The readings for this first Advent weekday of 2004 thrust us squarely into the middle of that delicately special tension between the past and the future that characterizes this season of hope and longing.  I remember one of the "Family Circus" cartoons in which the little girl, Dolly, innocently observes: "Time is God's invention to keep everything from happening at once!"  Lots of childlike wisdom there! Gratefully remembering the past helps us live confidently in the present and prepares us for future glory.
 
We cannot help noticing that the futuristic promise of the prophet, Isaiah, in the first reading, is picked up by Jesus in his amazement at the faith of the centurion; the last sentence of today's Gospel is filled with confidence that God's promise and invitation to all will be fully realized, that everyone will find the way to and have a place at the heavenly banquet table.
 
I invite all of us today to reflect upon and pray over that promise, that desire, that hope..  Then let us ask our own hearts: is there anyone  we are excluding from the table of God's love? Can we enter into the "desire of the everlasting hills" that belongs to God and extends to us, and will we reach out for the hope that all men and women will one day recline with us at the heavenly banquet?  What an Advent this one would be if we could, all of us together, boldly embrace God's universal salvific will, revealed in Christ, and manifested by the Centurion!  Lord, come and heal our paralyzed, divided world which is suffering so dreadfully.
 
And wouldn't it be as wonderful as it is holy if Jesus were able to say about each one of us -- at the end of Advent and on Christmas morning -- "Amen, I say to you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith!"  Together we will respond and sing together the beautifully hopeful responsorial psalm from today's readings:

"I rejoiced because they said to me, 'We will go up to the house of the Lord'...and I will say, 'Peace be within you!"