Second for Advent

There’s always hope

On Friday morning of this past week, students from Corpus Christi school came to the church to join us for the celebration of the regular morning Mass.  I’m told that they have been here many times before, but this was the first time that they had been here during this school year, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.  Children are truly a gift to us adults, you know, if we have the courage to learn from their wisdom.  During the homily on Friday, I explained to the children that God gives special gifts all through the year but especially at Christmas and during the Advent season.  I then proceeded to ask them if they knew what these special gifts were.  I fully expected to hear about toys or about the Halo games the boys want.  Imagine my surprise when not one of the gifts they mentioned was tangible, much less visible.  No, this group of young children quickly named such gifts as hope, joy, peace, togetherness with family and loved ones and even forgiveness.  I suppose you might say that such responses reassured my heart, and made me believe that there is hope for this up-and-coming generation.

Hope is at the heart of the readings we’ve heard this weekend. Anyone who has travelled to the Holy Land will tell you that it’s a pretty harsh and unforgiving terrain.  At first, it appears to be a desert, and indeed it’s not far from it.  Here at home, we are spoiled with such luxuries as grass (at least during the summer months), but in the Holy Land, vegetation is precious, as is rain.  Even though you’re not far from the sea, the landscape is far from verdant. Trees grow there only because they have been so carefully cultivated and cared for.  The majority of the population has been no stranger to suffering at the hands of all those who sought throughout history to control this gateway to the Orient, not least of which were the mighty Romans.

Speaking not to the mighty but to the powerless, the prophet Baruch dared to call his hearers to believe in themselves: to understand that they could hope for a better future.  Arise, O Jerusalem, he says, for every high mountain and the everlasting hills will be made low.  With words which evoke images of the impossible coming to pass, the prophets have challenged their audiences throughout the centuries to believe that the true secret to inner strength can often be found in the things and situations which appear at first to be most fragile.

Primary among these images is the Nativity, something we will have a chance to examine more closely in a few weeks’ time, but the theme of hope coming out of hopeless situations, and strength being found in the midst of weakness can be found even in the image of the Baptist who happens on the scene in today’s gospel.  When I think of John the Baptist, I somehow have a vision of a man standing in the midst of a stream: the River Jordan.  He’s calling out in a voice that sounds half convinced, and half crazed, belligerent and challenging while at the same time daring those who venture close enough to listen to hope that what he says might actually be true.  Yet, the scriptures describe him as a voice crying out in the wilderness (the perfect image of the weak, feeble, perhaps even ignored sprout of which we spoke last week).

If John’s voice could so easily be ignored by the wise and powerful of his day, is it any wonder that we can so easily ignore the wisdom of the voices that speak to us today?  Perhaps if we were truly to listen with the ear of faith, we might hear a child’s voice, so innocent, so easily ignored in an adult world, speaking words of hope for today’s generation, calling us to seek joy and peace and to truly believe that these are possible.  Here then is the challenge for the coming week:  listen for the voices of those who encourage us to hope, even when hope seems furthest from the realm of possibility, and take the time to thank God for the gift of children and others who announce this good news to us.  Pray for them with joy because in their own way, they announce the gospel to our world, and the one who began this good work among them will surely bring it to completion.