Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 2 December 2012

During the week we spend a lot of time waiting for things. Particularly at this time of year people who commute know the utter frustration of delays and cancellation to our transport often due to adverse weather, whilst those who drive cars find a new spiritual challenge to the virtue of patience in long queues caused by road works, accidents or the sheer volume of traffic. But there are many different types of waiting and not of all of them are negatively stressful, there’s the anticipation of something exciting or good, such as a new baby, holiday, birthday or anniversary, of journeys to meet people we love or waiting for them to come to us. Anticipation of these things makes waiting a different experience that keeps us alert to the future and gives us some meaning and joy especially the hope of things to come and the possibility of change that is good.

We are back into the liturgical season of Advent, which if full of scriptural and textual images that show us the waiting and hoping of countless numbers of people, of Israel, of our forefathers and mothers in the faith and in the anticipation of the great unknown cloud of witnesses throughout the ages, that God will come to us in person, that as Lady Julian of Norwich put it so succinctly, ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well ’. That’s the perennial hope of faithful Christians, somehow in the plan of salvation, the unfolding of God’s relationship with us through history and all creation there is an end to our waiting, to all the negativity of life and a coming home to love and joy.

This first Sunday of Advent gives us that scriptural focus of hope, waiting and anticipation of something fantastic , it gives us glimpses of God dancing through history calling us to see the Spirit at work in gifts and events, it sharpens our minds by letting Paul tell us that we wait in what we call ‘joyful hope for the coming of our saviour Jesus Christ’ and not to be afraid of waiting. Not for us the tendency to become apocalyptic when we see strange things, when wars and weather cause such damage, when hurts and conflicts oppress others, not for us the images of wrath, the dies irae, instead we are called to lift up our heads and live our Christian lives in the expectation of Christ calling us together on a day, not of wrath, but of salvation.

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain.