A new Church year begins and, once again, we are admonished to be alert. Odd that as we begin a season in
which we are to be looking forward, we are reminded of the end. But then, of course, what is ahead is the
end. We did not know last Advent whether each of us would be here again. Not so long ago, people in Ukraine
were going to school, tending their farms, visiting in cafes … Young people in Israel were sitting in their homes,
dancing at festivals … Families in Gaza were getting treated at hospitals, playing with their children. Palestinian
students were walking home in a land they thought was safer than theirs. They did not know that the hour
was coming. We can only hope that each of them had faith that the end was a new beginning. Ironically, all
three groups – Jew, Muslim, Christian – find their faith in the same God of Abraham.
Year after year, Advent after Advent, we hear the promise of the prophet that God will gather and protect us.
Yet we still wait. Surely God could take care of all of this and bring us together. But God has chosen to put the
promises into the hands of humans to be the means of fulfillment, and it has not always worked out well.
Thousands of years ago, in the time of the prophet Isaiah, people were fighting over land and beliefs and
power and still the world continues, with all the age-old threats and a good number of new ones. It is easy in
such times to be overwhelmed by the darkness. Once, during a massive peace gathering, I said to the great
Benedictine activist Sister Mary Lou Kownacki, “Sometimes it seems like we don’t get anywhere, like it doesn’t
matter.” Gently she answered, “Perhaps if we didn’t keep praying, we’d have already blown ourselves up.”
This, then, is Advent, the time of adding light, a little at a time, in hope of the coming of Jesus wherever and
however.
We may not be in a place where the specter of our death looms as darkly as it does in places where one can
hear bombs dropping, but we are asked in faith to keep death daily before our eyes because it is real. Whether
we are alert or not, it is coming for us. So Advent shakes us by the shoulders, reminds us that even in the
darkness we have something that will sustain us. It is the assurance of a God who has a deep and personal
love for each little life. No matter when, no matter how, we will be brought back from the ends of the earth to
the embrace of the Holy One.
There is a (perhaps not totally accurate) saying among those who count such things that the words “Be not
afraid” appear in Scripture 366 times, as if one assurance for every day of the year. Regardless of the exact
number, there is clearly nothing that God and Jesus say to us more often than “Be not afraid! Peace be with
you!” If we believe ourselves to be precious and loved, we should be able to pass through the fire and floods
of our lives with a little more hope each day. As the lights of the Advent wreath grow in number and
illumination each day until the commemoration of Christ’s birth, our light must grow until that mysterious day,
that sudden hour when our hope is fulfilled in the coming of our Savior to each of us. Who knows how long
any one of us has? Don’t doze!