GETTING SOMETHING OUT OF ADVENT

              

We have now moved into the darkest part of the winter months. It is discouraging to see the sun rise so late into the morning and disappear so quickly before evening. One alert farmer wisely coined: if we did not have the feast of Christmas, we would have to invent it! We break the long winter darkness with festive gatherings. Mid-winter festivities are a sign of social health.

 

This is such a busy time with all sorts of gatherings and meals. There is very little energy left over to participate in the wonderful spirit of Advent. Now, for any sincere Christian we are challenged to hang on to some meaning in these four weeks before Christmas. The music of Advent will only survive and give us nourishment if we pay attention. Christmas shopping could drown out the music of Advent.

 

The first thing I must do is ask myself: Does Advent offer anything to my life. What is there to gain from paying attention to Advent?

 

There is very little to do (i.e., activity) during Advent. This is all about paying attention to the great and wonderful works that God is doing among us. Advent is a  gift of time to pay attention to the great struggles between God and the Covenant peoples of Israel. The people learnt through incredible sufferings, (they were deported and abused as slaves by the conquering Empire), that God would not abandon them. God proved to be faithful. The first step is to pay attention to God’s faithfulness to our ancestors.

 

The second part of our paying attention is to participate in the coming of the very Son of God among us. There was an actual birth among poor people who were experiencing displacement. God has become flesh. Paying attention means deepening our relationship with the God-man Jesus. We must work to get to know Jesus so that we can know what God is like. 

 

The third part of Advent is to pay attention to what God is doing among us today. What direction is God giving us through the flooding of the Fraser River in British Columbia? What does God want to recognize among the huge number of drug overdoses in Canada during the past five years? Is God moving us to share our time and energy with our elder co-workers who have slipped into various degrees of dementia? God is ever at work among us. We want to pay attention.

 

What I need to do during these four weeks is block off some special time to take the Sunday readings for Advent, pray and work them over. I need to give special time to just paying attention to the movements of God. There is no need to re-invent the wheel here. The Sunday liturgies offer such a rich fare for my spiritual life. 

 

In all the business of this holiday season there is a nourishing gift awaiting: just be, just be present, to our faithful God.

BC FLOODS MAKE US QUESTION

         

During this past week we have seen horrific pictures of the flooding caused by unbelievable amount of rainfall in the Fraser Valley in BC. The entire town of Merrit (population 7000) has been evacuated. I can picture in my mind of the next few days when these people will return to their homes and their farms to survey the damage. I feel for the people who will have to go down into their basements and start carrying out all the soaked and ruined things they had in their basement. 

 

In the midst of all this disaster and suffering countless people have stepped up with generosity, opening their homes to these displaced people, preparing meals for these people and help rescue farm animals. This flooding has brought out some of the best in the people of BC. 

 

But this year of climate disasters challenges us to ask some very hard questions about our cultural values. What contribution has human behaviour contributed to these huge forest fires, the heat the heat dome and this unprecedented rainfall that became such damaging flooding? 

 

Thoughtful people come the conclusion that these disasters have been enhanced by human behavior. We have heated up the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, clear cut the forests and not respected the natural flow of the waters. No one should be surprised that the rich agricultural areas around the town of Abbotsford was a large lake one hundred years ago. What once was a lake became rich farm land. We have built barriers to protect the new land from flooding but it still is a lake! These torrential rains last Sunday and Monday did what was natural: the lake reformed!

 

How much damage has our practice of clear-cut logging done to our forests? After the forest fires raged this past summer, we must ask how the soil had lost its ability to absorb and retain water? 

 

There are many other heavy-duty questions that must be asked and reflected upon but this short column also wants us to get in touch with what our Christian faith brings to this reflection. 

 

First, all of creation is an extension of the great love that God has for us. There is nothing that exists that is not a sharing of the great love and compassion that exists within the very life of the Trinity. I am not sure where mosquitos fit into this scheme of things but I know they are some reflection of the goodness which is God. 

 

If creation is good and humanity is part of the web of creation, our responsibility is not to use anything in creation selfishly (use and then throw away) but to live and work with all parts of creation in harmony. For the past two centuries Western human beings have used creation as their personal possession; not showing any accountability to the rest of creation for any damage done to the atmosphere, the soils and the waterways. We have lived disconnected and irresponsible toward creation. 

 

Now, what are the flood waters in BC telling us about our interconnectedness with all parts of creation?

 

Our Christian faith calls us to care for our common home. Our prayer can bring us into the very heart of God and God’s great love for all creation. This can give us courage to ask the hard questions and then to take appropriate actions to live more simply and not do any damage to creation.

 

Our faith can give us the energy and power to work towards sustainability. First, we must begin by loving all parts of creation as God loves all parts of creation.

 

 

 

 

 

A DAY FOR THE WORLD’S POOR

                    

Pope Francis has asked the church to make this coming Sunday as a “World Day for the Poor.”

 

What is going on here?

 

There is great wisdom in asking the people of the Church to give special attention to a particular saint or a particular cause, such as praying for world peace. Instead of assuming that the people are paying attention you create a special day to focus their attention on the poor.

 

We are so busy trying to make a living, trying to keep things going at home and in our civic community that we have little attention for others. In daily conversation,  you may announce that you have a new apt on your computer and immediately the person next to you will speak about their computer. Immediately, they have centered the conversation on themselves. We are not even aware of how wrapped up within ourselves we are. 

 

The people of the Church are no different. We are so focused in on our own issues that we fail to recognize the poor who are so close to us.

 

Too often we have made the serious mistake of “doing” for others what we judge they could not do for themselves. For example, we have set up  food banks (this year marks forty years since the first food bank opened up in Edmonton).  But is there help for people to get on their own feet so that they do not need to use the services of the food bank? Do they need training to get into the employment market? Do they need help in management skills so that they can look at you as the trainer and say, ‘But I can do this myself’? 

 

If you are a ‘news junkie’ you will be flooded with items that keep you informed of the difficulties that climate change is making on many of the poor of world. 

 

What Pope Francis is nudging the people of the Church to do is to listen, observe and open their hearts to the poor of this world. Open your heart to the millions of displaced people scattered throughout the world. Listen to the girls and boys who cannot attend school because their families do not have the resources to send them to school. Listen to the families that have no access to any medical services because of their poverty.

 

But Pope Francis does not want us to just stop at the observation platform. He also moves us to receive from the poor. In the richness of the Catholic sacramental spirituality this opens us to see the poor as the sacrament of Christ. The poor are moments that we can encounter Christ. The poor can become moments to receive the love and mercy of Christ. The poor can be the very place where we touch Christ.

 

We take very seriously the teachings of the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25: Whatever we do for the poor we do to Christ. 

 

May this Sunday be a day of enlightenment. May the people of the Church, everywhere, open their hearts to find Christ in the poor.