Sacred Destination Thoughts On the Advent Journey

Through Advent the scriptures emphasis has been  focused on past and future.

So far Advent has also symbolized the spiritual journey that we as individuals and as global communities are travelling as we follow Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.

We ARE ALL God's people but how many of us believe it ?

 

Through all our meanderings, failures, denials, disagreements and questions we falter and stumble along the path,

but even if we mumble or whisper it we still affirm that Christ has come, that He is present in the world today, and that He will come again.


There is a profound sense that we live "between the times" and that we have to try to be faithful stewards of what is entrusted to us on this beautiful but mangled and scarred earth.

As we get to the Third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday , we are given a respite from the searching to rejoice in what we know is coming but it is a good time to also  pause and take stock and to ask :

How has the journey been for you so far  ??


Have we managed to secure a silent place in our hearts and lives just to sit for a while and wait : to prepare and listen, to watch,
to feel with all our senses the sacred cycle of time approach the birth of Jesus and the incarnation of God as Man in our lives.








When Christ broke into our history in the Incarnation, we can see although dimly that there is in the future a consummation to that history for which "all creation is groaning."


Are we hanging on to that belief  despite all the heavy things that load us down and hoping that in the next few days we can swing ourselves into life again?

Are we living on a prayer that will catapult us into joy love hope and peace
- or are we still stuck where we were with outworn outsized problems that make us feel alone and helpless?









Last week we heard the wonderful edginess and raw honesty of John the Baptist, the maverick prophet who asked us to Behold !




As we have done our weekly shopping and carried around our usual baggage of banter about the cold, the economic situation , the greed, the duplicity and dishonesty, the mendacious and the scurrilous what message and question have we missed  listening to ?











Maybe this week as we continue the mundane it is as simple as that : we can hold our hearts up to God while we bend low and dig and plough the fallow earth of our being. 
We can be filled with the love of humanity and the dry ordinary becomes the fertile soil of all that we hope for. Buried in the soil, our mustard seed of faith is growing.



Meanwhile the simple but profound message challenges us today as it always has done throughout our history  :


"Love the Lord your God with all your heart" and 

"love your neighbour as yourself."

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