Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Decem­ber 14, 2010

Today’s read­ing from Zepha­ni­ah presents a warn­ing:  woe to those who refuse cor­rec­tion, refuse to hear, and who refuse to trust in God.  The rebel­lious city not­ed by the prophet res­onates with us today.  Rebel­lion got our ances­tors, Adam and Eve, into trou­ble.  Being a rebel may look like free­dom from a dis­tance, but it ulti­mate­ly becomes anoth­er means of sub­ju­ga­tion – the “tyran­ni­cal city” men­tioned here reflects that con­di­tion. 
  
This past fall I vis­it­ed the Nether­lands, and I was amazed by their rivers that were care­ful­ly bound­ed by lev­ees ris­ing above the sur­round­ing farm­land.  With­in those riv­er chan­nels, large car­go ves­sels moved freely and effi­cient­ly above the farm­steads of the Dutch coun­try­side.  If those lev­ees were breached, the river’s ener­gy and direc­tion would be lost.  The riv­er would leave destruc­tion in its path, and ulti­mate­ly it would dis­si­pate into a use­less pud­dle.  Does this pro­vide an object les­son for us when we move out­side of bound­aries, such as the moral teach­ings of the Church?   And who among us does not have first­hand knowl­edge of the woes that come to us from doing so?

For­tu­nate­ly this read­ing also includes hope, redemp­tion, and for­give­ness.  Zephaniah’s mes­sage to the redeemed city is a mes­sage of hope, which is con­sis­tent with the light of Advent.  Tak­ing refuge in God allows His sav­ing pow­er to dis­place the rebel­lious spir­it; humil­i­ty and all that goes with it (includ­ing lis­ten­ing and obe­di­ence) will endure and rebel­lion will be left behind.  Advent brings this pos­si­bil­i­ty that much clos­er to real­i­ty.  God Him­self has come to be one of us, to be born in a manger to par­ents who embody the trust and humil­i­ty described here.  Hallelujah!

The Gospel reminds me of my youth, when my father used to ask me to join him to cut weeds on our farm.  Some­times I would resent his call­ing, wish­ing instead to be with my friends whose fathers seemed to be more solic­i­tous of their youth­ful desires than mine ever seemed to be.  But after protest­ing and resent­ing my plight, I would go.   Main­ly I went because I did not want my father to be there work­ing alone.  I real­ized he worked hard for our fam­i­ly, and I want­ed to be like him.  (My own chil­dren think that per­haps I, too, am not suf­fi­cient­ly solic­i­tous of their youth­ful desires, so per­haps that inten­tion has been ful­filled.)  With time and dis­tance, I have come to appre­ci­ate those times in the field with my father.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus pro­vides a warn­ing that resem­bles the mes­sage of the ancient prophet.  Jesus chose to rock the con­cept of right­eous­ness of those in the reli­gious estab­lish­ment, let­ting them know that exter­nal­i­ties of appear­ance do not gov­ern, but on the sub­stance of what they do in response to the Father’s call.   It opens the pos­si­bil­i­ty that rebels who hum­ble them­selves to lis­ten to God’s voice and do His will, may indeed reach the King­dom of God. 
 
Let each of us con­sid­er in our own hearts this Advent sea­son how we go our own way and lis­ten to our own voic­es above the voice of God.  And note that the voice of God may some­times be heard in the cries of the poor and needy among us.  Some­times it may also be the voice of the Church (or our par­ents and friends speak­ing those truths) try­ing to main­tain the bound­aries we need to keep mov­ing for­ward, like those rivers that  keep mov­ing toward the sea, rather than dis­si­pat­ing into a big pud­dle going nowhere.