Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Decem­ber 5, 2005

Isa­iah 35 : 1-10 “The desert and the parched land will exult; the steppe will rejoice and bloom. They will bloom with abun­dant flowers…Those whom the LORD has ran­somed will return and enter Zion singing, crowned with ever­last­ing joy…”

Psalm 85:9ab and 10, 11−12,13−14 “The LORD him­self will give his ben­e­fits; our land shall yield its increase. Jus­tice shall walk before him, and sal­va­tion, along the way of his steps.”

Luke 5: 17-26 “…When Jesus saw their faith, he said, ‘As for you, your sins are forgiven.’…”

Memo­r­i­al St. Sabas – 439-532 A.D., born in Cap­pado­cia (mod­ern day Turkey) is known for being one of the founders of East­ern monas­ti­cism, seek­ing out time for prayer and long peri­ods of soli­tude ear­ly in his life. He was men­tored by St. Euthymius, also an ear­ly Church monas­tic. He trav­eled preach­ing through­out Pales­tine and Jerusalem. His East­ern Ortho­dox order at the monastery Mar Saba in Jerusalem now holds his pre­cious relics.

In reflect­ing on the first read­ing from Isa­iah today, a week into Advent, I couldn’t help but remem­ber the homi­ly I heard on that first Sun­day when the Advent sea­son began. Fr. Val Peter sug­gest­ed we pray dai­ly through Advent ask­ing to “increase our long­ing for You O Lord”. He sug­gest­ed we look around and notice our sur­round­ings, see God’s hand­print in our world and in our uni­verse. No mat­ter the sea­son, God’s beau­ty is every­where. Here in our win­ter months we have been enjoy­ing the most beau­ti­ful sun­ris­es and sun­sets late­ly. As I read Isaiah’s beau­ti­ful descrip­tion of a desert in bloom, it remind­ed me imme­di­ate­ly of the signs of God’s hand on our world. Let this aware­ness be a sig­nal to pray dai­ly and often help­ing us to pre­pare for the com­ing of Jesus.

Using an aware­ness of God’s cre­ation gives us con­crete images in our dai­ly life to help draw us back to God and thus to a con­ver­sa­tion with Him. I began to see the advent wreath dif­fer­ent­ly too, no longer as a sea­son­al dec­o­ra­tion, but as a reminder to pray. So, I pulled out my advent wreath with new inten­tion this year. Isaiah’s words encour­age us towards this rela­tion­ship with our mak­er. “A high­way will be there, called the holy way…It is for those with a jour­ney to make, and on it the redeemed will walk”. (Isa­iah 35:8,9)

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus notes the faith of the men who took great lengths to place their stretch­er laid friend in front of Jesus. Jesus had been speak­ing to the Phar­isees and teach­ers of the Jew­ish law; and as he told the man placed in front of him that his sins were for­giv­en, he also read the hearts of the oth­ers who had been lis­ten­ing to him. The Phar­isees could not accept that a mere man was for­giv­ing sins, only God can for­give sins. The par­a­lyzed man did as Jesus said and stood up and went home, and every­one was amazed at what they saw.

May we all be amazed at what we see this day, this week, as we look around at God’s cre­ation, includ­ing our­selves, and we real­ize the won­der of God anew, and that was Fr. Val’s sec­ond point. His third point - get ready: God is going to send his Son to become Man; get ready, get ready. Hap­py Advent.

Our God will come to save us!