Sadly, we have quite successfully purged patience from our religious DNA. Our sense of waiting has been dulled that it is identified with boring, frustration and irritation. The proof is in the pudding as they say. If the Christmas tree has anything to do with the season of Christmas, traditionally it should be put up on Christmas Eve.[1] Alas, for some, the tree is already up even before one can say, “Bob’s your uncle”. More pressing in our impatience is the anxiety regarding when we can do away with masks, sanitisation, and social distancing. Quite literally, we are simply choked by or suffocated from waiting. Just as an aside, a possible reason for our present spike in Covid cases could be that people are just too impatient to allow the disease to come under control.
We are not alone in this for Isaiah himself showed this impatience too when he yearned for God to tear heavens open and to come down. But the Prophet also humbly recognised that God the Father is the potter still at work in shaping the clay. Spoilt or entitled as we are by instant gratification, God’s time is not and can never be under our command.
When time is beyond our control, what we have is our watchfulness as we wait patiently. This is where we have not really left the Last Judgement since we are straddled between the 1st and the 2nd Coming of Christ. We acknowledge the 1st Coming historically in the Incarnation as we await the Lord of Judgement in the 2nd Coming. The present is wedged between the past and the future.
It is this present which St Paul speaks of in the 2nd Reading. While we wait for the Lord to be revealed, we asked the Spirit to keep us steady and without blame until that day arrives. We ask His grace so that we can carry out His mission while in this world. Just be ready to suffer as we wait for God’s Kingdom to slowly take shape. Be prepared to face loneliness because God will often seem to be absent. According to a quote widely attributed to St Augustine: “if God seems slow in responding, it is because He is preparing a better gift. He will not deny us. God withholds what you are not ready for. He wants you to have a lively desire for His greatest gifts. All of which is to say, prays always and do not lose heart”.
Do not lose heart if the progress is slow. The Spanish word for wait is “esperar” whereas hope is “esperanza”. To wait is always an expectant or hopeful wait because in the end, God can be trusted. Waiting may be hard but it helps us better appreciate what we will receive. What we do is to cultivate a watchfulness that recognises Him in the present. In the Gospel, the door keeper has this added duty to stay awake for the unexpected return of the Master. It is fascinating that this wakefulness involves some deprivation on our part. When one stays awake, one does not sleep. That is self-denial. Advent’s purple is a stark reminder of the penitential character of this season which if you translate it, it is accompanied by some asceticism on our part.
Watchfulness and longing are two sides of a coin. When we are watchful, we long for that which we are watching out for. That means there must be some hunger within, an aching emptiness that we feel. Without that hunger, what is there to long for? Without this emptiness what more do we need? This kind of “self-contentedness” is closely related to the experience of crying at a funeral. People who have no love or who are self-contained cannot cry.
Being watchful and waiting as we hunger for God to come, we stay awake so that death does not find us asleep from too much enjoyment. Even in this downturn of a pandemic, the shopping centres are already chiming their jingle bells hoping that the cash register will “ker-ching” as well. Decorations are a plenty, but they can be distracting as they hurry us to break out into a full Christmas celebration to the point that we forget the waiting and the longing. In fact, with our festival-laden calendar, the mall cannot wait to get rid of one set of religious ornaments so that they can put up the new decorations for the next.
For Advent, it may be a good idea to be out of synch with this movement so that we can pay attention to our present. Our temptation is to ignore the present because we are busy preparing for or worrying about the future. The future is essential, but we can miss the present to the point that we have stopped living in the present. Again, in the Gospel, when the master left his servants, he did not leave them to sit idly whilst waiting. Instead, he left his servants in charge, each with his own task. Our challenge as we wait is to engage ourselves profitably in the present.
As LL Cool J in Deep Blue Sea tried to explain the theory of relativity, and I paraphrase “that putting one hands on a hot pan for a second feels like an hour whereas spending an hour with a beautiful woman feels like a second”. Here is where the relativity comes in. There is something paralysing when we wait in fear and anxiety. Like the naughty child waiting for his father to come home so that he can mete out the punishment. But when we wait in hopeful expectation, it is liberating and energising. This approach is reflected in the Collect we heard before the Liturgy of the Word. Even though time may not be under our control, still the Collect says we should “resolve to run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at His coming”. The response is ours alone to make.
It sounds "horizon-tal" in the sense that it is like a projection into eternity, but it actually speaks of a Christ who also comes to us here and now and not just in the future. Apart from caring for the poor, the orphans, and the widows, we have a duty to repent and be converted for our longing for God can be desensitised by the lack of recognition for our sins and waywardness. To resolutely run requires that we let go of our sins and our baggage. Longing for the coming of Christ is also a time of renewal. Thus, we face the reality of our who we are and beg that God, the potter, will slowly mould us into the jars that He wants of us.
Finally, there is a way to understand this pandemic in the context of Advent’s waiting. The breakneck speed of our lives has been throttled down and at the same time, the wait for a cure interminable. Given that we can be so blind and clueless, instead of searching for distractions, waiting is also a time of purification for our sins, a period of setting right our priorities especially with regard to heaven. Time is God’s gift to cultivate the virtue of patience. As we wait for Him to deliver us, there are many opportunities to exercise patience as we stand in solidarity with those who need our care and compassion. Christ is already with us in all who are suffering from and afflicted by the pandemic. Let us welcome Him now and forever.
[1] The seasons of Advent and Christmas are not synonymous. Apparently, the tradition of putting up a Christmas tree at St Peter’s Square started during the pontificate of John Paul II in 1982. It seemed that the Vatican had sort of resisted this tradition on account that it was a Protestant custom.
