November, 27, 2016

First Sunday in Advent - A Reflection by Fr. Leo

 

Each day we pray for the Father’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.  Our first reading from Isaiah gives us a glimpse of what that might look like. “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the word against another, nor shall they train for war again.”  Truly, the light of God shines bright in the realization of God’s kingdom. 

 

There is quite a contrast between the vision of God’s kingdom given by Isaiah and the world we live in today.  We train for war.  We build better weapons and kill from afar. How can the Kingdom come in a world like ours? I believe it is. First we must realize that what Isaiah gives us is a vision toward which we are to direct ourselves.  Perhaps its not that we have lost the perfect world, but that we are moving toward it.

 

We must trust that God is directing all things, even as he allows us free will and the choice not to cooperate with his spirit. It may be hard to trust that God is in charge as we look back through history and remember all the horrible things that have happened.  However, there are good things as well.  The Berlin wall came down.  Poland is no longer communist, and there is a growing awareness and efforts to curb man’s inhumanity to man. 

 

What I mention above is in the political realm.  But there has also been great progress in the development of human consciousness and the realization of the spirit’s roll in lifting humanity up.  There has been unbelievable development the last fifty years in humankind’s ability to perceive things of nature and as well as things of the spirit, which we are realizing are inevitably linked.  Even science is moving in this direction of an as yet not fully realized understanding of what we in our western rationalism separate as spiritual and non-spiritual, or human and divine.  Interesting that our belief in Jesus as the God/man, anticipated this growing awareness two thousand years ago.  I believe the consciousness of Christ is growing among us.  There are some who are further ahead, but they are a blessing to us as they show us the way to see and understand and experience God in all things.

 

There is reason to hope as we move into the future, and Advent can provide us with the most important thing we need to succeed.  We need hearts open to the work of the Holy Spirit, and Advent as a time of prayer and anticipation, provides us the opportunity to pause and hear God’s voice speaking his love to us, even as we may now only perceive the darkness.  Remember after every dusk comes a dawn, and God is dawning upon us in every now of our lives where his Eternity dwells.  So let us pray:

“God, open our minds and hearts that we may know your presence in all things.  Let your love heal our blindness that your light may be our light and our joy may be full. We pray for all people and long for the time when all creation will come to praise you our God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Creator, Sanctifier, and Redeemer). Amen.”