Fr Christopher Dillon OSB
Everything that we have heard in these readings is calling us to make ready, to make preparations; but for what? All around the world, people are preparing for Christmas, whether they are Christian or not, because it is a time for mid-winter festivity. But this is different; this involves an encounter with someone and preparation for that encounter. Last week, we were urged to be awake and alert for it; now we are being urged to prepare for it; and all the time against the backdrop of those cautionary words of the Letter of St Peter that,
where God is involved, a day can mean a thousand years and a thousand years a day. Because it is God that we are speaking about, God whose decision and desire, we have discovered, is to be with us and to bring us, ultimately, to be with him for all eternity.
This plan, we are led to believe, has been on the go from the beginning of time and each of us deals with it, in our own time, as best we can, not knowing what point of which thousand years is ours in all the waiting and expectation of the past and future centuries. The one thing we do know, as far as our Christian faith teaches us, this being with, this connexion with God is the heart and goal of our existence as human beings; so our preparing for it is the most important activity of our lives.
John the Baptist is the figure whom God appointed two thousand years ago to alert us all to this great truth, so his words are important for us to hear and to understand. His recommendation to us is repentance and the confession of our sins. By that is meant that we need to adjust our way of thinking and so reset our values and priorities from the ways of the everyday world to the ways and values of God, as we have learned them from Jesus Christ, and that we behave accordingly. It is a regular event, like house cleaning; stuff happens, stuff piles up and we have to deal with it in any walk of life. Christmas presents, the Christmas tree, Christmas dinner are all very well, but they are
second to this.
The really important matter in all this preparation is quite simply our
behaviour. Again, our Christian faith tells us that God has come to us, in the person of Jesus Christ, to teach us how to behave as sons and daughters of God. That is what Advent, the Coming, means. “Learn from me”, Jesus is quoted as saying, “for I am gentle and humble of heart”(Mt.11,29). “Gentle” is fairly obvious, involving being kind and polite; but “humble” is more subtle. It means being down to earth honest and truthful about oneself and everything else. Any one of us could do worse than bringing them as our Christmas gift to those around us. Either way, this is the kind of preparation that we are being
called on to make for the Coming of God into our world, into our lives. So it is up to you and to me; no one can do this for us; perhaps a little less screen time and more attention to what is going on around us.