Frackville

We talk about faith in different ways. Some of us with less, some with greater ease. The problem is that it is much more difficult to say “I believe” than to talk about faith.
As long as we stay on the surface of more or less theoretical considerations about matters of faith or ask about the lives of others and about things that do not directly affect our personal lives, talking about faith comes relatively easily to us; anyway – who knows – maybe it’s just a conversation about religion… A real conversation about faith is a decision to – like Mary – let God enter our lives and change literally everything in it. Cross the border of the impossible.

When we read in today’s Gospel that “nothing is impossible for God”, perhaps it is worth realizing that exceeding the impossible is often achieved in completely different ways than those we imagine. The impossibility associated with the lack of a husband is only a shadow that impossibility that was transcended when God decided that “a virgin would conceive and bear a Son” and that He, born of a woman, would be “great and called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God would give Him the throne of His father David, and His dominion there will be no end.”

Christ the Lord entered our human world completely unexpectedly and not in the way a person could imagine. Although, He was expected, He showed up unexpectedly. While the world expected the triumphant appearance of the Messiah, He came in the mystery of our humanity and in all the simplicity of human birth. Although one could have expected an enthusiastic welcome, it turned out that the door was closed to Him.
The greatest impossibility that God exceeds and that He forces us all to overcome is the unimaginable, incomprehensible and exceeding all human expectations truth that God took on a human body from Mary and became a man.

The very titles of the TV programs with the word “show” in the foreground – or at least in the subtext – reveal the dominant method. Namely, it is about creating idols, winners, successful people who, thanks to television, have made a career and become the audience’s favorites. All this, of course, is an excellent sell, but unfortunately few people realize that these “favorites” lead their admirers nowhere…

Whenever I return to the figure of St. John the Baptist, I am moved by his ability to remain in the background. In everything he does, one thought always stands out: He must increase and I must decrease. St. John doesn’t want to keep anything to himself. He doesn’t want to be anyone’s favorite. His only desire is to prepare the way of the Lord. So that Jesus could come and find everything ready to receive the Good News.

This must be treated as a challenge for our times. In a world that creates idols in order to use their faces, behaviors and ways of dressing to arouse new needs and create fashions that will bring huge profits, it is necessary to be able to distance oneself from this extremely strong pressure – first from the media and, consequently, also from society.

There are many important issues that we can care about and strive for. Having the right talents and recognizing the tasks to which God calls us, we must undertake them with full responsibility. However, we cannot forget that we are not supposed to lead people to ourselves and not our own way. Like St. John the Baptist and many other people of God, we must take responsibility for others, i.e. lead them.

“Comfort, comfort my people!” – with these words God calls us to comfort His nation in Babylonian captivity. What is a consolation? In the Holy Scripture it is never a downplaying of a difficult situation, an empty statement like: “Cheer up, it’s not that bad.” God, comforting a man, takes him in His arms, offers him closeness, binds his wounds, heals him, and stays with him in pain. God’s consolation is reconstruction, creation anew. The German theologian, Karl Rahner expressed it this way: “Consolation is for the believer the gift of experiencing that the love of God in Christ sustains every life, even those that seem to be astray or falling into ruin.” God, bringing comfort, enters the very center of human sadness and desperation, descends to the very bottom of our “pits” and awakens hope in us. He who is Emmanuel, God-with-us, strengthens us “when the nights are sleepless, when the days are powerless”, when “we scream, we are silent, we chase the dawn” (Peter du Chateau).

Every person needs consolation to gain new strength and not to escape from the helplessness of others. However, when comforting others, we experience all our helplessness and powerlessness. We are entering situations where not words, but silently staying with someone is the only and true consolation. We learn that there is no comfort in those who are prone to uttering platitudes that do not heal but hurt even more. The one who can truly console us is the one who, in the darkness, in the middle of “too night” (Peter du Chateau), saw the light of hope lit by God.

The prophet from today’s first reading found himself in a similar situation. God ordered him to preach words of comfort. We know that he followed this call, but he certainly had to carry with him the burden of the fragility of his own faith and the narrowness of his heart. What to do when, in the face of suffering, depression and doubt, words do not come out of our mouths? We must believe deeply that God also works through the imperfections of human words and gestures. This is rarely done in a spectacular way. God works most often in secret: in the privacy of our sensitive hearts.  Advent announces that God who comforts comes to people in the person of Jesus Christ.  He is all our comfort.

Every year, Advent makes us realize that once again we have become too attached to this world and have become too embedded in the present. We have forgotten that this world will come to an end and that nothing will remain as it is. Advent makes us look and look into the future. It is, like the present, full of both light and darkness.

But our future is Jesus Christ! He is the One who came and who will come again; He is the One who continually comes. And Christians are waiting for His day, His Advent. Advent means: coming, coming of God to man. God meets us: He gives us the present, the present time as a time of grace, as a path to the future. “I am the way,” says Jesus, the Incarnate God who entered our reality. Advent reminds us that Christians are people full of gratitude and blessed impatience. As Saint Paul says, we are to be grateful for the gifts of the Spirit: for faith and hope in the “revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We should wait impatiently for His coming, we should go out to meet Him and pursue Him persistently. And the degree of our holy impatience depends on the greatness of our faith and love. Their everyday testimony is faithfulness. Can someone be faithful who almost never puts off meeting the Lord until after a saint “NEVER”?

Advent calls us to vigilance: “Be careful and watch, for you do not know when this time will come,” says today’s Gospel. To be vigilant means to see clearly the reality in which we live and the reality towards which we are heading. It is Christ who is already among us in His word, sacrament and brother.

Advent announces that God is close, very close. You can meet Him. We, humans have no yardstick with which to measure His immeasurability; we have no hands to grasp Him; we do not have concepts that could capture His essence and help us understand Him. But He gave us a heart capable of seeking and finding Him. God is close, although hidden.

The time of Advent, which begins today, calls us to return to God’s ways, so that the coming Lord will not find us lost in the wilderness, in dark alleys and blind paths.