November 30, 2013
Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams concludes a longer poem “Advent Calendar” with the words:
He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.
He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like a child.
This Advent we Christians affirm, over and over, He will come.
We are determined, against the insistent headwinds of “buy, buy” to assert, “He will come, He will come.” (Who of us was not embarrassed by the pictures of throngs stampeding into Wal-Mart on Thanksgiving evening for the “early bird specials?” – Oops, maybe I was one of them!)
But what does that mean? Is affirming “He will come” simply one of a “Christian crank” making easy judgments on others – whose motives we don’t know and whose burdens-that-they-carry are invisible to us? Sometimes we find a Grinch and a Christian in the same person.
How do we avoid this Christian penchant to observe and judge others?
Perhaps rooting our Advent in daily practices of centering, quiet time, attentive to the Scriptures (the readings from Mass – or better, Mass itself?) will stave off our judgments. For this spiritual rootedness then gives way to the conviction that “He will come” … and it will radiate to those in our family, in our workplace, in our school or in our subway car. Practically it elicits a response that, “You must believe that something good is going to happen – ‘He is coming!’”
We Paulists are so very grateful to you, our generous supporters. We actively – with expectation and joy – wait together for the fulfillment, for “He is coming!”
Father Michael McGarry, CSP
President of the Paulist Fathers