December 6, 2004 Monday of the 2nd Week of Advent

Here we are, already into the 2nd week of Advent. Only two more Sundays to go until it’s Christmas. Our readings remind us today that Advent is all about waiting, and most of us don’t like to wait very much.

The word “advent” comes from the Latin adventus which means arrival. In the secular language we hear the phrase “with the advent of”, which means the arrival of something that people have been waiting for, some sort of improvement.

“With the advent of jet travel people were able to go from coast to coast in just a few hours.” “With the advent of the Internet, communications have become more convenient.”

As Catholics, our Advent is also about the coming of something that people have been waiting for, the birth of the Messiah. Out readings today speak of waiting, but each from a different perspective. The prophet Isaiah is speaking of a long wait. His prophesy concerns an event that is far into the future. We must be patient, but the wait will be worth it.
“Those whom the LORD has ransomed will return and enter Zion singing,
Crowned with everlasting joy;
They will meet with joy and gladness,
Sorrow and mourning will flee.”



In the responsorial psalm, we proclaim,
“Our God will come to save us!”

“Kindness and truth shall meet;
Justice and peace shall kiss.
Truth shall spring out of the earth,
And justice shall look down from heaven.”

“Our God will come to save us!”

In the Gospel, we see a different kind of waiting. Some men brought their paralyzed friend on a stretcher to see Jesus. But there was a big crowd. They couldn’t get close enough. They were impatient. They couldn’t wait. So what did they do? They climbed up on the roof and lowered their friend down through a hole in the tiles. It doesn’t say so, but we assume that there wasn’t a hole in the roof already.

These guys actually chopped a hole in somebody’s roof and lowered their friend right in front of Jesus.

Imagine: Jesus is preaching to a great crowd. All of a sudden, somebody starts banging on the roof. It’s a tile roof, so they must have been making quite a racket. The next thing you know, a stretcher is being lowered down from the roof, right in front of Jesus. He looks down, forgives the man’ sins and he gets up, picks up his stretcher and goes home.

The Pharisees first response was to criticize Jesus, calling Him a blasphemer, because only God could forgive sins, and this guy wasn’t God, was he? Of course, Jesus knew what was on their minds and explained that He had said what He said so that they would know that He did have the authority to forgive sins.

The crowd was astonished at what they had seen and began to glorify God, saying “we have seen incredible things today.” Their wait was over.

So, how do we wait? How do we spend the season of Advent? Are we like the prophet Isaiah, waiting patiently for things to come?

Or are we like the writer of the psalm, saying “Our God will come to save us!“?

Or are we like the friends of the paralyzed man, so anxious for Christ’s coming that we can’t wait? Unlike the men in the Gospel, we can’t shorten our wait. We can’t climb in through the roof and we can’t speed up the clock. Christmas will come at the end of Advent, not before, no matter how badly we want it to get here. Meanwhile, we have these remaining days to get ready by prayer and by doing good works.