1 December 2019
First Sunday in Advent
The gospel admonishes us to “stay awake,” and it is a sentiment with which I completely concur. I am not referring to lessening the amount of required sleep, nor of abandoning that time-honored and most salubrious of practices, the after-noon nap. Instead, I refer to going through life with your head bent looking at your phone. The passage from today’s reading speaks of being aware of the world around us so that we may be present to the Kingdom of God. The foundational method in Ignatius’ repertoire of spiritual tools was the Examination of Conscience in which persons would strive to find God’s activity in the world around them. For Ignatius, finding God in all things was the directional standard for anyone’s moral compass. Scriptural insights and their Ignatian emphasis all identify the need for an awareness of God’s creation and our response to that creation. It is difficult to imagine that insights into the divine plan can be revealed to someone crossing a busy street while texting. There is a chance that this may increase the probability of experiencing the beatific vision sooner than expected, but not after a few admonitions from our Blessed Mother who would recall the advice given by our natural mothers about watching out for traffic. Looking at an army of both drivers and pedestrians with their heads bent toward their devices, I recall the motto of Joseph Cardijn, the founder of the Young Christian Worker movement: See, Judge, Act. Ignatius wisely called our attention to the world and noted the improbability of making good decisions about that world if we do not see it first.