We’ve entered a special time of year. It’s my favorite time of year. I like looking forward to Christmas. And I like the coolness – even chill – in the air. On Friday I drove to Lake Lure. Driving on that curving, twisting road I drove slowly. I had the windows down and could smell the shrubs, the trees and the earth. In Apple Valley I stopped to buy some apples and cider. And they were doing something there I absolutely love: burning leaves – burning lots of leaves! The scent filled the air.
Special times create special expectations. And expectation makes us alert to things – alert to what is around us. And so we become alert – aware of the good things in our lives. That is so good for us. We need to do that: to let the goodness of our lives come to life for us.
Advent is just such a time – a time for letting the goodness of our lives really come to life for us – letting people, places, events come to mind and heart. A word we will frequently hear throughout the Advent season is the word “awake”. In the gospel reading from Mark Jesus says to us: “Be watchful! Stay alert! I say to you and to all: Stay awake! Be watchful!” But our awakening, our becoming alert presumes we’ve been sleeping – somehow not alert. Advent is there to call us from our sleeping – to call us from our un-awareness.
I spoke about liking the feel of the chill air. But something I don’t like the feel of is a cold shower. I once made a retreat at a Benedictine monastery in Big Sur in California. The monastery stood on a high cliff overlooking the Pacific. The view was stunning. But where I was staying was called “the old ranch”. We had no heating – no hot water. So every shower was a cold shower. Talking about being awake – that’ll do it!
Advent wants to be a kind of cold shower for us. It wants to shock us out of our un-awareness – and shock us out of our myths about life. It wants to shock us out of what we have settled into calling God’s presence. This is the presence we have made of God. This is the God of our own creation – usually a very American God – reliably nice and polite – even therapeutic: makes us feel good all over. This is a comforting, churchy God. Advent wants to stun us into recognizing God’s real presence – God’s holy, living presence. It wants us to smell God where we normally don’t.
Advent wants to change us. It wants to fill our senses, our imaginations, our minds and hearts with confusing, perplexing images – images of a world where God is seen, sensed and smelled in human flesh and daily bread. This fleshy, bready God confuses beyond all expectation. This God of Advent says: “Take me, eat me, become me.” “I am already in you; you are already in me.”
Like the cold shower Advent will sting and stun. But it will only do that to prepare us – to ready us – to make us alert. Because – at an hour we do not expect – in a manner we cannot imagine – in a closeness that baffles and blesses us – the Son of Man will come to us – will come into our real, ordinary, daily lives. That’s where he is most at home.
Jesus’ first choice of residence is: us. We are his chosen tabernacle. This church, this sanctuary, this tabernacle – they have their use in recalling to us Jesus’ real presence: “I am already in you; you are already in me.”
Let us awaken and be watchful. Let us in Advent prepare ourselves for finding in our own lives God’s ordinary presence – God’s preferred place of residence. Let our lives come to resemble that humbly normal stable in Bethlehem. Let us learn to smell God there – in our own lives. After all, we do call ourselves “the Body of Christ”.
Fr. Pat Earl, S.J.
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