<\/p>\n
Hope!\u00a0 It\u2019s a virtue that is in short supply today.\u00a0 Our economy and the economies of much the world are in a shambles.\u00a0 We have record sustained unemployment; record debt; and housing foreclosures all around us.\u00a0 We have a secular government that seems bent on interfering with our religious liberty- taking away school prayer, pushing gay marriage, and threatening our Church with oppressive forced insurance coverage of immoral items.\u00a0 We have disastrous election results, like the defeat of propositions 6 and 8; gay marriage and legalized marijuana.\u00a0 And lots of folks are depressed about all this.\u00a0 Even the spirit of the Christmas Season can\u2019t seem to break through and give us hope because there is so much to be done and it scares us to even think about doing it all.<\/p>\n
But the message of today\u2019s readings is hope because our salvation is at hand.\u00a0 \u00a0And we should be experiencing joyful expectation of that and not a sense of hopelessness and depression.\u00a0 You see all of us who believe in Jesus and all of us who have Faith in his promise of salvation have the Heavenly Kingdom, symbolized by Jerusalem in today\u2019s readings, to look forward to.\u00a0 The reality of life, with all of its burdens and responsibilities and conflicts and chores is something we all must face.\u00a0 But we must never lose sight of our goal, and never give up our Christian hope by trusting in God that He will work in our lives for our good.\u00a0 Christian Hope and trust are what can keep us going through any of life\u2019s burdens.<\/p>\n
The first reading talks about how the Jewish people were returning from exile.\u00a0 They had been through an extremely difficult and depressing time under the thumb of their conquerors. \u00a0\u00a0But they were \u201crejoicing that they are remembered<\/strong> by God.”\u00a0 Well, that applies to us as well.\u00a0 We may be going through difficult times, but we have cause to rejoice because we are remembered by God.<\/p>\n No matter what we have done in the past, God always wants a relationship with us. ,And He is calling us back now to His heavenly Kingdom, just as he called back the scattered Jewish people.\u00a0 And that should give us a profound sense of hope.<\/p>\n How can we capture that hope?\u00a0 Well, that\u2019s what Advent is about, a time for us to be in joyful expectation and renew our hope.\u00a0 These readings tell us that the way is being prepared for the Lord to come into our hearts.\u00a0 And we still have 2 weeks to ponder that before Christmas when the Church moves on and celebrates that Jesus has come.\u00a0 The question is whether we will use that two weeks wisely to get ready in the right way for the coming of Jesus.\u00a0 We may feel so down about the state of things, that we just can\u2019t get motivated, or we may just bury ourselves with doing all those things that need to be done-\u00a0 sending our cards, putting up the tree, shopping for gifts, celebrating at all the Christmas parties, baking of goodies, working overtime so that we reap the benefits of the season\u2019s shoppers.\u00a0 After all, that way we don\u2019t have to think about what bothers us.\u00a0 But if we do that, chances are we will still feel the same sense of sadness and depression after Christmas, maybe even worse.<\/p>\n The fact is that we simply must take some time to get away from it all and reflect on life.\u00a0 It can be something simple- an hour a week in the Adoration Chapel; or an hour a couple of times a week in our easy chair when we are fresh in the morning, or in the evening when the house is finally quiet, maybe ion front of the Christmas tree.<\/p>\n And the first thing we need to reflect on is some gift that God has given us.\u00a0 Surely, you can identify such a gift:\u00a0 Your spouse, a child, a grandchild, that 1957 pink ford Edsel that you once had; your childhood Christmasses; your talent as a piano player or football player; the time you beat your arch rival in chess.\u00a0 Whatever it is, that will put you in a frame of mind to consider how God has worked in your life, how He has answered your prayer in time of need.<\/p>\n Yes, there have been setbacks and problems; and there may be plenty of problems right now.\u00a0 Some of them are consequences of what we\u2019ve done; others are a mystery.\u00a0 But the point is, that when we reflect like this, we can always sense the presence of God in our lives, giving us gifts.<\/p>\n Sometimes we can sense a thread, a kind of pattern, where the Lord has gradually nudged us through some tough times when we cared to listen.\u00a0 We can then see that the mystery and pain of the past actually became a hidden blessing in the future.\u00a0 For example, a missed opportunity that we pined over, only to have a better one come along.\u00a0 That is God\u2019s hand in our life, it is God\u2019s blessing.\u00a0 Cardinal Newman put it very well in one of his poems:\u00a0 \u201cYour power and goodness have blessed me, protected me, forgiven me, and guided me my whole life long, Lord, in spite of all my sins…\u201d<\/p>\n If you can recognize such patterns in your reflection, then, there will be hope for the future.\u00a0 Because the same power of the Lord is there now to guide us through the valleys and mountains of life.\u00a0 That\u2019s what Isaiah and the Gospel writer is telling us.\u00a0 There is hope, and in that hope there is also joy, the joy of knowing that the Lord is coming, He is coming for you and me.<\/p>\n When our lives are done, and we have lived the good fight, our prayer and hope will surely not be disappointed.\u00a0 The Lord will come and guide us to the heavenly Jerusalem because the mountains will be lowered, and the valleys filled in and the path to the Lord will be straight.\u00a0 Jerusalem, the Heavenly Kingdom, with all the glory and rejoicing described today, will be ours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Second Sunday of Advent Bar 5: 1-9; Phil 1:4-6, 8-11; Luke 3: 1-6 Dc. Larry Brockman Hope!\u00a0 It\u2019s a virtue that is in short supply today.\u00a0 Our economy and the economies of much the world are in a shambles.\u00a0 We have record sustained unemployment; record debt; and housing foreclosures all around us.\u00a0 We have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[173,172,174],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions\/254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}