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Advent is the season we associate with expectation, waiting, and hope as we prepare to revisit and ponder the fulfillment of God’s promise: He dwells among us.
But today’s gospel seems to confuse us. It appears that Jesus is giving us an exit plan. Run, do no go back for anything and after all the abomination drama, God is back in Glory.
Very intriguing indeed.
The gospel is inviting our attention to participate in an undefined period of waiting.
We know how boring waiting can be; it even may irritate us as we tend to consider any waiting a “waste of time.” So we try to do something as we wait. As usual Jesus startles us with this invitation to embark in a meaningful waiting. Instead of frustrated non-attention we are taught to be awake and alert. He is inviting us to waste no time preparing things but to cultivate hope. Hope is a very muscular virtue. Hope requires attention and intention.
The mystics often mention that waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life. Hope brings us to an audacious openness. Openness to God, to the others, to the world. Openness to a God that manifests today in others as he manifested in Bethlehem. That is the exit plan that the Gospel talks about.
Let’s be open and alert because God manifests himself in the most unexpected ways: in the simplicity of a man and a woman who are searching for a dwelling place for their newborn. We can find them on the roads we walk, in the doors we open, in the welcoming we give and in the room we make in our lives and in our hearts to others.
Let’s dare to hope, to wait expectantly for God’s vision of the world: that we embrace each other as God embraces us…in the simplicity of God’s hidden presence. It is a wait worth waiting.
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