December 1, 2013
Reflection on Lectoring
Words have great power.
When a desolate and bereft soul cries out to its maker,
“Salva me!” there can be no doubt that God is the one true refuge for every
soul in pain. He is the almighty and
forgiving God who saves even the most wretched of his creatures. The cry of every soul in despair comes from
deep within. The anguished words are
infused with the deepest feeling and emotion.
There is a different kind of emotion expressed in the
readings for the four Sundays in Advent.
Different, but no less powerful.
No less memorable. They resonate with our human nature. They
also give us a glimpse into God’s divine nature. For the next four Sundays, our
readings will express our longing for the coming of our loving Lord and Savior.
St. Augustine understood this longing when he wrote in
his Confessions, “You have made us
for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” More than sixteen-hundred years later, his
words still resonate with us.
In the readings for this weekend, we shall hear words
like, “They shall beat their swords into
plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” and, “For our salvation is nearer now that when we first believed.” These are words of hope and
anticipation. These are truly memorable words
because they speak directly to us on many levels.
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First Reading - 2 Samuel 5:1-3
Waiting
Waiting seems to be a permanent part of the human
condition.
Some types of waiting come to an end. Waiting for a train. Waiting for the weekend. Waiting for our next birthday. These are things that mark the passage of
time, yet have only a limited sense of direction.
There are, however, others things for which we wait without
the expectation of achieving them fully.
These are the hopes and dreams that define a direction, but always
remain just over the horizon. These are
the spiritual goals and aspirations that are ultimately most important.
Today’s first reading talks about how “one nation shall not raise the sword
against another, nor shall they train for war again.” At a time when both Israel in the north and
Judah in the south were threatened by the Assyrians, Isaiah assures the people
that “the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills.” All they had to do was remain faithful to
God’s covenant.
They didn’t.
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Second Reading - Colossians 112-20
Timeline for Eternity
The goal of eternal salvation may be beyond the horizon,
but that does not mean we are absolved from the job of moving in that direction. In today’s second reading, Paul has even
established a timeline for our actions - a very precise timeline.
“You
know the time, it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep.”
Paul was a very task-oriented person. Except for the times he was in jail, he could
not sit still. Time was too
precious. The job was too essential. The goal was too important.
In today’s second reading, in Paul’s litany of “the works of darkness” that can derail
us, we get a sense of the urgency to stay the course. It is an urgency born of the fact that a
pivotal event in human history has occurred.
Christ has come to earth and has redeemed us through the sacrifice of
the cross.
© George Fournier 2013
