Do you know who you are? I mean do you really know it? Sometimes we walk around defeated. We allow anxiety to fill our lives with dread and a sense of hopelessness. Why me? What is all of this for? In the Gospel it talks about a time of tribulations, a time when people will be so afraid that they literally die of fright. The stars themselves will be shaken, and the waves of the ocean will move in ways that we will not even begin to understand. The second coming of Christ is going to be an sight to see! God Himself coming back to retrieve His Bride, to make all things new.
But let’s take that to our own situation. How often do we look out into the world and see things in “our stars.” The ocean of our own situation threatening to engulf us? Our sin raging around us, seeking to devour us, and instead of taking action, we “die” to fright. To not make a choice, to not do something about it, is to die. It’s to die to the opportunity. To die to the moment of grace that might have been! How often we stand in line at confession as if we are marching to our death, when in reality we are marching to our lives!
That’s why Saint Luke writes to us this morning: “But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.” When we begin to see the ‘writing on the wall,’ when the signs begin to point to the presence of God, all too often we wring our hands in worry and fear. We should have a holy fear, I agree. A reverential awe at the fact that God is all powerful and all knowing, but we also must not have the kind of fear we have for the terrors of the night. For the boogeymen, the Jasons and the Freddies. Our hearts should in a way leap with longing and anticipation for those things which bring God’s presence around us. “Stand erect, and raise your heads” because you ARE a child of God.
So be vigilant. Be prepared! “Conduct yourselves as to please the Lord.” Advent is a time to renew our relationship with Jesus. To long for His coming, to have our hearts leap as we journey with the Church through the story, in hopes that Christ will be born more fully into our own hearts, which are the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Why me? Why should I have to suffer? Why is all of this happening to me? Why do I get to be the one who has the chronic pain or the fused spine? We tend to think of these things in terms of negative. Yesterday listening to an audio book while driving back from Eua Claire, WI, Father Larry Richards reminded me of this simple verse. It’s the one I leave you with today, and it’s the answer to “why me?” It’s the reason we should hold our heads up high, especially when we suffer or have a time of tribulation and trial.
You have also forgotten the exhortation addressed to you as sons:
“My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by him; for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines; he scourges every son he acknowledges.”
Endure your trials as “discipline”; God treats you as sons. For what “son” is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are without discipline, in which all have shared, you are not sons but bastards. (Hebrews 2:5-8)