Advent Reflections
MONDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2022
By Marc Rugani, Theology
As we anticipate the celebration of Christmas, we look and pray for miracles. You can probably rattle off dozens of Hallmark movies and Hollywood classics that take up this trope. Nonprofit organizations and charities, like the Children’s Miracle Network, will make appeals that, with your donation, you can be a miracle worker. There’s good reason for that, but it may not be what you think.
Isaiah prophesies the advent of the glory of the Lord and the re-creation of our world broken by antagonism, fear, and degradation. It is a vision of peace, consolation, and flourishing, not only of human beings, but the whole biotic and abiotic world. Isaiah dreams of miracles. Blind persons see. Deaf persons hear. Mobility-impaired persons leap. These images seize my imagination; but mine may be an ableist imagination. Healing and wholeness are ultimately inward, for the purpose of journeying with others to a place of reconciliation and joy with God. I have to check myself at the thought that those who I refer to as “disabled” or “other-abled” need those functionings to be whole. They share as much in the image and likeness of God as I do. So, what’s the miracle to pray for and how can I be a miracle worker?
It’s solidarity. It’s saying to my neighbor, “My good is intimately and inextricably tied to your good.” We journey together as we each are able. In today’s passage from Luke, we see what that journey often looks like. Far from a highway free of danger and obstacles, the path to Jesus for healing goes through cultured despisers, crowds, and inaccessible doors. We must take up a stretcher or allow ourselves to be taken up by others to scale the walls of injustice, inaccessibility, and marginalization. We dare to raise the roof and crash the party, upsetting an unjust status quo. That’s what Jesus does. In communion with Christ and others, we overcome the alienation of personal sin and structures of sin to find true healing of our personal brokenness and the brokenness of our world precisely through the brokenness of our bodies.
Be a miracle worker.
Be in solidarity.
A few years back, I was at a family Christmas party, and a friend of my Dad’s, upon learning that I was a History major at the time, asked me, what the most important day in human history was. I paused and thought, thinking of all of the historical milestones that I had been taught, such as an infamous battle like D-Day, or a world tragedy like 9/11. Overwhelmed with my lack of knowledge of the entire world’s history, I was about to give up until it struck me.
I proclaimed that the most important day in human history was the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. On this day, God Himself became man by taking on human flesh in order to save humanity from their sins. God humbled Himself by becoming an innocent baby who would experience sadness, joy, hunger, pain, poverty, suffering, and persecution. Without the Incarnation, Jesus would not have become man and humanity would not have been saved!
Lent is typically the time where we remember the sacrifice that Jesus made for us on the cross but I am calling you, during this Advent season, to remember this initial sacrifice of Christ, humbly becoming man and being born of a Virgin in a stable, a sacrifice preceding the sacrifice on the cross. While Advent is a joyous season, it is also a trying time for many who suffer from loneliness, depression, poverty, or the loss of a loved one. In response to this, we must follow the words that Jesus spoke to the paralytic in today’s Gospel readings, “Rise and walk.” We must act as the paralytic’s friends did by never ceasing to bring their friend to Jesus, no matter the roadblocks placed in their way!
Jesus responds to the doubts that we may have in our hearts, of our inability to bring His lost brethren to Him, as He did to the Pharisees. “‘What are you thinking in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?” (Luke 5: 22-23). We too must rise and walk with our fellow men and bring them to Jesus as the paralytic’s friends did, for it was by their unceasing faith that the man was saved! Let us have that same unceasing faith that brings others towards salvation!
If we cannot enter through the door, we must bring them through the window (or the roof :) to teach them that Christ humbly became man for their sake! We must proclaim the words spoken in today’s first reading from Isaiah;
“They will see the glory of the LORD, the splendor of our God. Strengthen the hands that are feeble, make firm the knees that are weak, Say to those whose hearts are frightened: Be strong, fear not! Here is your God, he comes with vindication; With divine recompense he comes to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; Then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing” (Isaiah 35: 2-6).
Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us rise and walk together, rejoicing this Advent season as we celebrate the waiting for the Light of World to be born!
God Bless :)
- Reflection by Rachel Statz, Class of 2023