A Reflection for the Second Sunday of Advent
Readings: Isaiah 11:1-10 Romans 15:4-9 Matthew 3:1-12
Here’s just a little piece titled “A Superb Old Man.” Mark Twain published it back in 1869. You’ll be able to resolve for yourself how much you might be willing to consider:
John Wagner, the oldest man in Buffalo—104 years—recently walked a mile and a half in two weeks. He’s as cheerful and vibrant as any of those other old men that charge around so within the newspapers, and is every way as remarkable. Last November he walked five blocks in a rain storm with none shelter but an umbrella, and solid his vote for Grant, remarking that he had voted for forty-seven Presidents—which was a lie. His “second crop of wealthy brown hair” arrived from Recent York yesterday, and he has a latest set of teeth coming—from Philadelphia. He’s to be married next week to a lady 102 years old, who still takes in washing. They’ve been engaged 89 years, but their parents persistently refused their consent until three days ago. John Wagner is 2 years older than the Rhode Island veteran, and yet has never tasted a drop of liquor in his life, unless you count whisky.
Some folks would credit the prophet Isaiah even lower than they do Mark Twain. As they see it, false hope, the kind that preachers peddle, can itself be a torment.
On that day, a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse,
and from his roots a bud shall blossom (11:1).
“Yes,” they could grant. “Nature can surprise us. Something adjudged long dead can sprout again. But not people. They’re more predictable than plants. They could live longer than expected, but they rarely really change. Don’t get your hopes up.”
Yet Advent is a season of hope. Note that we speak of hope, not optimism. There’s a terrific difference between the 2. Optimism is our generous assessment of a situation: It would improve. Hope is a theological virtue. It’s an act on our part, a conscious opening of ourselves to God. And it is simply possible on our part because God is open to us, or, as we are saying, because we’re graced.
Sin is a word we shun, but rejecting a word doesn’t change reality.
After we hope, we open ourselves to the motion of God. If our actions alone were all that mattered, we can be gods. We’d not have to seek the living God. To open ourselves to God—the true God and never some self-spun idol—is to give up ourselves to mystery, to a spot now we have not been, a lifestyle we have no idea.
This much is certain. Nothing will change without this openness. God is your origin and your destiny, each of which lie beyond you. In case you don’t open yourself to hope, you won’t live.
Sin is a word we shun, but rejecting a word doesn’t change reality. We’re alienated from God. This profoundly alters who we’re, who we were meant to be. What we call sin originates with the traditional lie that we will not be adequate, that we will not be lovable, that our only cause for optimism is our own cunning. This sad, common curse makes even the hearts of mass murderers recognizable to us for they share the identical sad lie.
Advent is a season of hope. Note that we speak of hope, not optimism.
No shoot can sprout from a soil so befouled by the lie that’s sin. So, for the love of God, learn to like yourself! But you possibly can only do this when you learn to like God, when you see yourself as fundamentally open to something beyond yourself, embraced by it. Ask for the grace to see in yourself what God sees.
Parenthetically, you priests, that’s your great commission within the confessional: to assist a wounded soul see itself as God sees it. You do that by announcing the very achievement of hope, the forgiveness of sin.
What happens when you are unwilling to hope? In great sorrow I need to say, “Nothing! We were created either to embrace hope or to run out, to win through or to wither.”
Nobody can say what might occur when you truly embrace hope. Yet that will not be entirely true. All those firms which pawn false hope—those products that promise to alter your life and at last make you completely happy—will lose you as a customer. Why? You won’t need them, because you should have begun to tackle the looks and the style of John the Baptist.
John wore clothing manufactured from camel’s hair
and had a leather belt around his waist.
His food was locusts and wild honey (Mt 3:4).
How can we know you’ll appear to be the Baptist? Because John was no peddler of optimism. He was a person of hope.
