A road engineer’s plan for revamping a highway.

Advent, again…and the 2nd Sunday of which is just ahead.

Meanwhile, there is no change in the official definition. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), explains that Advent “is a time of preparation that directs our hearts and minds to Christ’s second coming at the end of time and to the anniversary of Our Lord’s birth on Christmas.” Well, maybe a dash of self-awareness and a measure of Salesian humility can both vitalize a dull definition and our Advent.

I pray this will be particularly true for those of us whose hearts and minds have been injured by our own and others’ egoism, addiction, cynicism, resentment, or materialism. I know that all of us who are mending a hole in the soul hold a mixture of hope and fear in our hearts. Advent is a mending season rich with opportunities to find and know the God who repairs and redeems. Like mending Interstate 95, the work seems interminable but at last, we can enjoy the drive!

Certainly, we are not hoping for toys this Christmas, but rather for soul-healing and fulfillment for each of us, those we love, and the wounded world. So, let us ready hearts and minds to hear John the Baptist this Sunday. He will call on us to repent and then will loudly (so I imagine) proclaim: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths… we shall see the salvation of God!” (Luke 3.1-6)

Both experience and Francis de Sales tell me that hearts and minds, once touched by God’s love, yearn to be quieted, directed, disciplined, and urged toward Christ-centered meaning, purpose, and wholeness. So, we begin by cultivating an interior awareness that our God is most courteously showing us the “good way” … “Thus says the Lord: ‘Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls’” (Jeremiah 6.16). So, over the next few weeks let us be quiet for long moments and open wide our hearts and minds to His perfecting peace. During Advent we listen, He mends the streets.

Perversely, egoism, addiction, etc. only intoxicate—an unpleasant thought maybe. But it speaks to the deadly illusion that consumption (chemicals, things, people, or sensuality) will mend the soul’s hole. But no, it is a merciless and addictive algorithm, and we find that sooner, later, or too late, we are a person we don’t want to be, living a life we don’t want to live. The U-turn we need begins with sober humility, and this Advent can be our season to foster a habit of humble reflection, receiving humbly our redemption.

In his Christmas Eve sermon of 1620, Francis described Jesus’ humility in this way: “Now the Savior also became Incarnate to teach us spiritual sobriety.” This, he continues, is shown in Jesus’ longsuffering on His path to the cross, always attentive to the Father’s will. We can reflect on this through familiar words from Philippians 2 (5-8) … though Jesus was God, he “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” Jesus did not disdain, rather He embraced, the human condition of relative powerlessness which we experience in so many situations. Nothing better conjures this reality than a newborn.

Humility can be born in us when our hunger for God’s redemptive self-gift in Christ and our gratitude for His curative power brings us again to the manger wherein, we shall see the salvation of God! During Advent, we gratefully lean forward in anticipation of that gift being born into the world for us. It is thus that we again take up the olde holy hymn…

“Yet in thy dark streets shineth, the everlasting light
“The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”

Fr. Mark Plaushin, OSFS

Love. Learn. Serve. Charlie Mike

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