Can we become today's John The Baptist?

 

In recent weeks our world news and our discussions have focused on the new Omnicom variant, a derivative of the Covid19 virus strain. Needless to say the recent appearance of this virus has seemed to put a damper on “getting back to normal,” again, as if there is a normal to which we think we will ever return. Fortunately, our experience for the past 2 years with Covid19 has provided a template for how we as individuals and institutions can best proceed, but in typical tradition, natural disasters never occur at an opportune time. So now as we enter the Third Week of Advent…all is not calm, all is not bright. We need a blessed Advent, a transformative time to “put things back where the Lord put them.”

Not unlike today’s world, Father Alfred Delp, a Jesuit priest, wrote of another turbulent time. The following is an adaptation of an essay he wrote in a Nazi prison camp, three days before he was hanged in 1945:

May the Advent figure of John, the relentless envoy and prophet in God’s name, be no stranger in our wilderness of ruins. (Luke 3:10-18) For how shall we hear unless someone cries out above the tumult and destruction and delusion? Not for an hour can life dispense with these John the Baptist characters, these original individuals, struck by the lightening of mission and vocation.  So many of us need our courage strengthened; so many of us are in need of consolation; there is so much harshness that requires a gentle hand and an comforting word.

“The Blessed Woman…” is the most comforting of all the Advent figures. Advent’s holiest consolation is that the angel’s annunciation met with a ready heart. The Word became flesh in a motherly heart and grew out far beyond itself into the world of God/humanity. (Blessed Art Thou Among Women).

That God became a mother’s son; that there could be a woman walking the earth whose womb was consecrated to be the holy temple and tabernacle of God – that is actually earth’s perfection and the fulfillment of its expectations. (Be it Done Unto Me According to Thy Word)

Advent’s consolation streams from the mysterious figure of the Blessed Expectant Mary. The woman has conceived the child, sheltered it beneath her heart, and given birth to the Son. Advent is the promise denoting the new order of things, of life, of our existence. 

Advent comes in three figures. This is not meant as an idyllic miniature painting, but as a challenge. My real concern is not with beautiful words, but with the truth. Let us kneel, therefore, and ask for the three-fold blessing of Advent and its three-fold inspiration. Let us ask for clear eyes that are able to see God’s messengers of annunciation; for awakened hearts with the wisdom to hear the words of promise. Let us ask for faith in the motherly consecration of life as shown in the figure of the Blessed Woman of Nazareth. 

Let us be patient and wait, wait with Advent readiness for the moment when it pleases God to appear in our night too, as the fruit and mystery of this time. And let us ask for the opening and willingness to hear God’s warning messengers and to conquer life’s wilderness through repentant hearts. (Watch for the Light, “The Shaking Reality of Advent,”pp.90-91)