Reflection on the Fourth Sunday of Advent

These readings for the fourth Sunday of Advent provide a timeless road map for our lives of faith and hope. They are as relevant today as they were thousands of years ago.

The first reading, from the Book of Samuel, was written several hundred years before the birth of Christ. It is especially powerful and timely today in light of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict and war. It is God who gives the Jewish people of the Old Testament rest from their enemies, and it is God who gives them a place to live in peace. It is God who has been with them in every difficult time, in their captivity in Egypt and in their wandering in the desert. It is also a reminder that promises made by God will be fulfilled according to God’s plan, and that we, as humans, are not always the ones to make the plans and give them to God to implement them. We have heard it said and know it is true that God’s ways are not always our ways. 

We have to keep remembering that truth in our lives. We have seen the power of that truth throughout history and especially in the life that Jesus lived.

When we get to the Gospel and the story of the Annunciation, we find some of these same points reiterated. God has chosen an unmarried woman from Nazareth to bring the Son of God into the world in human form. God does not choose the powerful to deliver this great gift to the world. Where there does not seem to be any way for this to happen, the angel reassures Mary that with God all things are possible. And God gives Mary a sign of hope and new possibilities in the pregnancy of Elizabeth. With faith, hope and trust all things become possible.

And this Son of God who will be born of Mary will be a ruler, but not in the sense of an earthly ruler. The Jewish people are living under Roman rule, but this savior is not coming to destroy the Roman Empire with power and weapons of war. In the same way that the Exodus and wandering in the desert were not the dreams of freedom that the Jewish people held long before the time of Jesus, the dream of freedom from Roman rule did not include a child born to a simple woman from Nazareth.

This child announced by Gabriel is a divine presence coming into the world to show people then and show us now that the power of love is the greatest power on Earth, and God’s love for us is the greatest gift we could ever receive. This is the gift we celebrate at the end of Advent when Christmas comes.

Hopefully this Advent season has strengthened our faith, hope and trust in the love of God, no matter how bleak or difficult things may seem at the moment. And this Advent season, it is hoped, has strengthened our sense that God’s ways are not always our ways, and it is imperative that we remain attentive and open to the workings of the Spirit.

Our openness and attentiveness is not a passive thing; it is an active choice and a stance to be lived out each day. We listen carefully to God’s voice speaking to us through the cries of the poor, the victims of war and violence, the Earth groaning in its suffering. We listen for God’s call to us of the divine plan to respond individually and collectively. 

As I was reflecting on some of these things, three words kept coming to mind – urgency, emergency and emergence. Since I often think of Advent as a time to slow down and pay special attention to God’s gifts and promises to us, I was surprised and puzzled by these nagging thoughts. I know that I feel a sense of urgency and emergency around what is happening to the planet and the people in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, our southern border and Haiti. The first two words call for an immediate response. Emergence, which shares the same root as emergency, often denotes a slower response or an evolution over time. But they all imply a form of rising up or responding to a situation. And with the end of Advent and the arrival of Christmas I think we are called to rise up and share the light of love that is the message of Christ’s birth. There is no greater regifting than regifting the love we have been given.