Pressing On
Third Sunday of Advent - Year A
Readings:
* Isaiah 35:1-6,10
* James 5:7-10
* Mt. 11:2-11
Pressing On
Things That Last
We all like things that last. When we make a purchase of any sort, we usually want to know how long that thing is going to last. We value things that we have owned for a long time and are still in good working condition. And when it comes to our friendships, we all know that old friends are good friends. It can be exciting to find a new friend, but there is something special about a relationship that has gone through the ups and downs that time brings. And we all know that if our friends didn’t have the gift of patience when dealing with us, we wouldn’t have many friends left. We all need people who won’t abandon us when we are less than perfect.
The purposes of God often develop slowly -- more slowly than we would wish. A well-known preacher by the name of Phillip Brooks was noted for his poise and quiet manner. At times, however, even he suffered moments of frustration and irritability. One day a friend saw him feverishly pacing the floor like a caged lion. “What’s the trouble, Mr. brooks?” he asked. Phillip answered, “The trouble is that I’m in a hurry, but God isn’t!”
Losing Faith in Jesus
“Happy is the man who does not lose faith in me.” These words from today’s Gospel are not ones that most of us remember very well. They don’t seem to be equal to such beatitudes as, “How happy are the poor in spirit”, or “Happy are the gentle and the peacemakers”, and those other often quoted beatitudes that we find in the fifth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel. This one is a seldom-quoted beatitude, but still one that is essential for our Christian living.
Why should we be in danger of losing faith in Jesus? Perhaps the very season of Advent gives us a clue to the answer. Advent is a time of longing and waiting. We wait for the Second Coming of Christ. We wait for the time when all sorrow and pain will disappear. We look forward to a time of unending happiness and joy. But what do people do when they wait?
Unhealthy Waiting
Some people get very impatient because they judge that they have been waiting too long. Then they decide that it’s foolish to wait any longer, and so give up hope. They lose faith in Christ and in the promises he left us. They lose faith in his presence in their lives. They abandon their dreams and their hopes and fall into despair or, at least, into a state of not caring, and not wishing and working for a better future for themselves and others.
They grow tired of working at their marriages and their friendships. It all seems too much work. They give up on their parish because things are not going along as smoothly as they would want. They drop out of volunteer work because the slow pace of progress grates on them. They don’t want to wait any longer. They ask why people won’t change and act the way they are supposed to. If we want to add up all our reasons for losing faith in Jesus, we can probably come up with a long list. But in the letter of James we are strongly reminded that, “it is those who had endurance that we say are the blessed ones.”
Waiting, patience, endurance--where would we be without these virtues? We would turn into a people without any depth to our lives. We would become just an empty shell of a Christian.
Irving Stone
Author Irving Stone has spent a lifetime studying greatness, writing novelized biographies of such men as Michelangelo, Vincent van Gogh, Sigmund Freud and Charles Darwin. Stone was once asked if he had found a thread that runs through the lives of all these exceptional people. He said, “I write about people who sometime in their life...have a vision or dream of something that should be accomplished...and they go to work.
“They are beaten over the head, knocked down, vilified and for years they get nowhere. But every time they’re knocked down they stand up. You cannot destroy these people. And at the end of their lives they’ve accomplished some modest part of what they set out to do.”
Called to Greatness and to Joy
Are we not all called to greatness? Jesus even says today that the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John the Baptist. It shouldn’t surprise us that greatness can be a direct result of being faithful to Jesus. Joy comes out of endurance. The happily married couple of fifty years didn’t get that way because they had an easy life. They grew into happiness through overcoming many, many obstacles.
We have only to look at the aged man or woman who has remained faithful to their following of Christ to see what it means to come to joy through patient endurance. If you are lucky enough to know such a person you will have in front of you one of the greatest signs of hope you could wish for.
As a third-century man was anticipating death, he penned these last words to a friend: “It’s a bad world, an incredibly bad world. But I have discovered in the midst of it a quiet and holy people who have learned a great secret. They have found a joy which is a thousand times better than any pleasure of our sinful life. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They are masters of their souls. They have overcome the world. These people are the Christians -- and I am one of them.”
As we move through this season of Advent, we are asked to be people of faithfulness, of patience and endurance. Perhaps we could look more closely at our lives, and ask the Lord to help us especially in those areas where we are about to give up. We have the assurance of Christ himself that he will see us through to the end.