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» In Light of Faith
 
Fourth Sunday of Advent, Cycle A, December 23, 2007
by Ann Ruggaber
A few weeks ago on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, we heard the gospel narrative of Mary’s encounter with the angel of God asking her to accept her role in the history of salvation.
In today’s gospel, it is Joseph’s turn. Imagine his confusion. According to Jewish marriage practice of the day, the betrothal was the culmination of lengthy discussion and negotiations on the part of the parents of the couple.
Once the engagement was publicly ratified by the two fathers, it required a divorce to end it. The marriage process was completed when the husband took the wife into his home.
Before this last step happens, Mary is found to be with child. Jewish law entitled the husband of an unfaithful wife to publicly shame her in the synagogue and return her to her family, where she might face even more dire consequences for having brought dishonor upon both families.
Joseph knows he is not the father of the child; he decides to divorce Mary quietly and be done with her.
However, God speaks to him in a dream, in which an angel tells him to take Mary as his wife, for the child has been conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit.
To believe that the message was of God, Joseph had to be a man of faith and one who knew the Hebrew Scriptures well. According to the angel, a seemingly impossible event had occurred: a virgin had conceived a child without the involvement of a man.
Knowing his tradition, Joseph would have had a context for these words. Not only would he have known the prophecy of Isaiah quoted by the angel and given to us in the first reading; he would also have known that God’s way is to bring life where there is no life.
He might have reflected on Sarah, mother of Isaac, and Hannah, mother of Samuel. Both women were barren and too elderly to bear a child. God brought life where there was no life, and their sons were important figures in salvation history.
If God, the Author of Life, could bring life into the barren womb of an elderly woman, could not God also bring life into the womb of a young virgin?
All of us have had some experience in our lives when our faith made perfect sense in the abstract, only to become quite challenging when it called upon us to do something unpopular, counter-cultural, or just plain senseless in the eyes of society.
Due to the cultural separation of men and women, Mary’s pregnancy would have been known by all the women, and no doubt would have been a subject of village gossip.
For a Mid-Eastern man not to stand up for his rights, to protect a woman carrying a child not his own, would have brought shame on him and his family.
Not only was the angel calling on Joseph to accept the miraculous; the heavenly messenger was also asking him to do something very difficult and to act in a way quite outside the norm of society. Only a man of great faith could have responded as Joseph did.
Sadly, the richness of the readings for the fourth Sunday of Advent can get lost in the holiday hubbub. It would be a wonderful preparation for Christmas to spend some time in reflection on this gospel in the context of our own lives.
Where has God brought life to us in unexpected ways?
How has God called us to live our faith amid new challenges?
How is God continuing to speak to us through the “angels” we meet every day?
How can this story of faith and courage be a model to us for whatever life may require of us in the year to come?
And finally, how have we encountered God in the unforeseen events of our own lives?
More than all the tinsel and holly in the world, such a reflection can lead us to a deeper celebration of the birth of Christ into our world, always new, always surprising, and always in a way we least expect.
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Parenthood is like Advent — a watchful waiting
by Mary Hood Hart
Parenthood, in all its stages, has taught me a lot about watchful waiting.
In early pregnancy, I learned to pay attention to signs of the baby’s growth. I watched and waited for small yet monumental changes, the flutter-kick in my womb, the sound of a heartbeat, and, later, the early signs of labor.
Pregnancy made me acutely aware of my own body and the body of another, the baby I carried, and our amazing communion. I watched and waited for the changes.
Labor itself was an experience of watchful waiting, for both me and those who observed and cared for me.
Monitoring the baby and contractions, waiting for contractions to progress, waiting for the moment of birth to arrive.
Pain, yes, but pain mingled with expectation, with a sense that, if I wait long enough, all will be well. And when the baby was delivered, there came the indescribable joy.
In my children’s infancy watchful waiting took on another dimension. I watched for signs of my baby’s discomfort – is she hungry? hurting? cold?
I watched for signs she was thriving; eagerly anticipating every doctor visit that brought news of her weight and length. All milestones were anticipated and recorded: the first smile, the first tooth, the first attempt to stand.
As well as anticipation of the new, there was anticipation for relief.
I watched and waited for signs: would this be the night she finally sleeps through? When will her first cold end? When will this crying stop? When can I have a moment’s peace?
Later childhood brings more milestones and more watchful waiting. How will she cope on her first day of school? First field trip? First sleepover? When will this rash fade?
No longer recording each month’s new weight and length, I kept records of progress nonetheless – report cards, photographs, the first penciled stories painstakingly written on wide lines, broken in the center like highway lanes.
I watched and waited: what will her interests be? What are her gifts? What will her friends be like?
My watching moved from the center of the action to the sidelines. From home: will she make the team? From the bleachers: will she strike out this time or will she hit the ball? From the car: when will the team bus pull into the parking lot?
And then, in the teenage years, watchful waiting takes on a darker side. Waiting for a teen when her curfew has passed offers a wide and ever-changing range of emotions.
First optimism — she’ll walk in the door any second. Then muted hope, surely, she’ll call. Then, why doesn’t she answer her cell phone?
Then, as time ticks on, the anxiety sets in, mingling with anger and hurt, until these emotions develop a life of their own, to form a monstrous creature rising from a dark pool.
Then, finally, comes resolution, when the teen has been located safe from harm, the curfew breached and discipline to administer, but that concern is overshadowed by a sense of relief, cleansing, like rain, that brings a renewed calm. All will be well.
Vigilant, defined by Webster as “staying watchful and alert to danger or trouble,” isn’t a word commonly used anymore. Yet that word sums up a good part of parenting teenagers in today’s world: watch out for the Internet, stay alert for signs of alcohol and drug use, observe friendships, fashions, patterns of behavior.
At times, with so much danger to watch out for, we are tempted to overlook all that is good and right.
This watchful waiting, from pregnancy to the teen years, offers parents the opportunity for grace. We have become finely tuned, made sensitive to the experiences of another whether that other be a baby in the womb or a varsity football player.
Out of love and a deep sense of responsibility for the well-being of a child, we have grown to be carefully attuned to another. Through grace, we have experienced self-giving, a willingness to put our natural selfishness aside to minister to this child.
How similar parenthood is to the experience of Advent, a period of watchful waiting, a time of awareness, anticipation, self-giving.
If we parents look for connections in the two, depending on the hour and our state of mind, we may identify with John the Baptist, wild, intense, eating “ants on a log” instead of honey and locusts, yet paying attention to what really matters, unafraid to speak the truth, domestic prophets leading “little ones” to Christ.
And other times we identify with Mary, the Mother of God, uncertain and perplexed yet ever faithful, saying “yes, God, let it be done to me as you say.”
Like Mary, we silently ponder God’s word and will. And grace gives us, like Mary, the courage to actively participate in God’s plan, outrageous though it may sometimes seem.
Or perhaps we identify with St. Joseph, who experienced what he at first thought was betrayal, but whose heart and mind were opened so that he came to trust something beyond himself and the mores of his time.
Like St. Joseph, we parents seek the grace to discern the right, often more difficult, path.
Like these Advent people, we parents, so accustomed to watchful waiting, so infused with grace, are called to prepare the way, to make room for Jesus to enter the heart of our home, the heart of our world.
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 It takes a village
by Barbara Hughes
I opened my mouth but no sound emerged. Feeling a bit under the weather, I had slept later than usual so when I awoke, my husband had already left for work.
An hour later I slipped into the chapel pew and nodded a greeting to the daily Mass crowd. But when I tried to join in the opening hymn, I discovered I had lost my voice.
It reminded me of the time my mother-in-law, who had been living alone, had a slight stroke. She didn’t realize it occurred until the phone rang and she was unable to respond to the caller. Her attempt to speak was followed by a series of garbled noises.
Both situations, though quite different, highlight the importance of interaction with others. While alone, neither of us realized we had a problem. It took another person or involvement in community to help us discover that something wasn’t quite right.
I can’t help but wonder how often that same lesson plays out in regard to other life situations. Life is a not meant to be a monologue, but if the only voice we hear is our own, we may not realize that our voice is impaired.
The saying that it takes a village doesn’t apply only to children. Adults need a village too. We need one another to get it right.
This is especially true in a culture that prizes independence.
Those of us who have been blessed with the comforts and securities of life may be in danger and not know it. If we never venture beyond our middle class world or listen to voices that are different from our own, we are at risk of not knowing that something is not quite right.
Some might argue that in a world of instant communications, it’s impossible not to know what’s transpiring beyond one’s personal sphere, but television and the newspaper are one way streets. They disseminate information but don’t demand a response.
If all we do is take it in information, our knowledge becomes moot, even irrelevant.
Still, not every response is an external response. We respond to every stimulus whether we realize it or not.
Turning a deaf ear, pretending the disaster in Bangladesh isn’t our problem or failing to notice the homeless person pushing his cart down the street are all responses. In the context of any given day, we are bombarded by people and situations that challenge us to find our voice.
The question is: how do we respond?
Do we challenge the moral and social injustices that plague our world?
Do we reach out to those who are hurting and contribute to the well-being of those who are lacking basic needs?
Scripture reminds us that faith without action is meaningless. The letter of James exhorts the Christian community in no uncertain terms.
“If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace and keep warm and eat your fill, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works is dead.” (James 2; 15–17)
Faith needs community to blossom and is strengthened when we are engaged with the world around us. Faith needs community to insure that the seeds that have been planted will bear fruit.
No matter how spiritual we may think we are, unless our love for God is communicated in real ways, we may have spiritual laryngitis and not know it.
Or like the person whose speech has been compromised by a stroke, we may not be aware that the message we send is garbled if we call ourselves Catholic but don’t avail ourselves of the sacraments or Church community.
We need to look beyond our own ideologies and way of bringing meaning to life and then decide how we can best comply with the teachings of Jesus. Community helps us to assess our status more accurately.
Isolationism and prejudice are viruses that infect the human heart. But recognizing God’s presence in the kaleidoscope of people and messages that intersect our life strengthens our faith and helps us appreciate the sacredness of every person; of every moment.
With much of our focus on gift giving during these weeks leading up to Christmas, let’s not forget to be generous to those who help make our faith come alive.
The hungry and homeless and victims of natural disasters should be the obvious recipients of our good works but how about the family member, the neighbor or the person at church whose views are different from ours?
Do we distance ourselves from them or do we greet them in the spirit of Christian charity?
The way we respond to community is a barometer that measures our spiritual health. Advent is a time to prepare for Christ’s coming.
If we use the time wisely, our voices will break forth in song when the Gloria in Excelsis Deo is sung during the Christmas liturgy because our faith will be alive and well.
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Copyright © 2006 The Catholic Virginian Press. Articles from Catholic News Services, including Fr. Dietzen’s column, may not be reproduced here due to copyright considerations.
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