Vigilance

“Violence and smut are of course everywhere on the airwaves. You cannot turn on your television without seeing them, although sometimes you have to hunt around.” (Dave Barry)

So begins another liturgical year, another cycle of Sunday readings. 

The prophet Isaiah starts us off. He is the official sponsor of Advent. We hear his invitation to "climb the Lord's mountain" to receive formation and to live out that formation in action (what it means to "walk").

Isaiah is particularly noting the fallen preference for contention.  His response: "All the energy you were about to put into getting one over on that guy--redirect it toward his good." Prayers are the first and best line of charitable offense. If other avenues present themselves, by all means take them!

The second reading from Romans is more concerned with sexual misdeeds. Instead of working on night moves, St. Paul exhorts us to "conduct ourselves properly as in the day." Orgies, drunkenness, promiscuity, lust, rivalry, and jealousy are covert operations. They may surface in the daytime, but until recently their practitioners have tended to hide themselves.

All the readings encourage the Advent watchword, vigilance. One never knows when and how our lives will end; "therefore, stay awake!" Jesus says (Mt 24:42).

Is the fear of death an adequate or ideal motivator for conversion? Maybe it's not the ideal one. We can aim for daily conversion, knowing we always need to adjust our attitudes and actions. 

Advent is built into the liturgical year so that we can revisit this theme of vigilance regularly. We can pay attention to what our eyes and ears regularly behold, because these sights and sounds form us. Are there channels of "violence and smut" that we silently program to the "Favorites" buttons, whether in our minds, on our television sets or Netflix queues, or elsewhere? God's people deserve better!

In a Rut-ler

I just read Fr. George Rutler's recent article for Crisis, "The Awkwardness of Advent", which made me want to be a better writer, and to read not only for vocabulary enrichment or literary references, but for Truth.  We'll see where that goes.

Apocalypse Now!

The word “Advent” means “coming, arrival.”  God the Son first manifested Himself in human flesh, as the “just shoot” promised long ago to God’s holy people.  In the same moment we acknowledge the consummate administration of divine justice at the end of days.  Jeremiah’s talk of safety and security comes to us alongside Jesus’ predictions of nations in dismay, roaring seas, and death-inducing fright.

What gives?  

Saint Luke has recorded Jesus in the register of “apocalyptic,” which we know best from the Book of the Apocalypse (Revelation), but it is also found in several Gospel passages, and Hebrew prophets such as Daniel, Joel, and Zechariah.  Apocalyptic is a writing style marked by vivid, sensational imagery well suited for sci-fi or horror flicks.  It usually contains coded language that unintended, "enemy" audiences wouldn’t be able to decipher.  

But apocalyptic is meant to be more than a good summer beach novel.  Its original audience wasn’t on holiday; it was being persecuted!  They appreciated divine encouragement.  They also needed exhortations to fidelity amid temptations to desertion.  Above all, God wanted them to know that their steadfastness was not futile.  Their enemies were doomed to the very destruction they were seeking to inflict.  For example: Daniel wrote to reassure the Jews who were suffering the madness of the Syrian king, Antiochus Epiphanes.  Saint John’s visions assured the early Christians under Rome’s thumb that they would survive that “evil empire,” and many others besides.

Apocalyptic literature is all about “getting sober,” that is to say, acquiring the divine perspective on human affairs.  Hear again Our Lord’s words in Luke: “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life, and that day [of the Lord’s coming] catch you by surprise like a trap.”  

The necessary virtue is vigilance: staying in the present moment, staying out of the drama of the end-times (and, for that matter, the drama of the current times).  As news and commentary assault us from all sides, it is easy to be caught in the riptide of obsessive anger and fear.  There is too much to do; there are too many real subjects of concern that merit our attention—not so much tasks as persons.

Save the drama for this llama

So enough with Powerball’s material madness: If we would have it, this Advent can be the chance of a lifetime, to focus on Christ with a peaceful heart so that everything else might fall into place.