Order: “Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come.” (Mk 13:33)
Reflection:

From the eschatological liturgical readings of the past several weeks, we now come to a season that is brimming with hope. And from reflections on end times, we now come to a new beginning, a time of joyful preparation that will clear the way for us to enter into a relationship with the Lord.

1st Week
It would also be good to know that there are actually three ways in which our Lord came and made himself manifest to us. First, as the Word made flesh through his birth into an ordinary human family, thus enabling him to dwell among us (Jn 1:14). It is this co-mingling of the divinity of Christ with our humanness that transforms us into supernatural beings. Second, he came to us through the indwelling Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, a transforming event. Having received power from on high (Acts 1:8), man will never be the same again. In the third and final manifestation, Jesus Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead (CCC682).

As the Advent season is also referred to as a “little Lenten season” it presupposes that we are also called to a life of prayer and fasting. CCC522 also tells us that “The coming of God’s Son to earth is an event of such immensity that God willed to prepare for it over centuries. He makes everything – all the rituals and sacrifices, figures and symbols of the First Covenant – converge on Christ. . He announces him through the mouths of prophets who succeeded one another in Israel. Moreover, he awakens in the hearts of pagans a dim expectation of this coming.”

2nd Week – Prepare the Way of the Lord
The preparation begins with Elizabeth, the cousin of Mary, from whose womb John the Baptist will come to announce the coming of the Messiah to the world. Scriptures tell us that John the Baptist’s life was committed to one burning mission – to point others to Jesus Christ and to the coming kingdom.

Like Jesus who emerged victorious and with great wisdom from the temptation in the dessert, John was likewise tested in the wilderness, but grew in the Word of God and began to call the people of Israel to repentance. Do we, like John, also point others to Christ in the way we live, work, and speak?

We must remember that through John the Baptist, the Holy Spirit began our restoration into the divine likeness of God, prefiguring what would be achieved with and through our Lord Jesus. John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance – a turning away from sin to a new way of life based on God’s word. Our baptism of water in Jesus Christ, and baptism in the Spirit results in a new birth and entry into God’s kingdom as his beloved sons and daughters (John 3:5).

Through baptism, Jesus gives us the fire of his Spirit that we may radiate the joy and truth of the gospel to a world in desperate need of God’s light and truth.

3rd Week – Who are we?
“Who are you really?” It was not difficult for John the Baptist to answer this when the authorities posed the question to him. But supposing someone challenges your identity with the same question. How would you answer? There’s an identity crisis in the world today and many are confused. While we can manufacture our identity with an assumed personna, our true nature rests in God who made us in his image and likeness.

John the Baptist had no identity problems. He appeared in the Judean landscape speaking and urging the people to prepare the way for the Lord. He bridges the Old and New Testaments. He was the last of the Old Testament prophets, pointing the way to the Messiah and was the first of the New Testament’s witnesses and martyrs. He is known as the herald who prepared the way for Jesus and who announced his mission to the people: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” John saw from a distance what the Messiah came to accomplish — our redemption from slavery to sin, and our adoption as sons and daughters of the heavenly Father.

Like John, we too must recognize our identity as children of God and citizens of heaven. So too, must we live like John, as a humble and faithful servants of God, pointing others to Jesus, through our example and witness.

4th Week – Be obedient by saying Yes!
Christ’s birth into the human family largely depended on Mary’s response to the announcement of the angel Gabriel. It determined our salvation, and aren’t we glad she did respond positively, in all humility and obedience. It couldn’t have been an easy decision to make, because what the Gabriel told her surpasses all human understanding.

Her question, “How shall this be, since I have no husband?” was not prompted by doubt or skepticism, but by wonderment! But Mary was a genuine listener of God’s word and was able to respond with faith and trust. Her “Yes” to the divine message should be the model of faith for all believers. Mary believed God’s promises even when they seemed impossible. She was filled with grace because she trusted that what God said was true and would be fulfilled. She was willing and eager to do God’s will, even if it seemed difficult or costly.

Like Mary, God will also give us the grace to respond with the same willingness, obedience, and heart-felt trust. When God commands us to do something, he also gives us the strength and the means to respond in faith. We can either yield to his grace or resist and go our own way. But if we believe in God’s promise of eternal life to those who will believe in him and remain obedient in faith, he will fill us with grace as he did Mary.

It’s Christmas – the King is born!
Why does John the Evangelist begin his gospel with a description of the Word of God? The “Word of God” was a common expression among the Jews. Thus, John presents Jesus as God’s creative, life-giving and light-giving word that has come to earth in human form. Jesus is the wisdom and power of God that created the world and sustains it by assuming a human nature in order to accomplish the promised salvation

Gregory of Nyssa, one of the great early church fathers (330-395 AD) wrote: Sick, our nature demanded to be healed; fallen, to be raised up; dead, to rise again. We had lost the possession of the good; it was necessary for it to be given back to us. Closed in darkness, it was necessary to bring us the light; captives, we awaited a Savior; prisoners, help; slaves, a liberator. Are these things minor or insignificant? Did they not move God to descend to human nature and visit it, since humanity was in so miserable and unhappy a state?

Pope Paul VI says in his encyclical Gaudium et Spes: “The Son of God assumed a human nature in order to accomplish our salvation in it. The Son of God …worked with human hands; he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like to us in all things except sin.”

Indeed, if we are going to behold the glory of God we can only do it through Jesus Christ. Jesus became the partaker of our humanity so we could be partakers of his divinity (2 Peter 1:4). God’s purpose for us, even from the beginning of his creation, is that we would be fully united with him. By our being united in Jesus, God becomes our Father and we become his sons and daughters. Indeed, we should be grateful to our Father for sending his only begotten Son to redeem us and to share in his glory.

Tags : , , , , , , ,
Categories : Reflection