December 10, 2017
Second Sunday of Advent
Lectionary: 5
Reading 1 : IS 40:1-5, 9-11
Responsorial Psalm: PS 85:9-10-11-12, 13-14
Reading 2:2 PT 3:8-14
Gospel: MK 1:1-8
It took a great deal of my adult life before I realized what it truly meant to love another person. Growing up I had no idea what a Sacrament was. I did not know that Holy Matrimony was a channel of grace through which God made it possible for two people to begin to love each other unconditionally. It wasn’t until I began to research the Catholic church that I stumbled upon this teaching and my eyes were opened to the problems I had been having in relationships. Then watching Julie, my precious wife, love me completely even at my worse. It changed for me what love was.
In the first reading from Isaiah, it talks about comfort. “Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.” For most of my life, I would have told you that being comfortable meant being free from pain. It meant having enough money to buy whatever you desired. Comfort was having plenty of food to eat and enough soda to make it through a long night of computer gaming. It wasn’t until after I had my spine fused, twenty-six bolts screwed into the vertebrae, and six feet of titanium rods inserted into my body that I began to see a new vision of what comfort truly was.
Comfort is having no wrinkles in the sheet when your back is so sensitive that you feel like the “princess and the pea.” It is found in having a wife who smoothes those sheets every time you move because you keep causing the wrinkles yourself. Comfort is your spouse walking by your side, helping you take painful step by step, to make sure you don’t give up and stop moving. It is in waking up from another drug-induced stupor, where you are trying just for a moment to hide from the pain, and finding that welcoming face of the woman who isn’t leaving you for being less, isn’t leaving you despite your bad mood, your inability to care for yourself, and despite the fact you feel like less of a man because you may never be able to provide for her again. True comfort comes from watching her work hard, long hours to continue to provide for the family long after many others would have walked away.
As we journey together through this Advent season, crossing into the Second Sunday, remember that is what Christmas is about. God is offering you a new Exodus, a journey from the slavery of sin, into the life of a child of God. Like my wife, who has shown me more than any other human what it means to be like Jesus, He is constantly waiting for you to just open your eyes and see that He has never left your side. He offers you a relationship deeper and more intimate than any relationship you have ever had. One in which you receive all of Him, nothing held back, Body, Soul, Blood, and Divinity, in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.
I think that is part of why we Catholics are so intent on preserving Holy Matrimony. It is more than just a document, more than just a relationship between two people. It is life creating! It is inviting God into your lives in order to bring about new life, to bring Comfort, to bring the graces necessary to even hope to live a life that looks like the one my wife has shown to me. We Christians are the Church, the Bride of Christ. He offers us that same relationship. He also calls us to be His Body in the World. Take some time this Advent to pray, go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, ask yourself how are you showing comfort to others? How can you be more like Christ? How can you let Him be born into your heart so fully that when others lift their eyes from yet another stupor brought on by the drugs of this world, they see Him waiting to lead them out of it? Then, go and be that person.
In the first reading from Isaiah, it talks about comfort. “Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.” For most of my life, I would have told you that being comfortable meant being free from pain. It meant having enough money to buy whatever you desired. Comfort was having plenty of food to eat and enough soda to make it through a long night of computer gaming. It wasn’t until after I had my spine fused, twenty-six bolts screwed into the vertebrae, and six feet of titanium rods inserted into my body that I began to see a new vision of what comfort truly was.
Comfort is having no wrinkles in the sheet when your back is so sensitive that you feel like the “princess and the pea.” It is found in having a wife who smoothes those sheets every time you move because you keep causing the wrinkles yourself. Comfort is your spouse walking by your side, helping you take painful step by step, to make sure you don’t give up and stop moving. It is in waking up from another drug-induced stupor, where you are trying just for a moment to hide from the pain, and finding that welcoming face of the woman who isn’t leaving you for being less, isn’t leaving you despite your bad mood, your inability to care for yourself, and despite the fact you feel like less of a man because you may never be able to provide for her again. True comfort comes from watching her work hard, long hours to continue to provide for the family long after many others would have walked away.
As we journey together through this Advent season, crossing into the Second Sunday, remember that is what Christmas is about. God is offering you a new Exodus, a journey from the slavery of sin, into the life of a child of God. Like my wife, who has shown me more than any other human what it means to be like Jesus, He is constantly waiting for you to just open your eyes and see that He has never left your side. He offers you a relationship deeper and more intimate than any relationship you have ever had. One in which you receive all of Him, nothing held back, Body, Soul, Blood, and Divinity, in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.
I think that is part of why we Catholics are so intent on preserving Holy Matrimony. It is more than just a document, more than just a relationship between two people. It is life creating! It is inviting God into your lives in order to bring about new life, to bring Comfort, to bring the graces necessary to even hope to live a life that looks like the one my wife has shown to me. We Christians are the Church, the Bride of Christ. He offers us that same relationship. He also calls us to be His Body in the World. Take some time this Advent to pray, go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, ask yourself how are you showing comfort to others? How can you be more like Christ? How can you let Him be born into your heart so fully that when others lift their eyes from yet another stupor brought on by the drugs of this world, they see Him waiting to lead them out of it? Then, go and be that person.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please comment here if you do not have a Facebook account