December 23
Day Seven
O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver,
the hope of the nations and their Savior:
Come and save us, O Lord our God.
We hear about hope in today’s antiphon. A line from the French philosopher Simone Weil often comes back to me in this time of year: “the spiritual life is a life of expectant waiting.” Other languages like Spanish use the same verb (esperar) for “to wait” and “to hope”. At this point in the retreat, we hope that the tasks of Christmas have wound down: the shopping for presents, the planning of events, some of the preparation of the food. Where do I find myself at this point in the retreat?
With our tasks done, we wait: for the right time to open the presents under the tree, for the food to come out of the oven, for a relative on a delayed flight at the airport, for the end of a drive to someone’s house for a gathering, for our guests on Christmas morning. How do I wait: nervously, peacefully, anxiously, or joyfully?
One time in a homily, a Jesuit friend of mine from the Midwest compared the spiritual life to the Cincinnati airport, part of which looks more like a glorified bus station with a food court than any place I would want to spend much time in than necessary. “It’s not what you’re waiting for, but who you are waiting with,” he remarked, in words that have still stuck with me. Do I take time to notice the people with whom I wait?
Around fifteen hundred years ago, the Christian tradition began to incorporate evergreen symbols (like the Advent wreath and the Christmas tree), as missionaries came into contact with Germanic tribes north of Rome. Depending on where you live, you might not notice it, but evergreen trees stand out with an austere beauty on a cold, winter landscape. Modern, city people often live lives paying less attention to the natural world, but we celebrate Christmas three days after the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year. The imagery fits well with the Christian understanding of Christmas: that God chooses to bring light to a dark, remote corner of our world. What signs of God have I noticed in my world that I didn’t notice before? How has the way I wait changed?
Not all of secular Christmas imagery is bad. Just as the Church baptized the solstice celebration of the Germanic tribes, we can baptize the sense of innocence and wonder that appears even in holiday commercials that don’t mention Christmas at all. As we approach Christmas after trying to prepare our hearts, even if we don’t always feel that we have succeeded, we can begin to turn our attention to what we have prepared them for. What do I desire this Christmas? What does God desire for me? What do I wait for?
Ultimately, in this posture of prayer, we find the meaning of hope, as we stand before God, aware of both our great desires and our complete and utter inability to fulfill them ourselves. In the third movement of the contemplation of the Incarnation, Ignatius presents the story of the Anunciation, when the angel appears to Mary. I would imagine that Mary received the angel with “fear of the Lord,” in the Biblical sense, a mix of awe and sheer terror that such a thing could happen to her. God did not impose on her, and God does not impose on us; ultimately, in our freedom, God grants us the choice to to hope. How do I respond to God’s invitation to wait in hope in my own life?
What’s more, her consent to bear God’s son did not mean that she live a perfect life, as the Nativity story tells us. It simply meant that God would not abandon her, in the same way that God never abandoned God’s people Israel, when they wandered in the desert under Moses or lived in captivity in exile. What concrete evidence do I feel in my own life that God will not abandon me? How does this memory, feeling, or experience give me hope?
I travel a lot as a Jesuit, and I have learned that two things make for a successful trip: good companionship and a minimum of baggage. With these things, I can endure most anything -- departures before dawn, long airport lines, canceled flights, car trips through rural areas, and sleeping in unfamiliar places. I can approach a trip from a position of wonder and gratitude for unforeseen gifts: time to chat at length with traveling companions, read a good book, watch a movie on my laptop, simply enjoy the silence, or gaze out the window at our beautiful world.
Today we conclude our Advent retreat, and I pray that this retreat has deepened your sense of Emmanuel—God’s presence with you as a companion on your journey—and helped you to lighten your load, so that you too can have time to marvel at the signs of God’s presence in your life.
From our embrace of the printing press, we Jesuits have always used new media to invite people to spiritual depth. This Advent retreat, offered online and promoted over Twitter, has been an experiment on my part and that of ISI, and we’d appreciate your anonymous feedback in the short survey. You can participate in the survey here. May God bless you and your loved ones during this Advent and Christmas season.
I waited patiently for the Lord
And He inclined to me and heard my cry
He brought me up out of the pit of destruction
Out of the miry clay
And He set my feet upon a rock, making my footsteps firm
He put a new song in my mouth
A song of praise to our God
Many will see and fear and will trust in the Lord