Fr. William Fennelly: We have just heard at the start of Luke’s gospel that “the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness”. He goes into the wild and spending time there changes him. As a result he felt drawn to go and preach about the coming of Jesus. This idea of the word coming to John isn’t more clearly explained than his going into the wilderness. In other words the period of withdrawal from normal society opens John to receiving the word of God. It’s a similar impulse to what drove the early monks in Syria and Egypt to go out into the desert to encounter the risen Lord. This new world, this new kingdom begins not with a revolution, but rather with a change of regime but with a change of heart, that is to say with conversion. John tells us ‘your job is to change you and in this way your world will be changed’.
On your left as you look over your shoulder is a new painting hung this week by Br Emmaus that shows a sleeping St Joseph. St Joseph has four dreams in Matthew’s gospel the most famous being his first (1;20-21) where he’s told to not be afraid but to take her as his wife even though she is with child. In the painting you’ll see Joseph is sound asleep and the process of dreaming doesn’t seem to trouble him; he’s at peace. Despite all of the threats around him and the really confusing fact of his fiancé’s pregnancy he is calm. Sleep is an indispensable part of our lives. We spend about ⅓ of our lives asleep and yet it’s an opaque if essential aspect of our lives. Joseph, like John the Baptist in his desert, meets God, but it is in the mysterious world of sleep and dreams. When the body sleeps the brain and soul seem to still have their antennae out to be communicated with. Br Emmaus’ painting expresses a silence, still air, stopped time. For those of us deprived of all three in our hurtling, distracted lives, this is more vital than ever. But beyond the silence there is a communication, a revelation which we can’t see or hear. Joseph in the painting like St John in Matthew’s gospel is showing us the way.
The first reading read for us so well by Teak was a call for repentance from the prophet Baruch who describes a sad state of affairs. Jerusalem has fallen, and is destroyed by the king Nebuchadnezzar. The prophet is writing in exile and he is conscious of the sins of his people. He addresses himself to Jerusalem because for the chosen people guilt is not just individual guilt, it is more a collective guilt. For the same reason, repentance is possible just because God’s promises to his people as a whole are certain. Baruch declares ‘God will guide Israel in joy by the light of His glory’.
Sometimes we may think that God has forgotten us or given up on us. That is how the Jews must have felt in Babylon. To this Baruch says no, God is still here. He will liberate us and he will raise us to glory and that is why we can repent not just with confidence but with joy. What Baruch is telling his people is meant for us too. Our repentance is not the condition for God’s mercy. It is simply the way we grasp hold of the gifts that God is always holding out to us. In Advent we’d do well to try to remember that repentance is just accepting the forgiveness that God is always extending to us. It is as simple as that. The significant change in John’s preaching in the wilderness reiterates the same theme and has something else. Once again repentance meant accepting the certainty of God’s promises. Only this time there’s a difference, because the Messiah is about to be revealed. God’s own Son born in Bethlehem and raised to glory for our redemption stands at the centre of human history waiting to be received.
We here in Ireland were lucky enough to have had a boring election last month but lots of the world must envy our calm. France and Germany are in flux, America is facing into what can only be described as dramatic times, the Syrian civil war is particularly intense at the moment. The suffering of the people in Gaza hasn’t abated for an instant over the last year, and in Ukraine the front is in movement and things appear to be reaching an inflection point, not to mention Sudan and Congo. All across our broken world people are yearning for a chance to start afresh, the chance for a new advent. Yearnings such as these must have been part of why so many people went out to hear the message of John the Baptist. They went into the place of ‘beginnings’ which is what the desert represented. It was there that the people of God were found by him and from there that they were led by him. We can be met by him in the desert like St John the Baptist, or in our dreams like with St Joseph. In the wilderness or sleep he can come to the most intimate part of ourselves where we barely even know ourselves and yet we find Him there waiting.
St Anselm of Bec put the living out of this seeking and finding ad seeking yet further well in a reading that we had at the monastic morning office during the week; “Teach me to seek you, and reveal yourself to me when I seek you, for I cannot seek you unless you teach me, nor find you unless you reveal yourself. Let me seek you in longing, let me long for you in seeking; let me find you by loving you and love you in the act of finding you”. It’s a life’s work.
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Many thanks for this.
Beautiful poem.
This is beautiful.
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