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MAKING SPACE FOR CHRIST AS THE WAY TO SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS - stephenkhoo - 12-04-2011 10:14 AM
Scripture Reflections
4 December, 2011, 2nd Sunday of Advent
MAKING SPACE FOR CHRIST AS THE WAY TO SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS
SCRIPTURE READINGS: ISA 40:1-5, 9-11; 2 PT 3:18-14; MK 1:1-8
Are you feeling sad, lost and depressed? Are you feeling frustrated over your life and yourself? Are you weighed down by problems? Are you finding life aimless, meaningless and feel like giving up? If you are feeling this way, then you can identify yourself with the Israelites in the first reading. They too were feeling down. Jerusalem and the Temple had been destroyed. Everything was in shambles. They lost everything, their political power, their land and their temple. They were deported to Babylonia to live in exile. Once again, they became slaves of a foreign power. Certainly, their sufferings and woes were no less than ours today.
And it is to his people and to us that prophet Isaiah prophesied. The first reading is taken from the Book of Consolation from Isaiah. As the name suggests, Isaiah spoke to console the people of God. Hence, the opening lines read, “Console my people, console them. Speak to the heart of Jerusalem and call to her that her time of service is ended and that her sin is atoned for.” Yes, today we find consolation indeed that our time of suffering is coming to an end. In the second reading, St Peter says that the new heavens and new earth where righteousness, i.e. peace and justice will be at home. But, is this promise only a dream or is it a reality? Can there be an end to our exile from our home? Will we be able to return to the true peace and joy that we are longing for and have been created for?
Yes. It is possible. How? By welcoming the Lord back into our lives. Indeed, this is what the Prophet is saying. “The Lord is coming with power, his arm subduing all things to him. The prize of his victory is with him. He is like a shepherd feeding his flock, gathering lambs in his arms, holding them against his breast and leading to their rest the mother ewes.” Truly, when God comes into our lives, then we will be at peace again. We will find our rest and ourselves. God is the answer to all our problems. If our lives are empty and confused, it is because we do not have the presence and security of God in us. We live our lives like orphans and abandoned children.
Consequently, the gospel message of today is repentance. We must return to God and receive forgiveness. That is to say, we must return to God so that we will find Him within and without us again. In the words of John the Baptist, it is to be filled with the Spirit of Christ. Yes, John the Baptist tells us that we need to live out our baptismal life once again. We need to die to ourselves so that we are ready to welcome Christ who will baptize us with the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that will dwell in us and give us the presence and love of God. Only with the Spirit of Christ in us, can we find peace and find ourselves. Yes, we must come home, the home of righteousness which is the home of the Father, the love of God present in us through Christ in the Spirit.
But how can we return to our Father’s house? The word that sums up all the scripture reading is simply this: Prepare. Prepare for the Lord’s coming into our hearts. So how do we prepare? Isaiah and the Baptist tell us, “Prepare in the wilderness a way for the Lord.” Yes, we must go to the wilderness to make preparations for the Lord. Why the wilderness? Because it is in the desert, in our solitude, in our loneliness, in our silence, in our prayer and in our meditation that we come to know ourselves truly as we are before God. So long as we are caught up in the world, in our ambitions, in the humdrum of life, we cannot find ourselves. So long as our lives are too preoccupied with other things, we cannot find our center. We will simply be drifting with the tide and the crowd and not be in charge of our lives. Yes, only in the wilderness will our true self surface; for in the wilderness we begin to see ourselves as we really are, since we have nothing to hang on to. All the repressed desires and anger and frustrations will surface. This is necessary if we are to deal with them. That is why only in the desert will the masks that we wear each day be stripped off as we are naked in the desert with nothing to entice or distract us.
What are those things that we should focus on when we go to the desert? Firstly, we must reflect on the cause and origin of our woes and our unhappiness. This was what the Israelites did. Their time of exile was not in vain. It was a period of purification. They begin to see that their exile was not so much a punishment from God but an opportunity for them to reflect on their own lives so that they can be purified in love and service. So too in our exile, we must reflect on how God is instructing us through the sufferings that we are undergoing. Yes, just as all physical pains are symptoms of some sicknesses in our lives; so we too must realize that our unhappiness and sufferings is God’s way of telling us that something is wrong with us. That is why St Peter tells us that we must not be mistaken that the Lord is slow to carry out His promises but that He is being patient with us all, “wanting nobody to be lost and everybody be brought to change his ways.” God wants us to change on own accord. He does not punish us as such. But He wants us to realize that if we do not change, then our sins and foolishness will ultimately destroy us. So the frustrations that we go through in life is the most gentle way in which God teaches us and lead us to the truth.
What then are those things we should consider? The scripture readings speak about making a straight highway for our God, filling every valley, making every cliff a plain, and leveling every mountain and hill. Concretely, to make straight the highway means that we must seek out the inconsistencies in our lives. When we live dual lives or are hypocritical, we cannot but be restless and unsettled. We know that we are not integrated. This is the primary cause of confusion and peace within us. Straightening out the way also means that we are called to remove any crookedness or injustices in our lives. Secondly, the call to level down the mountains simply is a call to remove the mountains of pride and egotism. To fill up the valleys would be a call to fill up the emptiness in our lives through dedicated service and love, since these valleys are caused by selfishness and self-centeredness and alienation which lead to meaninglessness. Finally, to make every cliff a plain means that we must enter those dark areas and dark corners in ourselves which we do not want to disturb or are afraid even to enter. It is only when we confront these areas can God then come into the innermost being of our lives.
Yes, these are the obstacles that we must remove if we are to feel the presence of God in us. Positively, to prepare for the Lord simply means, as St Peter tells us, to do our best to “live lives without spot or stain” so that God will find us at peace. In other words, when we live a life of integrity, a life of love and service, life of honesty and justice; life of peace and harmony, then we will find ourselves experiencing the presence of God in us. And this is what baptism in the Holy Spirit is all about, namely, to live the life of Christ by sharing in His spirit. Indeed, we all desire to live such a kind of life because only this kind of life is truly worth living. By living holy and saintly lives, we counter evil positively by dissolving and melting them through the powers of love. Indeed, there is no greater way to burn up the evils or fill up the emptiness in us than by proactively doing good or putting meaning to whatever we do.
When this day comes, we can then proclaim with the prophet Isaiah upon a high mountain, like a joyful messenger of God, “here is our God.” We can say this with conviction because we now know that God is with us and in us; that God has made a home in us. Indeed, isn’t this what Christmas is all about? Christmas is the celebration of the Immanuel, God with us. It is also the celebration of God’s Incarnation, which is His presence with us in the flesh. This presence is made possible by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. Consequently, when we live such righteous and upright lives, not only do we manifest God’s living presence, but others can also see in us the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah, “then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all mankind shall see it.” Like the Baptist, not only do we find salvation for ourselves but we also point to others through our very being and our lives that God lives and so we need not fear, for His victory over evil, sufferings and meaninglessness is won definitively. And so, we can now find rest in the arms of Jesus as we live in God’s house now and in the world to come.