Reflection for the Vigil of the Fourth Sunday of Advent 2009
December 19, 2009

by Mary Collins, OSB

Luke 1:39-45
The Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth

Two weeks ago, the Word called for leveling and straightening. Last week the Gospel said give and share. The biblical Word proclaimed for us here tonight is also full of action: there is hastening and leaping and some boisterous greeting! We hear of Mary and Elizabeth in joyous exchange. Right there are the unborns, Jesus and John, anxious to get out into the world, already full of vitality because of the Word spoken to each of them. I’ve listened to these action words many days now, but the clear and strong words of the prophets and evangelists keep being overwhelmed in my prayer by a different Advent word. It has been resounding within me through all these weeks of Advent. My Advent word came to me quietly, while I wasn’t even listening. I’m not sure why it struck me so forcefully.

Remember the reflection sheet we all received from the Human Resources Task Force in mid-November that called us to reflect on how we spend our day. We were invited to consider how much time we pray, how much time for lectio, for leisure, for work, for creative activity and so on. The forms for our Monastery Elders came to me, to distribute to those who could answer them. As I handed them out I discovered the Dooley residents had a slightly different list of items than the list given to the rest of us. Among other things they were asked to reflect on how much time each day they spent “waiting.” Well, I thought, these Sisters wait a lot: for medications, for the arrival of the bath aid, for the car to get them to the dentist, for someone to push them to chapel, to be called into the doctor’s office. So I began to think about my own waiting, and my attitude toward it.

My attitude surfaced quickly: I dislike standing in lines wherever they form. I dislike waiting. “Can’t we get this thing moving?” I wonder. So the word waiting, which I had begun to think about at a most superficial level started to cut more deeply, stung like a paper cut. How could I have missed it? The whole thing is about waiting!

Advent means to get our attention, to tell us that our whole life is a mysterious waiting. Our Gospel is full of action; but Mary and Elizabeth, John and Jesus are really waiting, waiting for the main event. Because we know the story, we think immediately that the main event, the birth of Jesus, lies just ahead. Today’s story is the opening act, not yet the headline performance. Then the waiting will be over! But will it, really?

Our memorial of Jesus’ coming birth is only a step toward the main event. Mary, Jesus, and John waited each day as their lives unfolded. The unfolding led to crucifixion and burial, then to resurrection and ascension. And still they waited, looking forward. And God waits for us, always present to us as our busy lives unfold, while we are hastening and leaping and greeting, leveling and straightening, giving and sharing, taking medications, going to the dentist. God’s presence is evident in these daily eruptions of beauty, goodness, and glory all around us, if we are attentive enough to name our experience. Yet the fullness for which we all long is not yet ours, even at the end of a good day. What are we to make of all this waiting in the life-long Advent that never ends?

The Cistercian teacher of contemplative prayer, Michael Casey, says that all our yearnings, our dissatisfactions, our restless longing can be positive signs. To keep looking for more is a likely sign of our tending toward God because what we have just does not satisfy. We can judge the restlessness within our own hearts to be a sign of spiritual immaturity and dysfunction. Casey thinks the meaning of what is going on may be more complex. Our restless waiting for we know not what is just as likely to be the sign that we are being drawn “toward God.” God is already near and but also the one for whom we wait - seen in the newborn “God with us” and yet always unseen and beyond our reach.

The church’s theologians tell us that spiritual restlessness is aptly named “eschatological.” Yes, the coming of the Lord is here, so we celebrate Christmas actively. Yes, the coming of the Lord is near. But the Lord’s coming is not yet fully realized. So even as we look forward to the Christmas feast just a few days ahead we wait with longing for fullness, reaching by God’s grace for the more that lies beyond our grasp and must yet come to us as gift. “Come, Lord Jesus,” is the church’s song for all ages, for as long as we live.

Many years ago the poet T.S. Eliot wrote of the mystery of human unease with our restless waiting in this broken world. He says:

I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong things; wait with out

love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. (“East Coker” III)

The Mary of tonight’s Gospel surely knew that truth: the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

© 2009 Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica
Atchison, Kansas