Be ready

‘So stay awake, because you do not know the day when your master is coming. You may be quite sure of this that if the householder had known at what time of the night the burglar would come, he would have stayed awake and would not have allowed anyone to break through the wall of his house. Therefore, you too must stand ready because the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.’

Matthew 24:42 - 44

When we look forward to a special event, a birthday, a trip away, a party, we can always put our finger onto the calendar and count down the days. As it approaches, so does our excitement. Our sense of anticipation and expectation grow. I watch my grandchildren as they prepare to head off to a birthday. They really do want their friends to throw a great party and have few goodies to take home for after. Then there's the palpable eagerness and delight on arrival, and on the return home the pleasure of showing everyone what's in their party bag.

The first Christians expected the second coming of Jesus to be in their own lifetimes. There was an urgency in their preparation: don’t marry unless you have to; live out the Gospel right now (Romans 13:11 – 14) – for you know not the day when your master is coming (Matthew 24:42). There was undoubted disappointment that this day did not arrive. But when it became apparent that the second coming would be later rather than sooner, Christians adjusted their expectations. They began to take a longer view of when this day would occur.

So how do you await or watch out for something that you cannot put your finger on? Our ancestors figured that Halley’s comet would be seen every 76 years, winter followed autumn, even the moon and planets followed observable, predictable patterns. Over the centuries we have had soothsayers, fortune tellers, millenialists, prophets of doom and gloom haranguing us to accept the imminent end to the world as we know it. They have all been wrong.

For the Christian the tension between the present and that unknown future is where our lives are lived out. What and how we are is played out into the future. It is a flip of the hands, one side is now, the other is ‘then’. The coming of the Lord is filtered back into the present when the Gospel is lived out, when the kingdom of God takes on flesh and substance in our daily lives.

Advent (Latin) is a direct translation of parousia – the Greek word for the second coming of the Lord and the first two first two Sundays of Advent highlight this notion of the parousia, while the second two Sundays focus on the Incarnation of the Lord. Advent also marks the beginning of the Church’s liturgical year. Our Sunday readings move from Year C to Year A.

Like the preparation time that precedes Lent, Advent provides a key opportunity for self-reflection, penance and self-renewal, and upon our lips and in our hearts we should urge, ‘Come, Lord Jesus, come.’

Peter Douglas

Pope Francis: Religious fundamentalism

is a ‘plague’

 

Interreligious dialogue is an important way to counter fundamentalist groups as well as the unjust accusation that religions sow division, Pope Francis said.

Meeting with members of the Argentine Institute for Interreligious Dialogue Nov. 18, the pope said that in "today's precarious world, dialogue among religions is not a weakness. It finds its reason for being in the dialogue of God with humanity."

Recalling a scene from the 11th-century poem, "The Song of Roland," in which Christians threatened Muslims "to choose between baptism or death," the pope denounced the fundamentalist mentality which "we cannot accept nor understand and cannot function anymore."

"We must beware of fundamentalist groups; each (religion) has their own. In Argentina, there are some fundamentalist corners there," he said. "Fundamentalism is a plague and all religions have some fundamentalist first cousin," he said.

According to its website, the Institute for Interreligious Dialogue was founded in Buenos Aires in 2002 and was inspired by then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as a way "to promote understanding among men and women of different religious traditions in our city and the world."

The pope welcomed the members of the institute who are in Rome to reflect on the document on "human fraternity" and improving Christian-Muslim relations, which was signed Feb. 4 by Pope Francis and Sheikh Ahmad el-Tayeb, the grand imam of al-Azhar and a leading religious authority for many Sunni Muslims.

The intention of the document, the pope explained, was a way to adopt a "culture of dialogue" while respecting each other's unique identity.

"This is key: Identity cannot be negotiated because if you negotiate your identity, there is no dialogue, there is submission. Each (religion) with its own identity are on the path" of dialogue," he said.

The "complex human reality" of brotherhood, the pope continued, can be seen in scripture when God asks Cain about the whereabouts of his brother.

That same question must be asked today and lead members of all religions to reflect on ways of becoming "channels of brotherhood instead of walls of division," he said.

To see the dangers of fundamentalism, Christians must also reflect on their own history, he said, including the Thirty Years' War, which began in 1618 as a conflict between Catholic and Protestant states, and the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, which saw the targeted assassinations of Huguenots by Catholic mobs in France.

"A bit of history should frighten us," the pope said. "Whoever doesn't feel frightened from within should ask themselves why."

Pope Francis said he hoped that the document on "human fraternity" would be "welcomed by the international community, for the good of the human family who must pass from simple tolerance to true and peaceful coexistence."

"It is important to show that we believers are a factor of peace for human societies and in doing so, we will respond to those who unjustly accuse religions of inciting hatred and causing violence," the pope said.

by Juno Arocho Esteves. T be found in America Magazine, 25 November 2019