December 1/First Sunday of Advent
But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand. ~ Luke 21.28
We begin the season of watching for the light with a reminder that we are a people who dwell in darkness. Luke’s apocalyptic text in today’s Gospel reading might have been lifted right out of the daily papers and social media sites. In the cosmos, disturbances and dismay. On earth, nations in perplexity, nations in anguish. All of us unsettled by the sea’s roaring and waves of social unrest, environmental cataclysm, and political division. Like the ancient believers for whom Luke wrote, we are breathless, exhausted and frightened, full of foreboding about the future. The ominous signs that Luke lays out for his audience read no less vividly today. What, then, are we to do? How are we to carry on in a time of such anxiety? Luke’s answer is both literal and metaphorical: “stand up straight,” from the Greek verb anakypto. Raise your head, and look up towards God, for the light is coming. We are “weighted all through our lives with a heavy downward lurch towards sin,” as the English Catholic artist and visionary Caryll Houselander observed. Our besetting worries, anxieties, and yes, sins, all these cripple us and keep us in darkness, preventing us from living a full and free life in God. Yet the stance of those who nourish a connection to Christ is one of courage and hope. Filled with faith that God is in charge, that God can do what we cannot do and can go where we cannot go, we may lay down our fears and stand up straight, knowing the peace and freedom of life in Christ.
O God of kindness and mercy, give me the courage to stand erect in courage and hope, grounded in your love, so that I may watch for your light. Amen.
For today’s readings, click here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/120124.cfm
To hear the various choirs of the Basilica of Notre Dame sing “The King Shall Come When Morning Dawns,” click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IumPDmJ571w
