First Sunday of Advent – 3 December 2023
There is a magic in every beginning, wrote the German philosopher Herman Hesse.[1] How true this is when we experience the birth of our children, when we hold a newborn baby in our arms, when we delight in the pure wonder and sense of play evidenced in young children. When we gaze upon a child we are caught intensely between an immediate experience of the present and a heightened expectation of the future. And I think it is true that in every child, God waits for us to stir again within us the sense of new beginnings, of fresh possibilities, of awakening hopes.
The invitation that God sets before us is to become like a child so that, no matter our circumstances, life might be born again and begin afresh.[2] And how does life retain its freshness, and its youthfulness? By always remaining awake to possibility. As the 19th century Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard once penned, “If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!”[3] To be alive to possibility is always to find our self at fresh beginnings.
As we do, we become more awake in our life. “Stay awake,” says Jesus. “Stand alert, stand ready!” The disciple of Jesus is the one who lives their life awake whilst the rest of the world sleeps. It is easy to go through life asleep rather than awake. It is easy for us to allow our fears to paralyze us, to render us passive, inert, to close us down and in on ourselves. We prefer not to see too much, not to hear too much. The Spirit of Jesus is birthed within us, however, to stir us from our sleep, to jolt us from our complacency, to quicken our steps, even to have us dancing. The Spirit is birthed in us so that we do not become the living dead, but keep rising to all that is offered to us by God’s promise of a life lived fully.
As we begin a new year in our life of faith and worship – as we begin to welcome the Child Jesus through the forthcoming celebration of Christmas – I don’t think we can prepare better than to ask ourselves, “What is the unique and personal invitation that life is extending to me, now?” Perhaps I am dealing with a serious issue in my health. What is the experience telling me about myself and others, about what is most important to me, about what I value and cherish? Perhaps I am dealing with a significant disappointment. What is the experience telling me about my hopes and ambitions, about my self-image, about the true nature and direction of my life? Perhaps I am wrestling with a particular relationship. What is the experience telling me about my needs, about my vulnerabilities, about my level of self-responsibility? Every experience begs a question, and every question taken seriously jolts me out of my passivity, my complacency, my presumption. It stirs me from my slumber and nudges me, waking me.
In some ways, all this is like looking at holograph. A holograph is a picture which contains another picture inside it. When you first look at it, the holograph looks like a meaningless pattern of colour. If you look very closely though, and in a very particular way, another picture begins to emerge out of the pattern in front of you, and you see something that you never expected.
Our discipleship challenges us to look beyond the surface of things in a similar way, and to wonder about the deeper meaning of what occurs for us. It means that we become active participants in our life, engaging the issues that discover us, wondering about their deeper meanings for us as catalysts of an unfolding journey that is occurring for us.
Just before his death, the writer Merton prayed for himself, “not mere acceptance of the familiar. A life of clashes and discoveries, not a life of repetition. Deep dread before God, and not trivial excitement.”[4]
Do we dare to pray the same for ourselves? The outcome might be the discovery of possibilities never thought, a life lived awake not asleep, a heart forever young.
[1] Herman Hesse, cited in Jürgen Moltmann, In the End – The Beginning: The life of hope, translated by Margaret Kohl, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 3. I am indebted to Moltmann for the theme of this homily.
[2] See Moltmann, In the End – The Beginning, 14.
[3] Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life.
[4] Thomas Merton, 28th February 1964, in A Vow of Conversation: Journals 1964-1965, edited by Naomi Burton Stone., (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1988), 20
