Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Decem­ber 9, 2007

PRE-PRAYER­ING
There is a new gad­get for the tele­phone -Caller ID- which allows the called per­son to see who is the caller. One can even fix it so the num­ber flash­es on the TV screen so the view­er will know if the caller is worth the miss­ing of the TV show. Caller ID is part of the Advent cycle. Life is call­ing for growth. Rela­tion­ships are call­ing for life. God is call­ing for a lit­tle time in our lives.

The Eucharist is not a “time-bound” gath­er­ing of believ­ers who leave the cel­e­bra­tion to return to reg­u­lar time-life. The cel­e­bra­tion is the unusu­al begin­ning of the unusu­al liv­ing. For those who believe, there is no more “reg­u­lar”; there is the embrac­ing of all the unusu­al ways God calls, life calls, rela­tion­ships call. We pre­pare by lis­ten­ing, lov­ing, liv­ing time in a world-sur­pris­ing man­ner. We protest that Jesus can come to us any­way He choos­es; in the form of bread and wine, or the forms of fam­i­ly and strangers. We pre­pare by open-hand­ed­ly ask­ing “what is this!” rather than “why is this?”

These days we pre­pare to sur­prise oth­ers with gifts of love and care. We can pray with open hands to receive grate­ful­ly any mys­te­ri­ous sur­pris­es which will remind us of the fan­tas­tic sur­prise of the Incar­na­tion and the Eucharist.

ADVENT HINTS

1. Do not put up the Christ­mas tree! If there is an Advent tree though, a small-branched item, allow it to be a sym­bol of its wait­ing to be decorated.

2. Each day, wait for some­one or some­thing and espe­cial­ly if you can, wait with the feel­ings of impatience.

3. Light the sec­ond Advent Can­dle with­in silence and dark­ness; don’t hur­ry on to din­ner too quickly.

4. Share with oth­ers the biggest sur­prise you have ever expe­ri­enced and lis­ten to theirs.

REFLEC­TION

Yes­ter­day, in the First Read­ing from Gen­e­sis dur­ing the mass cel­e­brat­ing the Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion, we heard God’s call­ing out to Adam about his where­abouts. Adam replied that he heard God’s call­ing, but was ashamed and fear­ful. In the Gospel we heard God’s call­ing to Mary and though she expe­ri­enced fear, she was avail­able to the Caller and the message.

Today’s First Read­ing is quite famil­iar to us; var­i­ous Christ­mas cards will speak some of these vers­es. The whole read­ing would seem more appro­pri­ate to the feast for St. Fran­cis of Assisi. There are all kinds of ani­mals parad­ing through these vers­es like a bib­li­cal zoo.

What we are hear­ing is a bib­li­cal poem about the per­son of the com­ing mes­si­ah. Lin­eage is impor­tant for roy­al authen­tic­i­ty. The Mes­si­ah will come from the king­ly line of Jessie and Saul and David. The “Longed-for” will resem­ble these pre­vi­ous care-tak­ers of the Holy Peo­ple of God. He will have the gifts giv­en by God’s Spir­it: wis­dom, strength of char­ac­ter, a strong sense of jus­tice and above all, a trust in God.

Jus­tice for all will sur­round all his breath­ings and he will not be moved by the pow­er of the wicked, or the appear­ances of wealth. In short, he will be worth wait­ing for, watch­ing for, and hop­ing for, because oth­er rulers of the peo­ple have not served well.

The sec­ond part of the poem deals with the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of oppo­sites. The nat­ur­al ene­mies in the ani­mal king­dom will “on that day” return to the Eden rela­tion­ships where all was ordered. Chil­dren as well will retain their inno­cence when deal­ing with the rest of cre­ation. Adam feared God and bib­li­cal­ly that fear extend­ed through all cre­ation­al life. “Fear of the Lord” is oppo­site from fear­ing for one’s life. As the cre­at­ed-life was to increase and mul­ti­ply, human alien­ation from God increased and mul­ti­plied as well.

“On that day” the lit­tle ducks on the lakes of north­ern Wis­con­sin will not have to duck under water to avoid the prey­ing eagle. Some­how those lit­tle babies are born with fear of the lord­ly black-winged king of the tree­tops. These are strong images of how such fears among us all will be released. The Messiah’s teach­ings and man­ner of life will lead us back to the order­ly life of Eden.

The Gospel is a dra­mat­ic intro­duc­tion to the arrival or “pub­lic birth” of Jesus. Instead of angels singing and shep­herds has­ten­ing, John is shout­ing and the Phar­isees have has­tened. Quite a pic­ture we have of John bap­tiz­ing in the Jor­dan those who are desir­ing a change of heart and a change of behav­ior. John’s preach­ing is a prepar­ing of the peo­ple for the One Who is to come, Who is “might­i­er” than John. The best shout­ing is saved for the obsti­nate Phar­isees who have come as spec­ta­tors to the gathering.

The “ax” is being layed already to the trees (Phar­isees) which do not bring forth fruit. He will blow them away with His life’s mes­sage and their tru­ly-fruit­less lives will van­ish like chaff in the flames. The “wheat” which is gath­ered in the barn are those who, like wheat, bring forth life with their actions.

Our actions reveal our hearts, or more pre­cise­ly, our atti­tude. Our atti­tudes are formed by expe­ri­ences which pro­voke ques­tions. How we answer these ques­tions forms our out­look or atti­tude. We ask of every expe­ri­ence, “what does this mean?” Jesus is one of those ques­tion-pro­vok­ing expe­ri­ences to us as He was through­out the pages of the Gospels. Here, the Phar­isees are not even allow­ing the expe­ri­ence to be a per­son­al-ques­tion­ing. John is invit­ing a change of “atti­tude” by expe­ri­enc­ing the bap­tiz­ing-waters and ask­ing of them­selves, “Do we belong to God; do we want to?” Jesus lives His ques­tions and His actions reveal His answers.

Well that might be a lit­tle heavy. These Advent days and litur­gies are call­ing to our hearts so that our actions might give new birth to the One Who has come and comes again through our hearts into this world. Chang­ing our actions only tends to be fruit­less. If we give up eat­ing can­dy with­out a change of atti­tude toward our bod­i­ly health, well take it from this “sug­arholic” it does not last. Lov­ing our bod­ies and lives as pure gifts from God for this world and these peo­ple for this time, takes more time and “repen­tance” than just keep­ing our fin­gers sug­ar­less. John had an “atti­tude” as did the Phar­isees, and so do we. Check it out!

“Jus­tice shall flour­ish in His time and full­ness of peace for ever.” Ps. 72