WHEN THIS IS ALL OVER ...

Recently we've celebrated various anniversaries of all sorts of important events in history, from wars ending to space explorations being launched. We mark the exact date and even the time of day for many or most of them. So I've been asking myself, "How will we decide that the pandemic is finished?" Is the U.S. government or the U.N. going to publish a declaration at some point, so that we will have a date for yearly anniversary celebrations? It seems pretty obvious that whatever "end" there is to the pandemic, it won't be a nice clean break that happens all at once. Too bad! Someone will have to fabricate, I suppose, an official date that we can celebrate as "End of Covid-19 Day."

Meanwhile, the world is waiting impatiently for this whole ordeal to be over. The long-awaited vaccine is now in the process of being rolled out amid much hope and anticipation. Coincidentally, at the very same time, the Church has begun celebrating the season of Advent, her own special time of waiting, anticipating and preparing. While there's only so much that you and I can do to hasten the end of the pandemic (i.e. wearing our masks and following other guidelines), the season of Advent offers us lots of opportunities to prepare for and even bring about the coming of the Word.

Over the past 1600 years Christians have been devising ways of preparing themselves, their families and their communities for the feast of the Nativity, and have been reflecting on the various comings of Jesus whether in the past in Bethlehem, or the future at the end of time, or into our hearts in the present moment. 

So, while it appears that the "end" of the pandemic will be a ragged affair clouded by uncertainty, the Church keeps opening to us each day her treasury of Scriptural passages and traditional reflections by saints and theologians that offer us reason for hope during the holy season of Advent. During this era of uncertainty our faith offers us plenty of  reason for hope; during the first week of Advent, for example, the liturgy has repeated confidently those ages-old phrases:

"On that day, a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom."

 "On that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book; and out of gloom and darkness, the eyes if the blind shall see." 

"Then the wolf shall be the guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid."

"Justice shall flourish in his time, and fullness of peace forever."

"O people of Zion, who dwell in Jerusalem, no  more will you weep; He will be gracious to you when you cry out."

We pray and we trust in God that the pandemic will leave us sooner rather than later, but as I said before, you and I have only a tiny bit of control over the future course of Covid-19. The situation is different, though, with Advent. Sure we're waiting in joyful hope, and singing songs that reflect that longing and waiting. But there's another dimension to the Advent message, a dimension that gets introduced in the liturgy tomorrow, on the Second Sunday of Advent, with the figure of John the Baptist. His message is "Prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight his paths." But we don't just "prepare his way;" we are the ones who are to make Christ present in the world, we are the ones who, by our lives, will make Emmanuel come to earth. In fact, this is our role as followers of Christ: To make Love take on human form in our lives by our acts of selfless generosity to our neighbor, by our joy and gentleness, by our patience and peacefulness, by our generosity and our calm trust in God.

This Advent is an especially good time to ask yourself what you can be doing to make Christ become more present in the world while you wait for the pandemic to end and while you wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ.