How do you experience hope? Did you enjoy the warmth of the sun in the first week of November? We had snowfall a few days earlier and yet nature teased us once again to take in the healing rays of the sun. Meteorologists and scientists will give us a logical explanation. Poets and musicians express it in other words. Perhaps you even began singing the Beatles song, “Here Comes the Sun”, or maybe that memory is before your time!
It strikes me that in the midst of COVID challenges these gifts of nature are bursting with hope, and sheer abundant blessing.
On the first Sunday of Advent we will pray the psalm antiphon: Restore us, O God, let your face shine, that we may be saved. These words too are full of hope. Listen: Let your face shine, “Here comes the sun”! Our Advent hearts seek the Son – the One who has come, and who will forever be present. We have such longings this year. We yearn for a healed world, reconciliation of divisions, laying down of weapons, deep conversations that help us understand each other better, creative responses to ecological disasters, a permanent shelter for our tent neighbours, a living wage for all, resources and caregivers to tend to our elderly loved ones, and on and on. . . And we well know that longing must move us to intentional caring and if possible action.
Let’s carry these thoughts with us throughout the season, nestled within a vessel of advent hope. Scripture assures us of God’s promise - fullness of life. The Son did come. Christ did indeed take on flesh and blood, experienced pain, expressed frustration, even anger. What he also did was offer a deep knowing of another conscious reality – the mystery of divine love. That love was generously poured out in his life and continues to be poured out day after day by caring human beings and by nature revealing its cyclic pattern of dying and rising. The earth pulses with the rhythms of ebb and flow, like a heart-beat. Microcosms enrich the earth so that new life may grow. Water warriors strive to promote clean water for all people. Volunteers gather up plastics from our lakes and oceans. Advocates write letters and petitions to effect systemic change. Women of wisdom pray, sending loving, healing energy.
Our civic environment will become festive with trees alight and wreaths on doors, and we will hold onto the hope known other years in family visits and meals shared. Seasonal music will fill the air, and darker nights will draw us into comfy chairs where our hearts may just focus on the hope that is dearest to us. Let your face shine on us O God. HERE COMES THE SON!
- Sister Loretta Manzara, csj