Advent is a season of hope

The Sunday after Thanksgiving we entered the season of Advent, 4 weeks of preparation for the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  We are now in the second week of Advent and John the Baptist has made his appearance.  Advent is not the penitential season that Lent is, but it does have some of the same characteristics.   It is a time to quiet ourselves from the madness of Christmas shopping, Christmas parties, the decorating and the rushing that we seem to be doing this time of the year.  Advent is a season of hope.
Human beings cannot live without hope.  Unlike the animals, we are blessed---or cursed---with the ability to think about the future and to fear our actions which shape it.  So essential is this to human life, man cannot live without hope, without something to live for, without something to look forward to.  To live without hope, to have nothing to live for, is to surrender to death in despair.  But, we can find all kinds of things to hope for and we can hope for almost anything:  success, financial security, safety for our children, for a better world, peace of mind, and, almost anything that the human heart can desire.  And, not all of these are selfish or self-centered, peace in the world, an end to hunger, clean drinking water in third world countries, finding a cure for cancer or creating a new technology that future generations are better off.  Our hope is capable of creating a better world and dignity to men and women.
The people of the Old Testament had the courage to hope for big things:  the desert would be transformed into fertile land, that people scattered and divided would be brought together again, the blind would see, the deaf could hear, the lame walk, the creation would be re-created into the image that God had originally meant to be as in Genesis. 
Thus we hope for the same things as did people of the Old Testament for their hopes are not yet realized.  But we differ from them in 2 ways:  one, God’s promise has been fulfilled in sending us His Son Jesus, and two, thru Jesus we have learned that God is not far away but is already in our midst. 

Thus the importance of the Advent Gospel passages where we see the process of God entering our midst.  We hear of characters that round out the story of Jesus at the beginning of Luke and Matthew in their birth narratives:  Mary, Joseph, John the Baptist, Simeon and Anna, the Magi from the East, Elizabeth and Zacharia, even the Archangel Gabriel.
Advent is a season, expressed by the Church, to be a time of quiet preparation for the birth of the Messiah.  Waiting and watching, prayer and works of charity—all meant to bring about a renewal within us, giving us hope.  Our culture tells us that this season is all about spending, decorating and running and, we cannot some of that.  But we are called to something greater:
Slow down, take a deep breath, consider what God has blessed you with, read the birth narratives (Matthew and Luke).  This is a time to prepare ourselves and refresh the hope that is fundamental to our lives.  Advent provides a great opportunity once again to cast off the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of Christ (St Paul).  Don’t let Advent slip away and be gone before you know it, slow down, take a deep breath, say a prayer and always have hope!
Rev. Patrick Christopher is the pastor at St. Joseph parish in Apple Creek. He can be reached via email at stjoeapc@gmail.com.