Advent is ordinarily thought of as a time of waiting for the coming of Christ in our midst. And so it is.
Advent is also a time of watching. In the readings for the First Sunday of Advent, we are urged to awaken from sleep and, once awake, to stay awake. Once awake, however, we so easily get caught up in the many tasks of the season. But we are summoned to be awake so that we can keep watch.
We spend plenty of time watching. Some spend endless hours watching television. We watch our children grow. We watch our parents become frail as they age. We watch the clock ticking endlessly as we await the results of medical tests. How we watch depends on what we are watching. So, we watch TV differently, with a different sort of alertness, than when we watch someone we love suffering.
We watch alone. We watch with others. In the late days of March and early days of April 2005, it seemed as if the whole world was watching as Pope John Paul II breathed his last, was commended to God, and buried at Saint Peter's in Rome.
"Watch": A word often spoken by Jesus. During Advent we are invited to a kind of watching that is filled with joyful expectation yet open to the unexpected. We are to live with eyes wide open, watchful and attentive so that we might be ready for the coming of God in our midst. When we keep watch, God's visitation is more easily recognizable when it comes.
Living with eyes wide open is not easy. How much easier it is to become absorbed in the many demands of day to day living. Our vision gets blurred. Most often our vision is out of focus because we are distracted. And how easily we are distracted!
Sometimes life's events come at us in such a way that we are simply overwhelmed and cannot help but be distracted from our course. But it is also true that often we look for distraction. Can we reflect in honesty during this Advent season and ask: What is the source of our discontentment that drives us to constantly seek distractions?
Moving from distraction to watchfulness is our gift and task during this Advent season. Taking a stance of watchfulness, we stand ready to live with open eyes, attentive to the heartbeat of God in the vital forces and movements of life.
We needn't look far. More often than not, it is in the little things, the seemingly insignificant details of our lives. So often we are inclined to look for manifestations of God's presence in the extraordinary, indeed in the exotic. This, too, can be a distraction.
What is in our line of vision blocking the horizon of God's coming? All too often it is ourselves, our self-fixation, self-preoccupation, self-absorption. Rather than living with eyes wide open for the coming of Christ in our midst, we tend to focus on who we are, what we are doing, what we want.
To be watchful is to be ready to encounter Christ in whatever way he might come to us in our often humdrum daily lives, whether through our work, our family, children, spouse; through those we meet along the street, in the stores and at the gas station. Our response is to be one of attentiveness and respect, refusing to allow the distractions to divert our attention from what really matters: the Christ who has come and is coming.
Such a stance of watchfulness and readiness can only be strengthened by prayer, the ability to quiet our hearts and minds amidst the cacophony and clutter of "The Holiday Season." The kind of watching and readiness called for requires all the life you can pour into it, an unwavering, single-minded vision fixed on a single point ahead. With "eyes fixed on Jesus" (Hebrews 12:2), we are undistracted.
Once we enter into this new kind of watching and readiness, the doors of the heart are opened. We stand ready to welcome the God who comes in astonishing ways, in the small things, the little things --- especially in the fragile flesh of an infant in a manger. |