DISCLAIMER: So, Reader, I'm a touch behind, but this week has been a pretty hectic one for me! I'm gettin' this all caught up. :) Thank you for your patience!
Moving on!
Here we are, Reader.
Already the Third Week of Advent. This month seems to be racing by,
doesn’t it?
As I was reading the
Scripture passages for today, a couple of things came to mind. In
Isaiah, he talks about restoration. A mental image flashed in my
mind, about as winter’s time ends and springtime starts to come
around, and as we slowly come around and start seeing warmer weather,
it’s really no different than what we’re waiting for and
preparing for our Beloved Lord’s Grand Arrival!
Think about it like
this: For thousands of years before He first came to us, we were
kind of in a weird stasis, right, trying to figure things out, having
an aimless wander, confused as to which direction to go. Moses came
down from Mount Sinai, as the Book of Exodus tells us, to find his
friends and family parading and carousing around a golden calf they’d
made because they thought that Moses had left them. He hadn’t.
So, God said, ‘Alright, I’m going to make what I expect of you
all abundantly clear.’ He
gave us the 10 Commandments, or as some call it, the Decalogue.
...and yet… We still
didn’t listen, did we? You read story after story after story, all
of these are accounts of humans just tripping over themselves, and to be
fair, each other, about what God did or did not mean when He said
what He did in each Commandment. What He meant, or didn’t mean.
Eventually,
our cries were loud enough, Jesus said, ‘I’m coming.’ He came
to us on a chilly December night in the form of an Infant to draw us
in and help us feel more comfortable approaching the King of Kings
and Lord of Lords. Our Beloved Lord loves us that much, He chose to
be the Sacrificial Lamb so we wouldn’t have to suffer the way we
deserved to, He took that on Himself for us, in our stead. Often, I
wonder… ‘But… Why, Beloved, did You do this for us?’ The
answer is in the Catechism and the Bible:
‘With the Nicene Creed, we answer by confessing: ‘For us
men and for our salvation He came down from Heaven; by the power of
the Holy Spirit, He became Incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and was made
Man. The Word became flesh for us in order to save us by
reconciling us with God, Who ‘loved us and sent His Son to be
the expiation for our sins’ : ‘the Father has sent His Son as the
Saviour of the world,’ and ‘He was revealed to take away sins’
(1 John 4.10; 4.14; 3.5):
Sick, our nature demanded to be healed; fallen, to be raised up;
dead, to rise again. We had lost the possession of the good; it was
necessary for it to be given back to us. Closed in the darkness, it
was necessary to bring us the light; captives, we awaited a Saviour;
prisoners, help; slaves, a liberator. Are these things minor or
insignificant? Did they not move God to descend to human nature and
visit it, since humanity was in so miserable and unhappy a state?
The
Word became Flesh so that
thus we might know God’s Love: ‘In this way the love
of God was made manifest amongus, that God sent His only Son into the
world, so that we might live through Him.’ (1 John 4.9) ‘For
God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever
believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.’ (John
3.16) The Word became Flesh to
be our model of holiness, ‘Take My yoke upon you, and
learn from Me.’ ‘I am the way, and the truth and the life; no
one comes to the Father, but by Me.’ (Matthew 11.29; John 14.6).
On the Mountain of the Transfiguration, the Father commands, ‘Listen
to Him!’ (Mark 9.7; cf Deuteronomy 6.4-5) Jesus is the Model for
the Beatitudes and the norm of the new law: ‘Love one another as I
have loved you.’ (John 15.12) This love implies an effective
offering of oneself, after His Example. (cf Mark 8.34).’ – CCC
456-59
‘But,
what does this have to do with Spring and Winter?’ you might be
wondering? Well, one of my favourite things about
the Easter story is when He told our Mama, ‘Behold, I make all
things new again!’ Each year, we get a little tiny glimpse of
that. When the winter nap starts to slowly wear off and the whole
world seems to wake from that ‘sleep,’ everything’s fresh and
renewed and restored to life. What was once dead has come back.
This time with a new vigour.
Now,
taking that and circling to the First Reading, Isaiah 35 talks about
things blooming, weak legs will be made strong.
I
love poetry.
As
a writer, I love almost anything written. There are a few things I
generally won’t
ever
touch, but poetry was, for a long time, something I could not get
enough of, so much so I wrote my own for several years. The language
Isaiah uses in his poem, it’s not unlike the language David used in
a reading we had not too long ago from Psalm 23. There’s a lot of
vivid imagery here. Phrases like, ‘the steppe will
rejoice and bloom.’ and
there’s this gem: ‘the
splendor of Carmel and Sharon; they will see the glory of the Lord,
the splendor of our God.’
It’s almost like you can see the thawing away of the cruel hands of
death giving way to the warmth and beauty of what God has waiting on
the other side of that season for us. This season we’re in, I’m
not talking Advent, but the season of life,
itself, we see a lot of gloom and doom when we turn on the news (or,
in my case, open my e-mail and catch the headlines that way… I
don’t own a telly). It’s awful, isn’t it? Fighting, child
abuses, murders, the list seems
endless, and it seems like,
‘When, Lord, when will You fix this?!’ But He reminds us through
Isaiah, ‘...say to those whose hearts are frightened:
Be strong, fear not! Here is your God, He comes with vindication;
with Divine Recompense, He comes to save you.’
And
I love this next line,
‘Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears
of the deaf will be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag,
then the tongue of the dumb will sing.’
Not
unlike winter thawing away to become spring, am I right? Even in the
Second Reading, our brother St James reminds us to be patient, that
the coming of the Lord is at hand. I
mean… with all that’s happening in the world, this seemingly
never-ending suffering, it’s going to give way and Jesus is going
to make all things new again. Better. Wonderful. Our Beloved Lord
even reminds us in the Gospel, from
His own Precious Voice,
directly to the disciples: ‘the blind regain their
sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead
are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.’
Years
ago, I heard a phrase that made me feel a little caught off guard,
confused even. ‘This is the backwards economy of God.’ I never
quite understood that, but then I came to realize, in a way, it’s
flipping everything we know on its ear.
When
Jesus talks about this directly when He was here the first time, and
on down through the prophets before He came to us, the Bible is rife
with constantly
reminding us that what we think is ‘beautiful’ and ‘royal’
and ‘super important’ now will be flipped around where
‘less-than’ people will become elevated above the ‘important’
ones. Jesus came to us as a Helpless Infant, born to a poor family –
I mean, let’s be honest here, St Joseph wasn’t quite rolling in
the gold,
and I think if Jesus wasn’t
trying to make a clear point, He’d have been born to a royal family
of the time in a super posh palace somewhere, right? – and He
chose to take things that were broken and fix them. He is our Divine
Physician, but more than that,
as He had been stating over and over and over again all throughout
His Ministry, even right up to the last few staggering breaths up to
Calvary, He said, ‘I’m going to fix this. Just wait
and see!’ He died so we
could
live. He gave us our new breath with His Final Gasp. The First
Infant Cries that were uttered by Him in His Human Form, it’s like
the Divine Reset Button had started to be pressed for us, setting
everything into motion.
Because He
loves us that much.
Our
Beloved Jesus is that Light.
The tunnel we’re in, it’s not where we belong.
He is beckoning to us, gently calling to us and sharing with
us little hints that ‘new things are coming.’
We are going to be restored. Our loved ones who are sick, they will
be made healthy again. Those of us who suffer with ailments –
mental or physical – we will be made whole. Horrible bosses will
be brought to their knees. Bullies? A thing of the past. Our
Beloved Jesus is going to come and fix all of this
for us. This is what we keep missing each year as the seasons shift
and change. This is what we need to be watching for. We’re
constantly crying out, ‘When?’
And the answer is always the same: ‘Be patient, My
Child. Be patient. I’ve got you. It’s going to be okay.’
In what areas
of your life are you too impatient to wait for Jesus to show you what
to do? How can you prepare your heart for Him so He can show you how
to be still and wait for Him?
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