Readings: http://www.usccb.org/nab/112810.shtml
Today after many weeks of Ordinary Time, we begin the Season of Advent and with it the “busy part” of the Liturgical Year. For after the four weeks of Advent comes the Season of Christmas; after Christmas come a number of weeks of Ordinary Time again but followed then by the 40 days of Lent and finally the 50 days of Easter and even a couple of fairly important feast days afterwards as well (Trinity Sunday and the feast of Corpus Christi). So things will be quite busy from now on for a good six months.
Very good then, today we begin the Season of Advent, which reminds us of the centuries of waiting for Jesus’ first coming, asks us to be prepared for Jesus’ second coming and helps us to prepare for the celebration of Christmas again, which recalls Jesus’ entry into the world for the first time some 2000 years ago.
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Now it’s probably fair to say that we don’t like to wait. In traffic, I get annoyed if I find myself behind a truck or SUV which inexplicably slows down, and I find myself with no idea why -- if the reason is something only 2-3 cars down or, worse, an accident or construction delay a mile or two away. Not being able to see past the truck or SUV after a short time, I find myself fiddling with my radio to set it on WBBM to catch the traffic report to hear if there is some major tie-up ahead. In the meantime, I’ve learned to say a number of Hail Mary’s (or even SING THEM) to slow me down and help me to accept my lack of control over the irritating and, after a time, unnerving situation.
I was further reminded a number of years ago by a parishioner that today we often throw something into the microwave to reheat it -- even for as little as 30 seconds -- and we find ourselves tapping our watches awaiting the microwave oven to complete its job, even though there is simply _no way_ in _this universe_ to heat that item faster than through that microwave. The laws of physics of _our universe_ offer us no faster way.
Finally, we get irritated when we’re sitting in front of our computer and the cursor turns into a little spinning ball or top or hour glass, indicating to us, that whatever task we’re asking the computer to do, will take longer than perhaps we thought it would, and we're just going to have to wait.
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So if we get irritating waiting even a few minutes for something, it may seem simply unfathomable that the oracle we hear in the 1st reading today from the Prophet Isaiah was written some 500 years before its _partial fulfillment_ with the coming of Christ -- after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians but before their liberation by the Persians 70 years later, again some 500-550 BC.
To get a grasp of the amount of time that we are talking about, consider simply what our world was like 500 years ago:
Only 500 years ago, Europeans were first discovering the Americas. Of course, the people living here knew where they were, but until about 500 years ago, the Americas were for all practical purposes completely separated from the rest of the world.
Only a couple of centuries earlier Marco Polo returned to Venice after living for several decades in China and reported all sorts of things about China that were simply not believed by his European contemporaries (cities of a million people, an emperor named Kublai Kahn living in such splendor that he might as well have been as “real” as Obi Wan Kanobi from our Star Wars stories of today). Indeed, part of why Columbus “discovered” America was because the Spanish and Portuguese were trying find ways to reach the China described by Marco Polo in his writings.
Then 500 years ago there were missing all kinds of items and entire technologies that we take for granted today. Forget computers, the printing press only found its way to Europe (again from China) some 500 years ago (Marco Polo's book, was originally simply a handwritten and _handcopied_ manuscript). And there was no electricity, hence only bonfires, lanterns and candles provided artificial light.
500 years, this is the length of time existed between the time that the oracle that we hear Isaiah prophesying in the first reading today and its partial fulfillment with the coming of Jesus.
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And we say partial fulfillment because in the prophesy, we hear that “swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks and nation will not go to war against nation no more.” That hasn’t happened even to this day. We are waiting _even now_ for the final fulfillment of this prophesy.
Indeed, outside of the United Nations building in New York – the United Nations having been founded at the end of World War II, the most violent of wars of recent memory – there is a plague inscribed with those words of Isaiah that we heard today. And though the wars that we’ve experienced since World War II have thankfully been smaller, we are constantly reminded (even this week with renewed threats of war on the Korean peninsula, a war that would easily dwarf in violence the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) that Isaiah’s prophesy has not yet been completely fulfilled and awaits fulfillment only perhaps with the second coming of Christ.
We have to wait some more. And so, despite all our knowledge and technology we too get to share the same frustrations experienced by generations past and indeed of the people of Israel between the centuries following Isaiah’s oracle and the first coming, according to our belief, of Jesus as the Messiah into this world.
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But these are all large questions and perhaps distract us from what is going on closer to home.
Closer to home, Advent is a time for preparation for Christmas. Advent in the United States generally begins the weekend after the celebration of the our nation’s great family holiday of Thanksgiving and ends then with the celebration of the other great family holiday of Christmas.
Since family holidays inevitably bring to the forefront unresolved family squabbles, Advent becomes an annual invitation to work on resolving them, reminding us that we don’t have an eternity to do so.
And to illustrate the point, let me talk here from my personal experience: I will, for instance, always remember that I was not home for the last Thanksgiving that my mother was alive.
I was studying in California at the time after coming home the first year I was away for both Thanksgiving and then Christmas a month later, I asked if it would make better sense that I skip coming back for Thanksgiving in that fateful year and come back for Christmas instead, and despite not being home of Thanksgiving, Christmas went well, BUT ... (and the but is the point of my story ...)
My mother had been fighting cancer for several years then. But even then as now, it was a disease that was hard to judge. Yes, it was a matter of life and death, but from a practical, day-to-day point of view, it also appeared to be basically a two day a month disease. My mom would go to chemo, which would make her sick for a day. Then she slept pretty much the next day. Then third day she would be able to go back to work again and all that was needed was for her to go back to the doctor a few times in the weeks intervening for tests before her next round of chemo, which would come a month later.
So she was still at “fine” a month later for Christmas though all of us would later remember that she looked a paler in the photographs than in years past.
And it was my mom who drove me to the airport on the feast of Epiphany (the three kings) about two weeks after Christmas to that I could fly back to school in Los Angeles. And after dropping me off, she headed to the doctor for tests regarding her next round of chemo.
Well, on account of those tests, the doctor ordered her back to the hospital and she never left the hospital again. Yes, I was able to come back even several times in the intervening months, including at the end, basically till the end. So we all had our time to say our goodbyes. But it remains with me that I was not home for the last Thanksgiving that my mother was alive and it was the only Thanksgiving that up until that time I had ever missed.
I do not mention this story to make anyone to feel guilty, but as a reminder that we don’t have an eternity to resolve our family squabbles. We all live on a conveyor belt which keeps us moving into the future, and that yes this season of Advent, which finds itself in our country squeezed between the two most important family holidays of the year, offers us an annual opportunity to seek to resolve some of the problems that exist within our families.
Yes, the conflicts are often complicated, yes, they are often “not our fault,” or more precisely not entirely our fault, but precisely because they are often complicated, we do need to move on them, because non of us will be here forever.
So let that perhaps be at a task that we can set ourselves for this Advent season, to at least become aware that we do have to move on our unresolved conflicts, especially those that exist at home, and yes become aware that the clock is ticking, (thankfully not in a super rapid way -- it's not like EVERYONE we have unresolved issues with, will be dead by this time next year) but still the clock _is_ ticking.
Let’s see during this season and the year that follows if we can find some way through the problems that keep us apart.
If we do that, then this time, this season, this coming year will not have been a waste.
So let's use the time and the resources that we have at our disposal to move on some of those conflicts don't seem to go away.
God bless you all, and have a happy and blessed Advent. Amen.
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