PHOTO: Jennifer Stephens
Originally published in The Catholic Times, December 13, 2015
“What does keeping Advent mean for us now, today?” I asked myself after reading a couple newspaper articles about mass shootings and escalating fear and anger at terrorist attacks. I was still pondering while making a quick stop at a mall. Lights and hype along with an unending string of Christmas music bombarded the senses, and on the drive home, Pope Francis’s reference to this year’s Christmas trappings being a charade came to mind.
Checking the text, I discovered that he opened his homily with “Jesus wept,” adding later “…because Jerusalem did not know the way of peace and chose the hostility of hatred, of war.” With Christmas coming, the pope said “…there will be lights, there will be celebrations, trees lit up, even nativity scenes…all decorated: the world continues to wage war…The world has not comprehended the way of peace.” The entire world is at war, piecemeal, and the cost is great—A somber message for the coming season of joy and hope.
While terrorism and wars are in the news around the world, they are not the only form of violence. There’s also violence against the poor and marginalized when funding for safety-net programs are cut. Civil rights for all are a continuing issue, as is adequate care for those suffering from mental illness. (Many mass shooters suffer from it.)
The earth itself suffers at the hands of human beings, yet some choose to dismiss the issue of global warming and the investment in new technologies needed to address it. (Did you see the pope’s shoes, sitting along with 20,000 others in a public square in Paris during the climate talks there—A quiet “march” to support those working to find ways for governments to respond to this threat?)
The pope is right: The world has not embraced the way of peace. How do we do that? How do we find hope in a dark world?
A friend sent a poem she has been using for Advent reflection: “Annunciation” by Denise Levertov. “Aren’t there annunciations/of one sort or another/in most lives?” the poet asks before pondering how we do or do not accept the annunciations that come to us. She writes of Mary, a young girl like other young girls, but called to a “destiny more momentous that any in all of Time;” she didn’t hesitate to embrace it.
Levertov concludes that whatever we have to offer is enough. “The blessing is not in the treasure/But in the letting go.” We are called to give what we have, not to hold it close, but to generously pour onto the world. We are called to lavish Love on the marginalized who need our care and nurture, much as Jesus needed protection within the womb as he grew.
Levertov’s poem reminds me of the loaves and fishes story. The young boy freely gave what he had, and Jesus made it enough.
Maybe that’s what’s Advent’s quiet and waiting is about. Avoiding the distractions of orchestrating a “perfect Christmas” and instead giving ourselves time to pay attention to what Grace has been placed in our hearts, not turning from the challenges of sharing it in a dark and often hostile world. Like Mary, we’re called to say, “Yes, I’ll give all that I am.”
A poem by Jessica Powers, considers the Incarnation. “In Too Much Light,” she sees the Magi following one star and laments her difficulty finding one to follow. Her revelation?
Faith cries out ‘til her voice fails, proclaiming that in every spot and time, “…there is not any place/ when the sought Word is not.”
That’s where our hope lies this Advent, when even our pope laments the darkness and choices for war over peace.
It is within, given when the Holiest of Mysteries became one of us, sharing Love and trusting us to share it in our times and places. The hope is discovering that light, not outside us, but in our deepest center. Being selfless with it, giving it away, is embracing the way of peace.
When we discover the divine light within ourselves and within all others in this world, the wounded, the suffering, the marinalized, the fearful, the violent, then we’ll have found the God we prepare to celebrate during Advent.
Jessica again: “Behold, all places which have light in them/truly are Bethlehem.”
© 2015 Mary van Balen
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