Advent Reflections
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2022
By Jay Cormier, Humanities
The blessed season of being wrong
For many of us, they are the hardest words in the English language to say:
I was wrong.
Zechariah effectively makes that admission in today’s Gospel. Zechariah has been made silent since he refused to believe the angel Gabriel’s news that he and his beloved Elizabeth, despite their advanced ages, were to become parents of the boy who would become the last great prophet of the Messiah. Zechariah’s insistence that their son will be named John and not Zechariah is an act of humility before the God who has worked this wonder despite his doubt. His nine months of silence was Zechariah’s Advent of waiting, an Advent of reading and re-reading the signs of God’s love, an Advent of listening anew to the prophets of hope. In the nine months of silence, Zechariah is re-born in humility and gratitude. His scratching out on a tablet His name is John is the first cry of the reborn old Temple priest.
To say I was wrong could be the best gift we give ourselves and others this Christmas: that we have been wrong to refuse to believe that we can make God’s Kingdom of justice and peace a reality by our most ordinary works of generosity and forgiveness; that we have been wrong to overlook God dwelling in our midst in the love and care of family and friends; that we have been wrong to dismiss our abilities to bring God’s Christ to birth here in our own Bethlehems and Nazareths.
On this next-to-last day of Advent, may we humbly and gratefully acknowledge, like Zechariah, that sometimes we are wrong about compassion and ability to hope.
Open our hearts and minds, O God, to see what is hidden from us, to hear what the noise and clamor of the world shout down, to embrace the wisdom we cannot yet understand. Through the joys and struggles of family and friends, may we find our way to your dwelling place by the light of your peace.