Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Advent is a time of hope, of expectation, of waiting for the Lord. God wants you to recover that sense of anticipation you had as a child when you waited for Christmas. It is not about wishful thinking but to reflect about the deep desires you have for yourself, your family and friends this Christmas. The hope you have for a change in a relationship in your family. Hope requires that you take some action: to pray, to get up early and speak with the Lord.
Hope means that we are a people “on the way.” There are some who say they “have arrived,” that they have it all. This is presumption. And its opposite is the one who says, “I’ll never get there; it is impossible.” This is despair. Hope is a virtue, a good habit that lies in the middle of these two extremes. God wants you to live in hope and I invite your to work on this virtue. I will focus on it during these four weeks of Advent with the intention that it grow in us.
Have you named the desire that you are hoping for this Christmas? I encourage you to spend some time thinking of this. What do you desire for your parents or your spouse or your children this year? It is not just wishful thinking but a deep desire for a change, not so much in others but in yourself. Also part of this desire is for those people you would like to hear this message of hope at Christmas. Often at Christmas and the holidays it can be very stressful and full of tension. Hope will change your outlook on others and create more peace.
A seminarian was saying that at his seminary there are two olive trees and one if full of olives but the other one, which is older, is empty; it has no fruit. John the Baptist this week (Matthew 3: 1-12) is asking the religious leaders to show him the fruit, the evidence of their repentance. He is asking the same for you and me. The fruits of repentance are very visible: you reconciled with your family who you had not spoken to in years, you had another child after the factor of life was closed for several years, you visit regularly a sick or homebound relative or neighbor, you made a generous gift to the poor, etc. When others see this it creates a question mark: what happened to him or her? They never gave a fig about their neighbor and now they are cooking for them.
John the Baptist says to them: repent. Turn around! You mentality is usually grumpy, cynical, anxious or dismissive and God is inviting you to turn, and to help you to put on Christ, to start to act like a Christian. He is not saying to do it on your strength; he knows you can’t; he will give you a different spirit. Ask for it.
Paul is writing to the Romans (15: 4-9) since there are also tensions in their church, their community. Paul says just a few verses before what was proclaimed today, “Bear with the failing of the weaker ones, and not just to please yourselves. Consider your neighbor’s good in order to build him up.” Paul speaks wisely in saying bear the foibles of others rather than getting annoyed by them. If it is something serious then, of course, you have an obligation to speak. However, it is often the small things of your spouse or your friend that drive you crazy. Don’t force them to be the way you want them to be; love them for who they are. Jesus did not do things to please himself, neither should we.
Scripture, the Bible, was written so that you might believe, so that you would have hope and encouragement. Scripture is full of stories of all kinds of people who build us up so that we have hope. It includes not just good people but all types of characters that in some way respond to God. Read a chapter a day from the New Testament and you will be encouraged and hopeful; it was written for this purpose. I pray during Advent that you find encouragement in God’s word, and this will give you hope.
