For daily readings, see http://www.usccb.org/nab/120108.shtml
Advent is wanting God to come closer. Advent is wanting God to come sooner. Advent is wanting God to come closer and sooner, and actually meaning it!
To borrow a metaphor from yesterday's momentous KU game, Advent is 4 and 7 from the 21 with 27 seconds left, down by four to Missouri. Advent is 10 seconds left, down three against Memphis. It is watching Mario's shot in the air.
Advent is a hospital waiting room. It is pregnancy tests. It is biopsy results. It is keeping vigil when a child is to be born, or a loved one is about to die.
Advent is the hour before a first date. It is the moment before a first kiss. It is making the final preparations for a perfect proposal.
Advent is the fear before going into enemy fire. It is the anxiety we have in answering the phone when we know a loved one has been in harm's way.
Advent is opening the mail after taking the ACT. It is applying for a job that my family really needs, and waiting for the answer.
Advent is the excitement of getting ready to see someone we love whom we have not seen in a really long time.
Advent is wanting God to come closer and sooner, and actually meaning it!
Advent invites us to become more like those who pray in today's first reading from Isaiah, those in exile to Babylon, who actually blamed God, and His distance from them, for their plight. You and I are probably too timid to blame God for our exile, for our long-suffering inability to make ourselves into what we want to be. We instead blame ourselves, and ask God to keep his distance and to give us more time to tinker with our self-improvement projects. This is not the attitude taken by those exiled to Babylon. Isaiah reports that they refuse to believe God has decided to keep his distance from them. They want God to come closer, and to come sooner, and they really mean it!
Advent is the time for us to stop asking God to leave us alone as long as possible, so that we can mold ourselves, before having to turn in the final product for judgment at an unspecified date. Jesus tells his disciples that they may never be ready to turn in their final product, for they do not even know the deadline. Rather than despairing, however, He tells them to keep vigil. Isaiah shows us the way of the Israelites who prayed for God to come sooner rather than later. It is futile to pray that God will give us all the time we need. Rather, we are to expect that God is coming now, so now is the time to beg God Himself to mold us into what we are supposed to be, according to His will.
Most of us are too timid to blame God for our exile. We are too self-centered to ask God for less time instead of for more. Yet if we ask God to come closer, and to come sooner, and we mean it, what but good can result? If we place our lives are in God's hands, if He is the potter and we are the clay, we can and should rejoice that every situation, especially the ones we cannot control, and the ones fraught with the most excitement, vigilance, and yes, even anxiety, is a situation of God's molding us into someone beautifully ready to participate in the eternal mysteries of divine life and divine love, the mysteries that complete the mystery of who we are.
Advent is about asking God to come closer. Advent is asking God to come sooner. And actually meaning it!
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