- by Fr. Pat O'Dea - December 2, 2006 -

"WHAT DO YOU HOPE FOR?”
By Fr. Pat O’Dea

If someone were to ask you the question, "What do you hope for?", I would suspect you might have to pause for a bit before coming up with an answer? Hmm, what am I really hoping for?
Perhaps you might be hoping for good health, or for an end to suffering. Perhaps you are hoping to find someone to love and to be loved. Perhaps you have hopes for your family, your children or other loved ones. Perhaps you are hoping to come closer to God, or to find God, and that this discovery might bring you peace and consolation. It is good to have hope. I have often heard people say, "Hope helps me to go on living".
Today God speaks to us of hope through this special season of Advent, a season of waiting in anticipation.  If we carefully listen to the Word of God expressed in the scriptures this season,  we will find that hope is indeed everywhere. Advent celebrates the hope of the whole community.
In the scriptures we hear the great prophets proclaiming the news that the long-awaited Messiah is coming.  There is excitement and rejoicing. John the Baptist, the great prophet, sent by God, is calling out to all who hear him to prepare their hearts, to WAKE UP, and to be more alert and ready to receive Christ who desires to come into our lives. John tells us that our lives are not called to be routine, but rather they should be filled with excitement and hope. For God is sending His Son to us, so that we may come to know the great love the Father has for us and the fullness of life he desires us to have.
John tells us,  "He is coming!".  However, are we willing to receive him? To prepare a path for him, to open our hearts to him, to turn away from sin and despair, to allow him to become Lord of our life?
Perhaps we might ask ourselves today what "the coming of the Lord" means for us. What is this coming?  How does it involve us?
In speaking of the season of Advent a few years ago, Pope Benedict XVI said that we should look to another person n this season of Advent for answers.  Her name is Mary. She, like us, longed for God.  "Mary belonged to that part of the people of Israel who in Jesus' time were waiting with heartfelt expectation for the Savior's coming.  She could not have imagined how this coming would be brought about. Perhaps she expected a coming in glory. The moment when the Angel Gabriel entered her House and told her that the Lord, the Savior, wanted to take flesh in her, must have been all the more surprising to her."
Yet, she listened and she allowed the words of the angel to touch her heart, the angel who came from God, who spoke for God. Mary, with a tremendous act of faith and obedience, said "yes", let it be, and so it was that she became the "dwelling place" of the Lord, a true temple in the world and a "door" by which the Lord entered upon the earth.
While his coming was unique in Mary, and while we also look to the day when he will come again to claim all things to himself and to the Father, Jesus still wishes to come again and again in each one of us.  He wants to come through you and through me into the world anew.  Are you willing to give of your body, of your flesh, of your time so that he can find a dwelling place in you?
As Pope Benedict said of this season, " God calls us to communion with him, which will be completely fulfilled in the return of Christ, and he himself strives to ensure that we will arrive prepared for this final and decisive encounter. The future is, so to speak, contained in the present, or better, in the presence of God. Himself, who in unfailing love does not leave us on our own or abandon us even for an instant.”
This Advent, let us not simply think of Jesus' coming as a remembrance of his first coming at Christmas, or as a waiting for his return at the end of time; rather, let us look to his daily coming into our lives in the ordinary events and people, in our Mass, in our sacraments, in all our hopes. To see his coming, without warning, in the people and places and events we least expect. Don't look to the sky, as the scriptures point out; rather, look into the story of your daily life and recognize the Lord who comes to you in ways you least expect.
Paul Murray, an Irish Dominican poet, once said, "God loves us so much that if we should cease to exist, he would died of sadness."  Let us keep in mind: as much as we hope for closeness with God, God is also doing the same.  Hoping and longing for us.
In this season of Advent, may you find the hope and consolation you are looking for.

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