Advent In A Blue Christmas

 Advent In A Blue Christmas

“But no one knows about that day or hour. Not even the angels in heaven know. The Son does not know. Only the Father knows. Keep watch! Stay awake! You do not know when that time will come.” Mark 13:32-‬33 NIRV

The COVID 19 pandemic has cast dark clouds over Christmas celebrations this year. Instead of a merry Christmas, we are faced with the prospect of a blue Christmas - with financial worries and health concerns hanging over our heads. Together with political upheavals, climate changes and natural disasters, the COVID 19 pandemic has also given birth to many false prophecies about the end times. However, the blessing of COVID 19 is that it is a wake up call to rediscover the real meaning of Advent. To overcome our feelings of blues over our inability to prepare for our traditional Christmas celebrations, we can take time for silence and reflection - a time to be captivated by the season of Advent. Advent without the hedonistic trappings of Christmas can be an exciting adventure to make room in our hearts for the Risen Christ.

Instead of speculating on the second coming of Christ which no one can know, we are called to keep watch and to stay awake. A more fruitful exercise for Advent is to spend time in Silence, to wait on the Holy Spirit, to search the Scriptures and to seek the leading of our Shepherd of Love.

How we spend our time in this world is determined by what is in our hearts. The spiritual condition of our hearts determines whether we will bear the fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility and self control. In the parable of the sower, Jesus describes the four kinds of soil that represent the condition of our hearts - the path, the rocky ground, the soil filled with thorns and the good soil.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has drawn attention to the truth that the line separating good from evil runs not between countries or classes or cities or political parties, but right through the human heart. And it oscillates. He saw that even in the best of us, there remains some unpurged evil, but even in the worst of us, a small corner of goodness remains. It is therefore so important to be aware of the kind of soil that we may have in our hearts.

First Sunday of Advent: Our hearts as a path

A seed sown on the path cannot bear fruit. People walked on it and the birds ate it up. When our hearts are a path, we are unable to believe and to receive the power of God’s love. We are under the control of lust and greed. We are only concerned about what we want and how we can make use of others to get what we want. We are addicted to our need for control and blind to our need for God’s amazing grace.

In the midst of our successes and comfortable lives we are in constant danger of forgetting God. We are tempted to turn health, wealth and longevity into our idols. COVID 19 is a grim reminder that the future is unpredictable and that we are powerless over life and death. This tiny virus is teaching us to realize how short our lives are so that our hearts will become wise (Psalm 90:12). The call to keep watch and stay awake is not an order from a tyrannical God to keep us from enjoying life but the wise advice from our Shepherd of Love to help us live life abundantly.

When Jesus is our Shepherd of Love, we are the sheep of His pasture. As His sheep, we will have the be-attitude of meekness. And we have the wonderful promise that the meek will inherit the earth. This is not about going to heaven when we die but living in the kingdom of heaven here on earth. It is living with Jesus reigning in our lives as the Servant King in the here and now. It is living in the power of love and not to be seduced by the love of power.

With Jesus as our Shepherd, we will not fear poverty for we can trust that God will always provide for our needs but not our wants. We need the spirit of poverty to live in the kingdom of heaven. This does not mean that we are to be materially poor - it is to be free from the sin of greed. It is only with the spirit of poverty that we can live a life of total dependence on God. And this will keep us from the love of money that is the root of all evil.

To keep watch, we can practice silence. It is a practice to become more aware of our thinking and the thoughts flooding our minds - it is not trying to empty our minds. At times, one may fall asleep during the silence especially when one is physically tired - and hence we need to stay awake!

Cultivating silence is the expression of our intention to seek God’s presence. It is an act of repentance. Through silence we invite the Holy Spirit to transform our minds so that we will not conform to the thinking of the world. And it is a concrete act of surrendering our will to God. Through silence we can become more aware of the sins of lust and greed. In silence we trust that the Holy Spirit is working to change our attitudes so that we will have the beatitudes of meekness and poverty of spirit.

Mother Teresa described prayer as the fruit of silence. In prayer, we seek the power of love to overcome lust. We pray for the fruit of goodness so that we will be freed from the sin of greed. In prayer, we confront the reality of evil as well as affirm our trust in God’s faithful Love:

“And pray that we will be saved from sinful and evil people. Not everyone is a believer. But the Lord is faithful. He will strengthen you. He will guard you from the evil one. We trust in the Lord. So we are sure that you are doing the things we tell you to do. And we are sure that you will keep on doing them.” 2 Thessalonians 3:2-‬4 NIRV

Let us learn to be still and to wait in silence during this Advent in a Blue Christmas of 2020 so that the Holy Spirit can break up the “path” in our hearts and change it into good soil for God’s seed of Love to bear fruit.