Memorial of Saint Francis Xavier, Priest
In the first week of Advent, we read in the gospel that Jesus is giving praise to the Father, “Lord of Heaven and Earth, for although You have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, You have revealed them to the childlike.” We were all childlike once. But then we learned about suffering; our hearts were broken, or we were let down by people and things we believed in, or we just got tired after years of struggling to do the right thing, or family and friends left us in death. We forgot how to play and feel wonder at God’s creation; we think we understood now the way it all REALLY works, and that ‘understanding’ is weighing us down. We are stuck on the questions of why, as if the divine answers are intelligible to our mortal minds.
Get ready; Advent is a season to expect the unexpected. God surprised the world with Jesus incarnate as a little baby, and the Spirit continues to surprise people today. What’s blocking you from being open to a wonderful surprise? What stops you from being childlike? The truth we are moving toward in Advent is the truth of the gospel: Jesus is coming into the world, and everything is being made right. Because of this truth, we are free to be who God made us to be. We are free to love, free to care for family and neighbor, free to work for the good of all without concern for our fate. God’s love holds us close to His heart, and He suffers with us, and He is doing something about it. This is the Gospel.
This Advent, may the Spirit open and transform us to respond as shown in each of today’s readings: with Childlike faith that Lion and Lamb will lie down together, that the lives of the poor will be saved, and that our eyes become childlike and are blessed to see.
- Chris Nieport