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A season of paradoxes and perplexities
Advent is the beginning of a new liturgical year, and we are at the end of our calendar year. We are asked to be alert and to wait for a God that is coming; but God already came and went. We are asked to consider this a time of penance and fasting while we decorate everything with jingle bells and have office parties, group parties, neighborhood parties. And as we wrap gifts and prepare our trees and Nativities, we are immersed in apocalyptic reflections.
It could be disorienting. Be alert, be awake, keep your eyes open. God is coming and he may be knocking at our door (or it may be the family knocking). We cannot be caught by surprise.
If Jesus comes today, I am not ready to greet him. I am rushing to distribute food parcels for the poorest families, making sure the children can have their Nativity play and that everybody has a part, making sure that there are fresh vegetables or fruit for the young people and the young mothers.
I don’t have that kind of warning or runway for when Jesus may enter my life today. But he is coming toward me, toward you, toward all of us, no matter how unprepared we might be, because we have cultivated a genuine desire for his coming as we have prayed unceasingly in words and songs: O come, O come, Emmanuel.
As we envision Emmanuel, God in our lives, in our midst, let us ask him again to get on his way because we are eagerly waiting for his arrival with our perplexities and paradoxes.
O come, O come, Emmanuel.
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