A reflection for the first Sunday of Advent, 2006 -continued

presented by - Bill McDonough, Theology department, College of St. Catherine

If we want an extreme reminder of the risks we take in being forgiven, in being liberated form sin, in becoming loving, we need just look at the crucifix.

The crucifix shows us that God does not only love us blindly and unconditionally. It also shows us that he was ready himself to takes the risks that we take in being loved by God. God became flesh so that human beings could respond to his love, could take it out on him for daring to risk transforming us by his love. This is part of the meaning of the season of Advent culminating in Christmas: that God became flesh so that he could suffer. The mystery of Bethlehem is that God began to feel the cold as he was later to feel the cross. With the insane unthinking directness of love, God blundered into our lives, crashing through like a superhighway, so that he could share the price of being loved that this world exacts. God came to share our lives and sufferings in time so that we could share God’s life of love and joy in eternity.” Herbert McCabe, “Motorways and God,” in God, Christ, and Us (2003) 25-28.

2. Our free choice for God begins in recognition that all is gift: Advent is for quiet and prayerful reflection about the source of our confidence, our joy, our hope “We must keep two realities together in thinking about our shared life with God — God’s gift and our response. If we over-emphasize our response, we have forgotten that our friendship is made possible by the free gift of God. Then our friendship with God becomes a kind of external working relationship, in which we will never find rest. If, on the other hand, we think of ‘friendship with God’ in the passive sense of already possessing a completely shared identity with God, we lose the dynamic character of love, which is acquired through shared activity and which demands to be brought alive in concrete ways of love for the world.”
E. Schockenhoff, Human Good(1987) 509.

-We must neither moralize; nor trivialize here. Caritas is carus (precious and expensive).

3. Our shared life with God leads to commitment to God and those to whom God is committed: Advent is for re-kindling our efforts at love and justice in the world.

“I am not trying to make you feel guilty for the sin of the world. Not at all: we have been rescued from such guilt and slavery to sin; that is the redemption that Christ won for us on the cross by his loving obedience to his Father’s will. But having been rescued from the sin of the world, having escaped from guilt and slavery, we now have a task...

What we have is not optimism, but hope. We believe that humankind can and will by the power of the Spirit become not ever wealthier but more richly human, less frightened, more free, more secure in the peace that comes from justice and friendship; but only through overcoming the world in Christ.... We do not have the illusion that justice and peace can be established if only we can find the right technique. We know that quite small attempts to bring about justice, quite small movements of opposition to genocide, racism, war, and exploitation meet with suspicion at best.

We do not present a lovely vision of the world which everyone is expected to fall in love with. We simply have, wherever we are, some small local task to do, on the side of justice, for the poor. This, in the power of the Spirit, we will try to do, and we know that to do it is to risk hostility as Jesus risked crucifixion. It is to risk defeat. This is what we mean by hope. Our hope is the kind that goes through defeat and crucifixion to resurrection. We can do this because we have hope, because we know that God will bring life out of such defeat and failure as he brought life out of the tomb of Jesus.” McCabe, “Action,” God, Christ, and Us, pages 12-15.

A concluding thought on the Eucharistic Prayer you used last week —for Reconciliation, II:

"In that new world where the fullness of your peace will be revealed, gather people of every race, language, and way of life to share in the one eternal banquet with Jesus Christ the Lord." I "googled" the underlined phrase, and found it used in an interfaith prayer in Wales among Christians, Jews, and Muslims for eliminating racism: "Almighty God, source of our life, we acknowledge you as Creator of all people of every race, language, and way of life. Help us to see each other as you see us: your daughters and Sons loved into being and sustained by your care. Keep watch over our hearts so that the evil of racism will find no home in us.."