First Sunday of Advent
MT 24: 37-44
In this first Sunday of Advent, the first reading we hear in
the liturgy comes from the prophet Isaiah. Anticipating the coming redemption
of the people of Israel, the prophet proclaims, “in days to come, the mountain
of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised
above the hills. All nations shall stream toward it; many people shall come and
say: ‘Come, let us climb the Lord’s mountain!’” As the new liturgical year
begins, then, we are given the inspiring and exuberant image of going up to the
top of the mountain to be one with God. This sounds great. If only it were that
easy! As the Christian story unfolds, though, it becomes apparent that we are
just not very good climbers of the mountains before us. We can’t make it up
there. We try and then we slip back. Or we get dragged down by sin and fear and
discouragement. But God has compassion on us as try even so ineffectively. In
the end, as the Christian story goes, we don’t ever make it up that mountain,
at least not on our own. Instead, God comes down from that mountain and
“condescends” to be one with us, joining us in our weakness and frailty and
smallness. He takes flesh and dwells among us first as a defenseless baby and
then at the end in the humiliation and defeat of the Cross. We want to go up
the mountain but since we can’t do it, the Lord comes down to us in our poverty
to lift us up to be one with him. The way we end up getting up there, then, is
by surrendering in our own poverty and love to him who has become poor and
small for us. The word Advent means “coming toward,” as in God coming toward
us, down from the mountain, as it were.
As we begin this new liturgical year, then, in the first week of Advent,
we do well to take a breath, sigh and cry out from our own smallness and
frailty to the Lord and say, Come Lord Jesus! Come and dwell with us at the
bottom of the mountain and help us to say yes to your plan to lift us up to be
one with you on your mountain!
Fr. Chris Collins, S.J. is Assistant to the President for Mission and Identity.
No comments:
Post a Comment