Whose fault is it?
Oh, that you would open the heavens and come down?
Whose fault is it? It seems that Isaiah comes to the conclusion in the first scripture of this Advent Season that it is all God's fault! Listen carefully to the first reading this Sunday.
This Sunday we begin a new Liturgical Year—it is all waiting there for us to look forward to: — Christmas, and all its related feasts; then a little respite in Ordinary Time; then the great journey of Lent with its climb up the Lord’s Mountain toward the Sacred Triduum; then the Easter Season — 50 days of Alleluias, climaxing in the Pentecostal gifts of the Spirit, opening out to the feasts of Trinity and Corpus Christi, along with celebrations of Confirmation and First Holy Communion. A myriad of other feasts and saints days lie before us also, all of which are opportunities to grow in faith and to renew the covenant of love which the Lord has made with his people.
This Sunday we begin the whole process with four weeks of waiting. Waiting for the Christmas feast, yes, but also waiting symbolically for the return of the Lord in glory. As we sing at every Mass: “We proclaim your death O Lord, and profess your resurrection until you come again”. We wait; the child in each of us waits; the Church in her liturgy waits.
I remember well that joy of waiting in my years in the seminary, especially in the early years in Blairs. The Christmas break was always the holiday most looked forward to, and in the liturgy and the general life of the college the expectation grew as the weeks developed, until a ten day countdown began with Carols and Christmas songs at the end of supper each evening, and at the end of the carols each night, two hundred of us would shout out in chorus together as the days went on “10, 9, 8, 7, 6.....” It was simple and fun, but symbolic.
The season of Christmas for which Advent prepares invites us not to only receive, not just to take, but to give and in giving to encounter the Greatest Giver of all, the one who gives life. Christmas is Christ and the life he comes to bring. Advent seeks to open you and I again to the newness and wonder of that life. It calls us to renew ourselves in spirit, to be come more faithful, more devoted, more personally committed. It calls Mums and Dads to model the things of the Spirit to their children, to give Jesus a true place in the home, his word, his presence to sanctify the home in which you live. Advent is a season when you can Rediscover family prayer with the lighting of an Advent candle on a small evergreen in your home at mealtimes, for instance; the chance to take time for reflection during the Parish Advent Day, the opportunity to make a Sacramental Confession during the season—what an astounding gift of God's mercy Confession is, a celebration not to be feared but to be welcomed joyfully. In it, Christ says to us as he said to Zachaeus, “Come down, come out of your tree, I want to stay at your house, I want to dwell in the home that is your heart”.
Whosoever’s fault it was, God has taken the blame! In Jesus, he has crucified the blame to the cross, and ridden dry shod [as we sing at the Vigil] over the sea of despair
In the weeks that lie ahead, the pace of your life will almost certainly quicken, but we, the Church, are now being called to pay attention to the waiting child within us, and to take stock of what we are really waiting for, that is, the reality of God's life breaking in on the world as we celebrate the Christmas liturgy, and, beyond this, we are waiting for the one who will return in glory with all his shining train. As the Advent prophet Isaiah puts it: Every valley shall be exalted and every hill made low, and all creation shall se together the glory of the Lord.
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