An Advent for the New Year

An Advent for the New Year
The website – cinops be gone – Tuesday. Dec. 15, 2008

From the classic daily entries in December- Co-Workers of the Truth, “Meditations for Every Day of the Year” Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Ignatius, San Francisco

Advent – what does this mean? “Advent” is a Latin word that can be rendered in English as “presence, arrival”. In the language of the ancient world it was a technical term expressing the arrival of an official, especially the arrival of kings or emperors in the provinces.

It could, however, equally denote the arrival of the deity who appears out of concealment and powerfully manifest his presence or whose presence was celebrated in cultic ritual. The Christians adopted this term to proclaim their special relationship to Jesus Christ.

“God is here.” He has not abandoned this world. He has not left us behind alone. Even though we cannot see and touch him like so many things- he is present, nevertheless and visits us in many ways.

The word “Heimsuchung,” visitation ought to make us aware that even hardship can contain something of the beauty that is Advent. Illness and suffering, just like great delight, can become occasions, as it were, of an intimately personal Advent – a visitation by God, who enters into my life and wants to turn to me. Although it may be difficult, we should nonetheless try just once to see our days of illness in such a light: the Lord has interrupted my activity for while to calm me down.

Within the context of human life, illness has its profound meaning. It may be God’s own moment in our life, a time when we are open to him and thus are led to find ourselves as well.

For the gifts of Jesus Christ do not merely reside in the future but indeed extend into the present. He, though hidden, dwells here already. He speaks to me in manifold ways – through Sacred Scripture, through the Church seasons, through the saints, through various events in every day life, through all of creation, which takes on a different appearance when he is standing behind it rather than being shrouded in a fog of a dubious origin and dubious destiny.

I can talk to him; I can wail before him and offer him my sufferings, my impatience, my questions, knowing that he is lending me an open ear.

George H. Kubeck