How can this be?

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Thursday of the Third Week of Advent

At office today I heard a reading about Advent that made absolutely no sense to me. It was well written, and very poetic, and tried to develop one of the many Advent themes, but when I took a look at each individual sentence, none of them really hit home or touched me in a way that could help me as I conduct my own very imperfect Advent journey towards Christmas. I should probably look back on my own writings and see if some of the things I’ve been saying are also as non-sensible as what I heard read at noontime.

So anyway, today I resolve to pull things out of the reading for Mass which do say something to me and which, I hope, might say something to you as well. A couple of things jumped out at me. First, 6 words from the prophet Isaiah (54:10):

My love shall never leave you.

I resist the temptation to comment except to say that those words are already written in your heart. Find them.

The second line I share with you today is from the Gospel of Luke (7:30), speaking about the Pharisees and scholars of the law, “who were not baptized by John.”

[they] rejected the plan of God for themselves.

The NRSV translation says that they “rejected God’s purpose for themselves.”

In this case, I have a few questions to ask you:

1.       How can this be? If it’s God’s plan, isn’t it going to come to fruition anyway?

2.       Well, isn’t that what Satan did?

3.       So if they do reject it, what happens to them?

4.       If God’s plan for us is the best thing that can possibly happen to us (and I believe it is), well then, how senseless it is to reject that plan. Would you or I do such a thing?

And finally, I recall a preacher once saying that if one refuses to say “Thy will be done,” then God turns to that person and says, “Ok. Your will be done.”

I hope this makes some sense to you.

God bless you!