1st Sunday Advent B - Homily 4

Homily 4 - 2014

I am sure that I read somewhere on Friday, though for the life of me I can no longer remember where, that some organisation that Fr. Bob Maguire was connected with was running a Christmas raffle. The third prize, I think, was a car; the second an overseas trip for two, and the first prize was the opportunity to work voluntarily for a week serving soup to people on the margins somewhere in South Melbourne. I could have dreamt it – but I do not think so!

Fr Bob’s point was that serving the disadvantaged for a week would give the lucky winner far more happiness than winning a trip overseas or getting a new car. Happiness! Jesus spoke about it in the Beatitudes and in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. Fr. Bob has obviously read it. Most of us do not believe it.

Advent is the time in the Church’s year when once again we are invited to ruminate more deeply on the mystery of God’s simultaneous presence among us and his absence – how we can make the most of it, and experience that elusive happiness so dear to the heart of Jesus.

For me, I do not intend to do anything different – just more of the same. But I do want to listen more intently to Jesus’ recommendation to Stay awake! That does not necessarily mean doing more, but I would love to become more – more alert, more attentive to Jesus’ presence to me within the all-too-usual sense of his frustrating absence. I would like my prayer to be the experience of that presence deep within me. But it is not. It is more a constantly sharpening act of faith in God’s presence there in the apparent emptiness, and my learning to sit comfortably and peacefully with that.

I believe that God loves me; and that this love is unchanging and infinitely personal and intense; and that it is totally independent of whether I am asleep or awake, whether I am praying or not, whether I am helplessly distracted or not. I want to stop trying to entice God to love me more, to notice me, at least a little bit more than a few others I can think of. The infinite God cannot love more or less. 

I want to engage with God’s love – the real me, which I am still not in touch with, but that God knows thoroughly and loves just as I am – not for God’s sake, or to somehow cheer God up, but for my sake. I do not want just to think about God present within me or to imagine or feel God – because I know that the real God is beyond my capacity to understand or imagine or feel. All I can do is sit, believe and hope, and wait. I feel a bit like Isaiah [impatiently or patiently?] crying out, Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down!

What I am also hoping this Advent is that God will sharpen my vision – to be able to see others through the eyes of God, easily accepting that God loves them no more and no less than God is loving me. I am so far from that – and time is running out. All I can do is to be as open as I can be to the possibility, to try to get out of the way, to hope, to wait, and, in the meantime, to struggle along, trying at least to act “as if”.I am finding it less hard to sit comfortably with my powerlessness, and with my need to stand before God with nothing of my own getting in the way. Life is richer the simpler it becomes. It keeps getting better. I like growing older.