Advent, Here We Come! Shake us up, Lord Jesus!

While in the seminary, my friends and I had the routine of traveling down to the gulf in the early spring season.  As soon as we were in distance of the ocean, we would roll down every window in the car and let the salty, humid air refresh our winter wearied souls.  The smell is still palpable in my mind.  At night before going to sleep, we would open the sliding door to the patio to listen to the sound of the waves crashing on the beach.  Those two things—the smell of the air and the sound of the ocean—were worth the entire trip for me.  And yet, even after a few days their luster would wear off.  We would forget to roll down the windows in the car, and fall asleep without noticing the sounds of the ocean. 

 

John and Abbey had been married going on ten years.  They had two children to whom they devoted their lives.  They had been through death, job changes, joys and sorrows.  They were still deeply in love, but not without asking the big questions neither of them ever anticipated asking.  But much to their ignorance, life seemed to move from one event to the next, leaving little time for slowing down and really taking in what occurred.  They would come to the end of the day so exhausted that any attempts at deepening their relationship were less desirable than laying their head down on a pillow.  One night, though, just before turning off the light Abbey noticed John staring at her.  She sort of had to rub the sleep out of her eyes to figure out what in the world he was doing.  She finally said to him jokingly, “do I have toothpaste on my chin or what?”  Fixated on her face, John simply responded:  “I am sorry to say that I forget the beauty you had when we were first married.”  Feeling a little insulted and saddened by this comment, Abbey’s face contorted and she held back a surge of emotion.  But before she could respond, John finished his statement:  “Though I can’t remember your beauty from of old, I can’t believe the beauty you now possess, and how for so many years, I have forgotten to gaze upon it.”

 

It is a somewhat sad reality of human existence that we become accustomed to the beauty around us.  Whether it is the waves crashing, the salt water air, or the face of our beloved, we become accustomed to life.  We buy something new and in days the newness has worn off and we place it aside.  We start a class in school with great excitement and before we know it we cannot wait for the end of the semester.  This experience is also something that can affect our faith.  The excitement of being a new mission church in the county fades away and we are not as motivated to come to church or be involved.  The mass becomes simply something we attend each weekend, but we hardly engage the profound mystery before us.  That new bible we purchased at retreat has creases in the first few pages, but the rest lays untouched.  The journal we wrote in has a few entries, but each has gotten shorter and shorter, and now they have stopped altogether.   

 

The Gospel today paints yet another picture of turbulent times that will take place in the world and in the cosmos: Heaven and earth coming in contact, clashes of power, tribulations.  There is spoken of a great dismay and a shakeup.  Sometimes we are afraid when hearing these readings. Sometimes we write them off that they will never really happen.  Or we simply hope that they won’t.  But I think what we need right now, what this Advent season can be for us, what the best thing we can do to be vigilant and prepared for the great mystery of the Incarnation is to be shaken up in our life of faith.

 

 

 

 

In the psalm today, we sang “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.”  The word for soul here in Hebrew is Nephesh.  This can best be translated as one’s whole life being.  We are invited by the psalmist to consider lifting up our entire life being to God in a manner likened to a friendship—a relationship.  This is not a novel idea.  But the very essence of our Catholic faith revolves around entering into a relationship with our God. This becomes the joy of our faith.  It is the only way to shake up our faith, to keep ourselves vigilant, to restore its life so that we do not miss the beauty that surrounds us.

 

This relationship is none other than one of pure love.  Just as we would love another human, we can love Jesus, who was truly God and truly man. The Incarnation is the best evidence we have that God actually wants to be close to each of us.  God is not some deity far off in another universe.  God is not distant and uninvolved in our lives.  God chose to be so close to us that he actually took on our human flesh.  Therefore we can have a relationship with him.  This relationship is us talking with him, us walking with him at every step of our lives. This relationship is the thing that gets us up every morning.  It’s how we love our spouses and children in a greater way.  It inspires us to want to come to mass because the mass is the place where we meet the very one we love.  It inspires us to want to learn more about our faith because it means we learn more about the beloved—about Jesus with whom we have this relationship. 

 

 

 

 

I grew up as a so called cradle Catholic.  I rarely missed mass and rarely missed our faith formation evenings.  Yet after I was confirmed there was not much fueling the fire of faith inside of me.  I went off to college and slowly faded away from the Church.  It was only when attending a Protestant retreat with my Protestant friends where I was reminded of the core of my Catholic faith, the very thing that I had forgotten about:  God was calling me into a relationship with him through his son, Jesus.  A relationship that if I cultivated, would change my entire life.  From that moment Catholicism began to make so much more sense.  And I found that there was no better place to build that relationship with Jesus than in the Catholic Church. 

 

The month of December presents to us all a time of busyness.  We begin to panic wondering if we will ever get ready for Christmas.  We have lights to hang, presents to buy, traveling plans to arrange.  But I ask us all as a Church to consider one thing that we can do that is far more important than any other preparations we could make for the Holidays:  I invite us all to deepen our relationship with Jesus. 

 

Deepen this relationship, so we won’t miss smelling the intoxicating air of our Catholic faith.  Deepen this relationship so we won’t miss hearing the beauty of the waves of love and compassion crash on the shores of our lives.  Deepen this relationship so we won’t miss gazing upon the face of our savior that has loved us into existence.  During this Advent time, allow yourselves to be shaken up, set in dismay, pulled out of comfortability by this relationship. When advent is over and it is time to open those Christmas presents, we will have found we already received the greatest gift ever:  a loving relationship with a loving God who fulfills all our hearts could ever desire.