The Power of Advent

Throughout the Bible, food is seen as a sign of God’s providential love.  The miraculous feeding with a few fish and loaves is the only miracle – other than the resurrection of Jesus – that appears in all four gospels.  In fact, it appears six times, for both Matthew and Mark relate two versions of this story. 

In the parable of the sheep and the goats, the first of the works of mercy which the Son of Man considers a marker of those who were to be admitted to the kingdom was, “I was hungry and you gave me food.” (Mt 25:35)

As we see in today’s passage from Isaiah (Is 26:6-10), heaven itself was often imaged as a great and bountiful feast of food and wine.  Jesus uses this same imagery in several of his parables. 

In an economy of subsistence agriculture, desperate, life-threatening hunger is just one bad harvest away.  Virtually everyone in Jesus’ day – as is true in many places of the world today – would have known times of extreme hunger.  Thus, the presence of food was an occasion to give great thanks and praise to God.

For me, not so much.  Like the air that I breathe, food is just there.  I’ve always known that the next meal is only hours away; snacks are even closer!  In some sense, I take food for granted.  And this is my great loss.

For whenever I take something for granted, I begin to think that it is my right to have it.  I deserve it.  I’ve earned it by my hard work or my goodness.  Ultimately, this becomes true of everything that comes my way.  I deserve the good food, the big house, the fancy car, the warm clothes, and all the comforts of life.  And if I feel that I deserve everything I have, why should I be grateful?  Who would I need to thank?

When I am completely lost in this world of ingratitude, I find that I even take my life for granted.  I wake up in the morning and immediately start thinking of all the things I must do, the people I must see, and the places I must go.  I’ve taken for granted, of course, that the day would be there, and that I would wake up to live this day to see to my oh-most-important tasks.  I have taken my life for granted.

My ungrateful world, while seeming at most times to be a most warm and pleasurable place, is actually cold and ugly, for at its center is a stony heart, shut off from the love of God.

When someone threatens what I take for granted as my just desserts, I become indignant and angry.  I strike out at those who threaten me or take what is mine.  And yet I am never satisfied with what is mine, for I see others who have even more.  Why is this more not also my rightful due?  I become grasping and greedy as I crave to have the things that others have, the things that I don’t have, yet must have. 

Advent is a season to reawaken my heart to God’s great love, to break the chains of ingratitude which bind my heart in selfishness and greed.

Advent prepares us to celebrate the greatest gift we could possibly receive, a greater gift than life itself.  In a few short weeks, we will celebrate the gift of salvation, of God-become-man, God sharing our humanity that we may share God’s divinity.  We could not have done this by ourselves, and we did not do anything to deserve this wonder, for this gift was tendered “while we were still sinners.”  (Rom 5:8).  It is a gift of unimaginable, unlimited, unconditional love.

Opened up by gratitude, we become more aware of this great love God has for us.  A virtuous cycle ensues. 

Aware of God’s great love, we begin to see our very life as a gift from God, an occasion for thanks and praise.  We begin to see our possessions as precious not because they are our right, or because they make our life more pleasant or easy, but precious because they are gifts from our all-loving God, the source of all happiness, the source of all joy.

As we begin to see our lives and our possessions as precious gifts, gifts which God continues to provide each and every day – the day itself being God’s gift – we become generous in sharing these gifts with others, serving Christ who comes to us each day in the guise of one of his children in need.

In sharing God’s love today, we prepare ourselves to receive the culmination of God’s gift, the promised final coming of Jesus, bringing the fullness of God’s kingdom to earth.

This time of year, we often wish people a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.  We don’t seem to have a similarly apt adjective for Advent.  Here is my thought.

Have a most grateful Advent.