Third Sunday in Advent: Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons

Fr Robin Gibbons

Advent 3 Year C - 13 December 2015

I sometimes wonder, when I listen to Christian intercessions or public prayers, why they are so mournful, despondent, and heavy? That's a bit polemical of me I know, but just take time to listen to our public acts of intercessory prayer, we do pray for the needy, the suffering, for relief from the bad awful actions of people towards others on this little planet, and yet that's not the total picture of Christian life or hope is it? Paul writes of being happy in his letter to the Philippians, 'be happy' he says: 'always happy in the Lord'!

That motivation of joy, of happiness should be part of what we are aiming for, not only for others but also for ourselves. In our faith journey sadness is supposed to somehow give way to joy, the darkness finds the dawning light, sorrow discovers consolation in the final wiping away of every tear, we live in 'sure and certain hope of the resurrection'! Death, as the Easter song puts it, is swallowed up in victory. How can we share this sense of happiness and joy in a world so wounded and in pain? It's not easy, but we must try harder to do this!

Perhaps we need to recapture that sense of expectation, for this is the theme bound up with Advent, waiting for something to come, to happen! I fully realize that not everybody will share my sense that change is always important, that nothing ever remains static; not even our understanding of God expressed in faith, but at the heart of expectation is that childlike sense that something wonderful may come, something better may appear.

It is true that a suffering world with its complicated problems causes us to shudder and feel a heaviness of concern; we may, even as many of the great saints did, shed bitter tears of compassion for our world. Jesus certainly wept for others and given what is going on in terms of war, conflict and ecological disaster there is plenty to weep over... and yet people need hope, they need joy, they need to know that whatever happens the God who is love will be there and that love will triumph!

The Holy Spirit is given to us all in Confirmation, this is the Spirit of refining fire, but it is not a fire of destruction, rather of intense love that forgives, reconciles and brings us to true joy! Pray for that too!! Happy Advent!

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