Today (hodie) we stand in the ambience and reality of the ‘first Coming’, of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, this great gift of God’s beloved Son.  Today we celebrate this historical reality.  And this is not all: Today (hodie) we stand with open hearts of faith as we behold the ‘second Coming’, the birth of Christ personally to each one of us and to the expanded horizon of our Church and our world. Let us never forget this: God’s incarnation is on-going and it needs each one of us, alone and together, to embody God’s life that is always coming into our lives. 

‘Be patient’, ‘Make your hearts firm’, ‘Do not complain about one another, so that you may not be judged’…. ‘the prophets knew of hardship and patience’…These are exhortative words from the epistle for this Third Sunday of Advent…And added to them is the theme of ‘oice’ for the coming One is even closer now, our expectant hearts begin to feel the reality of God’s promise stirring in the silent depths within and without in the created world.

 Vigilant and ready…to receive.  God comes: “God is underway toward us” (Hans Urs von Balthasar, Light of the Word, p.13).  Images, words straining to open our hearts to receive what awaits us during this Advent-Christmas season.

“We wait for the fullness.  We watch for the completion of the promise.  We vigil for the coming of the unimaginable fruition of the seed growing from the beginning in the heart of God” (p.16).  With these stirring words of Wendy Wright from her book, The Vigil, we are given a window into the Advent-Christmas season. 

Fr. Ronald Rolheiser wrote: “Gratitude is more important even than love because anything which does not take its root in gratitude will be self-serving and manipulative in some way.  Only when we give of ourselves to others because we are grateful for how we have been blessed—only then will our love flow out as pure and as not demanding something in return.  When we are not acting out of gratitude, we may be well-intentioned and outwardly generous in our actions, but we will not be truly acting in love” (Give Us This Day, November 2019, p.298-299). 

I received from Abbot Damian of Spencer a copy of his homily that he gave last week for the funeral Mass of Br. Meinrad.  He concluded his homily with the following: “I’ll let St. Therese and Fr. Thomas Keating have the final words.  Therese expressed her conviction in this way: ‘Even if I had on my conscience every conceivable sin, I would lose nothing of my confidence. My heart overflowing with love, I would throw myself into the arms of the Father, and I am certain that I would be warmly received.’ "