby, once “the night is far spent,” Paul phrases it, the stumbling home from wild desires sounds a city night’s death-knell.
Sudden shadows that leap and loom trouble us at night far more than the tame shadows of daytime. If we are startled from a midnight sleep, we may feel a terror greater than at any other time: some gaping darkness, some unexpected anxiety, some uncovered dread. If we sleep again, our unconscious has its say, unkempt, untrammeled, unmanageable in its better dreams, horrific in its nightmares.
Sadly, even in the day we often sleep-walk as we eat, drink, and parent, too often unknowing and unconcerned. When we do manage to stir ourselves to action, we routinely play out a strident score written by our conductor of night—the dark unconscious. Freud’s find, the libido, stalks the world day and night for prey or power or pleasure. Our quarrels, jealousies, and wars are works of darkness, even though they haunt our days.
Darkness was the lifeless void of Genesis, the ninth ominous plague of Egypt foreshadowing its terrible tenth: the death of all firstborn.
Isaiah promised that the works of dark and sleep would all be changed in God’s bright presence. “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again .... Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.” To see in the light of eternity is to change. If we knew as God knows, if we were “instructed in God’s ways,” if we walked in God’s paths, not only would our nations disarm, we would tear down our more private defenses. We would never again make war against each other, against our very hearts.
The Fourth Gospel announced God as light in whom there is no darkness, the light that shines in human night, irradiating our world. It was light, the First Letter of John would teach, that opened the way to life and love.
Paul advises the Romans (they themselves knew their dreadful nights) to be conscious of the day. They are to live now what they want forever. Salvation is nigh, Paul says. Be awake. Walk with the armor of light.
The Ephesians were to be children of the day, awake and vigilant. “Wake from your sleep, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
Since we do not know the time when our lives stop or the earth melts, every day must be one of presence. Vigilance is for now. The watchful eye, the expectant heart, is for this moment. If we are sleep-walking our way through life, now is the time to “come to.”
Advent. Enter. To “come to.” To wake up. To enter life, here and today. Let God enter it all and now. And let us enter it all, even the darkness, now with God.
If we go into our lives and permit God to enter with us, then we shall see, even though it be night. Revelation—enlightenment—will come to us, not in shrouded nightmare, but upon a midnight clear. Then we shall no longer be the walking dead. And even though we walk through the valley of darkness, no evil shall we fear.
The clamor of the streets will be stilled, for it will be a silent night. The deceptions of the dark will be uncovered, for it will be a holy night. Night itself will be transformed, transfigured, when all is calm, when all is bright.
And we shall sing with Zechariah his canticle of illumination, a song of the life that is light.
In the tender compassion of our God
The dawn from on high shall break upon us
To shine on those who dwell in darkness
And the shadow of death,
To guide our feet into the way of peace.
St. Louis has a custard stand that many people think of as the heart of the city. It’s not actually near the center of the city at all, it is on the South Side. But it is THE place people gather on summer days. Its name is Ted Drewes.
Every evening, hundreds, literally hundreds, of hungry folks gather outside the many serving windows of this old time frozen place, waiting in line for a chance at the tasty stuff in all its variations (“concrete,” “Terra Mizzou”—as in the nickname for Missouri—“Cardinal Sin,” and so on).
One evening I even saw a just-married couple pull up in a horse-drawn buggy, wearing their formal wedding clothes, and order frozen custard (with the obligatory pictures being snapped), and then go on to their honeymoon. Quite an important place.
The funny thing is that no one in line is in a hurry. They talk, they enjoy the weather, they enjoy being in “the” place. If someone is needy, that person can cut into line and no one cares. The people seem to have turned waiting into a social affair, a time of lingering patiently together.
What does this have to do with Advent? Well, look at it: in Advent, we too wait. Jesus is to be born, and in fact we have experienced him many times before at Mass. We join each other not around frozen custard but around the peace and goodness that the birth of Jesus will bring to our hearts and our relationships. We will line up together at this Sunday’s Mass, and God will turn our waiting into a social, prayerful event.
Ordinarily we do not like to be delayed. Think of traffic jams, lines at the grocery store, etc. We project our minds forward to the many things we have on our list besides wasting time. But is there really nothing to interest us as we wait in mundane situations? At the custard stand, of course, there is the pleasant St. Louis air, people to talk with, and of course the promise of a tasty reward that will do its will with our taste-buds. Our senses open up.
Is there anything we can open to when highway traffic is creeping along at six miles per hour?
Yes. If we come to our senses we will not need a hot fudge sundae to make it worth our while to wait. In the present moment, as you read these words, hundreds of real and God-filled objects are all about you. Did you ever really feel the texture of the steering wheel you grasp every day? How about letting in the colors of the trees? The people in other cars—visible to you at six miles per hour? If you stay in the present instead of mainly the future or the past, you will find subtle and obvious beauty all about you. Your goal will arrive when its time comes. Meanwhile, the present tense is still happening.
Advent is like this. A time to pull in our scope a bit and realize that emptiness is a healthy and normal part of our lives. We are continually refilled if we let ourselves be. Strange to say, waiting for fulfillment is also itself a fulfillment. It lets us be what we are—not God but human.
May the real world be born to you as you wait.
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