First Sunday of Advent
Jeremiah 33:14-16 - 1 Thessalonians 3:12-4:2 - Luke 21:25-28, 34-36
Waiting with Crumbs in our Pockets
Waiting in hope starts early in our lives. Do you recall times in your childhood when you were waiting for your birthday…Christmas…a beach outing…or maybe even a newborn sibling to come home from the hospital? Those hope-filled episodes were bursting with vibrant dreams shaped by irrepressible expectations. Our youthful imaginations were fired up; our first experiences of human longing and yearning were born in those moments between the hoped for event and its actual arrival. The Advent season is much like this. In order to enter into the grace and power of Advent, we must once again summon our dreams, our irrepressible and perhaps unspoken expectations, and tap into the hope and holy longings we hold in our hearts.
Jeremiah’s prophecy proclaimed on this First Sunday of Advent is to a people yearning for God’s deliverance of their freedom from bondage, a secure future, and a just society. In response to Israel’s anxieties, the prophet gives voice to God’s promises, “I will raise up for you a just shoot; one who will do what is right and just for you.” Upon those few words, our ancestors, in faith, hung all their hopes. “God is dependable,” they said, “so we must fire up our imaginations, summon our deepest longings, for nothing less than this will prepare- the way-in-us for our Advent Journey.”
Over the course of a lifetime marked by multiple developmental moments from childhood through adulthood, hope in the fulfillment of our dreams and faith in God’s dependability can get a little faded. Disappointments can dampen our dreams, expectations can become repressed, and we no longer let our longings lead us into courageous next steps. However, this year, Advent summons us to shake off the dust of disappointments and ready ourselves for a new moment with Jesus’ words, “ Do not let your hearts become drowsy. Be vigilant. Stand erect. Raise your head and await the power that is coming to you. Your flourishing is at hand.”
So, let us be together this Advent as a community with new, or perhaps recovered, expectations, irrepressible hope, and holy longings in our hearts. For nothing less than these will prepare the way for God’s Advent-journey- in-us this year.
Let’s take this wisdom with us as we go…
Hope has holes
In its pockets.
It leaves little
Crumb trails
So that we,
When anxious,
Can follow it.
Hope’s secret:
It doesn’t know the destination—
It knows only
That all roads
Begin with one
Foot in front
Of the other.
“Hope” by Rosemary Wahtola Trommer
Sr. Arlene Flaherty, OP
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