TWO ADVENTS

 

TWO ADVENTS

There are two Advents; the one we know about and is thoroughly written up, especially in Isaiah, and the one we don’t know but we are racing towards. This second one is where we are involved and, in a real sense, have a say. We are not just in the stands, watching, but influence the unfolding of this Advent by the decisions we make. The timing is up to us: the sooner we succeed in making this world in the image of the One who designed it, the sooner that One will be able to ‘gather’ all his people into the peace he has planned for them.

But we keep postponing this universal community of peace. We run away from the implications. One story in the news is of an Iraqi family driven out of their home by the IS who sought refuge in a camp where they had to stay for seven years. They struggled to get to Europe and a better life only to be hounded on the Polish border, sent back to Iraq. The report ends, ‘and there is worst to come.’

The Isaiah reading for the First Sunday in Advent says; ‘I will make a virtuous branch for David who shall practice honesty and integrity in the land.’ It is poetic hidden language but it expresses the times that are coming when God, working with people, will bring truth in relationships. God cannot do it alone. Maybe the people of the first Advent who were looking forward to a Messiah, thought the Messiah would do everything for them. We know they had a narrow focus on Israel. Few had any thought for the ‘gentiles’.

But the first Advent did bring us a Messiah and that is what makes our hearts rejoice this 25 December. Yet this Messiah can do nothing without us. The whole plan is that we wake up and take steps in our lives to bring about community in the world. Sending the Iraqis back to where they came from, washing our hands of them, is certainly not building community. What should we do? Well, it is easy to be an arm-chair strategist and there is no avoiding the problem. But some kind of follow up of the lives of these people, some kind of support for them in their own countries to help them get settled, would be better than sending them back in despair.

We cannot wait around for this second Advent. It calls for our full engagement in doing what we can. If this sounds starry-eyed, one thing we know: if we decide to do something we will succeed, one way or another, and we are not alone. Our five loaves and two fish quickly grow.

28 November 2021       Advent Sunday 1C    Jer 33:14-16   1 Thess 3:12-4:2       Lk 21:25-28, 34-36  

A WORLD VIEW

 

A WORLD VIEW

The feast of Christ the King was instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925 as an antidote to the rising secularism and nationalism of the time. The forms these movements took threatened the dignity the Church saw as an integral part of the vocation of human beings as children of God destined to develop their own gifts and so find their way to the Father. The feast announces a world view very different from one that sees human beings as sufficient in themselves.

‘No one is free until everyone is free.’ We used to say this about South Africa and, truly, it was obvious then that white people lived in fear of the ‘black peril’. They were not ‘free’ in any meaningful way. And, of course, it is also true with regard to Covid and climate change, ‘no one is safe until everyone is safe’. Long ago, a war in Viet Nam or Ethiopia did not greatly concern those not directly involved. It was far away and we could get on with our lives without taking much notice. Something similar could be said about famine, droughts, tsunamis and floods. They were localised and the relevant governments would deal with them.

But Covid and global warming changed all that. No one is safe. Literally everyone on the planet is involved and Biden and Xi have to wear their masks too. Is this not an entirely new phenomenon? These two modern threats, whose effects have peaked in the last eighteen months, have made everyone take up a position in response. Some have chosen to ignore them and pretend life can go on as usual; others have got deeply engaged in facing these threats and doing something about them.

It is now clear that Covid will not be banished easily. We cannot put it behind us as we did the flu of 1918-19 which killed millions. No sooner have people begun to relax than a new Covid wave hits them – and there is no end in sight. Similarly with climate change. The Glasgow summit, recently ended, achieved some success but left many people deeply disappointed by the lack of compassion, imagination and courage displayed by many nations.

One lesson stares us in the face: these are global issues not local ones and humankind is painfully learning that pursuing local agendas and short-term benefits is like building on sand. This week-end the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of Christ the King. Everyone on the planet has had a chance to see the 30 meter high huge statue of Christ the King dominating Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, because of the Olympics in 2016. It dominates a huge panorama of land and sea. It symbolises something far beyond our limited interests. Can we see it as a sign that this world is God’s world and he has made its fruits available to all of us that we find our way to him?  He invites us to reach out to one another and recognise, at last, that we are one people of God and we are to rise above our divisions and strain for his justice.

21 November 2021, Christ the King   Dan 7:13-14         Rev 1:5-8     Jn 18:33-37

THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED

 

THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED

It is a strange way to begin. The first person to write a gospel starts by describing the end of the world. ‘The sun will be darkened, the moon will lose its brightness, the stars will fall from heaven’. This, eventually, becomes Chapter 13 after Mark goes back to write the earlier chapters. What are we to make of this? Perhaps we imagine something like the worst outcome of the climate crisis? In 1982, Annie Dillard wrote an account of her experience of a total eclipse (cf. Google).

 

            ‘… I turned back to the sun. It was going. The sun was going, and the world was wrong. The                     grasses were wrong; they were platinum. Their every detail of stem, head, and blade shone                         lightless and artificially distinct as an art photographer’s platinum print.  This colour has never been             seen on Earth. The hues were metallic; their finish was matte.’

This is a taste of a long description of the effect of the eclipse on her. It is a taste too, perhaps, for us of what it the end could be like. Dillard writes of the disorientation and horror of our natural world in convulsion. Another quote:

            ‘The sky snapped over the sun like a lens cover. The hatch in the brain slammed. … My    mind                was going out; my eyes were receding the way galaxies recede to the rim of space. …   You have                   seen photographs of the sun taken during a total eclipse. The corona fills the print. All of those                  photographs were taken through telescopes. The lenses of telescopes and cameras can no more                cover the breadth and scale of the visual array than language can cover the breadth and simultaneity             of internal experience. … You see the  wide world swaddled in darkness; you see a vast breadth of             hilly land, and an enormous, distant, blackened valley; you see towns’ lights, a river’s path. …

 

            “It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.” Wallace Stevens wrote that, and in the    long run he                 was right. The mind wants to live forever, or to learn a very good reason why not. The                                mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness; the mind wants to know all the world,                 and all eternity, and God.’

 

The whole article is worth a careful read. It opens our consciousness to all that is beyond our imagination and comprehension. It is an awesome thought, both frightening and joyful. Frightening, because the onset of the end of the world seems set to be a time of unimaginable turmoil. Joyful, because we know that the gospel message is one, ultimately, of hope. The end will not be a catastrophe. It will be the moment when the ‘Son of Man’ will reveal the final triumph of God and the long foretold ‘gathering’ of his people. It is a message of consolation to close a difficult year.

14 November 2021      Sunday 33B     Dan 12:1-3      Heb 10:11…18            Mk 13:24-32

 

NIGHTMARES AND DAYDREAMS

 

NIGHTMARES AND DAYDREAMS

A nightmare is described in the Oxford Dictionary as ‘a female monster sitting upon and seeming to suffocate a sleeper.’ I know a little boy in Ireland who was so traumatised by his primary school teacher’s description of the advance of Communism in Europe, and the way its enthusiasts brain-washed those who opposed its beliefs, that he had a nightmare. He woke up screaming at a vision of Stalin’s divisions marching down O’Connell St, the main street in Dublin.

Well, Stalin’s divisions came – not to Ireland but to other places – and now they are no more. Hitler’s divisions marched through Europe and North Africa and now they too are no more. The colonial empires pegged out territories for themselves across the world are also no more. The cold war – from the 1950s to the 1980s – is also no more. And the threat of MAD – mutually assured destruction by opposing nuclear powers - is, if not no more, at least unthinkable.

While we have the power to make life miserable for others there is always a push- back when those oppressed rise up. As I write, delegates of the human race are gathering in Glasgow to ‘push-back’ on global warming. The media heightens the tension telling us of the many battles lost across the globe: forests destroyed, habitats eliminated, sea levels rising and global temperatures relentlessly going up. We wonder what kind of world we will leave for our grandchildren. Already, in Kuwait for example, life is almost unbearably hot.

But history tells us that human being always resist, always fight back. I met a man the other day who grows ‘essential natural oils’ and he helps others to do likewise. He is adamantly optimistic. ‘We will win this thing.’ The ‘thing’ is, of course, climate change. Uniquely, it is not about war or famine or disease. It is about the human will. It is not about science. We know the science. It is about morality. It is about doing the right thing – not the selfish thing.

‘Now that you know these things, blessed are you if you do them’ (John 13:17). Jesus knew this was the crux of the matter. We know what to do but we lack the will to do it. We have won many battles before. Are we going to win this one? The answer – based on our past success in building a better world and our present exponentially growing awareness of the threat to our survival - is, ‘yes’.  We need the will of a Churchill or a Martin Luther King or even a Merkel to get there. Or perhaps it won’t be one individual who will convince the world; maybe it will be a globally shared now consciousness which is so strong it will overwhelm the delayers and begrudgers.

When Jesus was on the mountain, giving his inaugural address, he included these words; ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for what is right.’ Their number is increasing.

November 7, 2021                  All Saints        Rev 7:2…11        1 Jn 3:1-3         Mt 5:1-12