Reflection for December 4
While in today’s gospel John the Baptist focuses on the fierce power that “the one who is coming” with his “winnowing fan” will wield to extinguish evil in the world, the two earlier readings emphasize the joyous aftermath of that winnowing. Isaiah spends two lines on “strik[ing] the ruthless” and “slay[ing] the wicked,” but focuses mostly, in a succession of poetic images, on the world of peace and justice that will then ensue: one in which bitter enemies are reconciled with one another (“the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb”); one gentle enough to be led by a child; one where there will be “no harm or ruin.” Paul’s letter to the Romans picks up on the spiritual blessings Isaiah says the awaited one brings with him – which (“piety” aside) are the “gifts of the Holy Spirit” many of us may remember memorizing during our pre-Confirmation studies! In particular, Paul focuses on “strength” (fortitude?) – re-imagined as “endurance and encouragement” – “that we might have hope” as we await the sorting-out of the disrupted world and the peace that is to come.
Though on its surface hope is an easy concept to grasp, is it easy to believe in a world beyond harm and ruin when we are bombarded every day with images of destroyed Ukrainian cities, of starving Somalian children, of Americans screaming political epithets at one another? Is it easy to hope in the face of the loss of a child, a spouse, a dear friend? If it were easy, we wouldn’t need John’s dire warnings to scare us into righteous behavior! But Paul says that “Christ became a minister. . . to confirm the promises to the patriarchs.” As heirs of that promise, do we not also have access to those gifts of wisdom, understanding, and so on, to strengthen our endurance? Although our days will continue to darken for the near future, let us continue, in the spirit of Advent, to wait with “endurance and encouragement,” in hope for Isaiah’s promised world where, in the words of Robert Frost, we will “be whole again, beyond confusion.”
Christine Doyle