Second Sunday of Advent
What a person looks forward to reveals much about that person, and it reveals much about who (or more frequently what) that person worships. In Christianity, we not only “look forward,” we hope, and that hope also shapes our present and even our past! If a Christian does not have that hope that Jesus Christ has for each one of us and for all of creation, then that Christian probably lacks something important in faith and love as well.
Saint Paul observes that it is “by endurance and by the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Rom 15:4). Our “endurance” bears witness to our hope. Yes, our hope is for things yet to come, things that the prophets foretold long ago, such as what we hear in our beautiful first reading (Is 11:1-10). We need such instruction from scripture, as Paul reminds us, to raise our gaze and hope for greater things. It would be well worth reading that passage from Isaiah again today, asking myself whether I dare hope for the coming of this reality, or whether I have emptied these words of meaning, letting them become just another Advent trope.
As important as “looking forward” may be, Christian hope is more; it transforms the present. In hope, we “welcome one another as Christ welcomed us, for the glory of God” (cf. Rom 15:7). Christ invites us, which means that he wants to receive us into his home. We are wanted. If we endure in hope, then we too will invite others, we too will want to receive others into our home. And perhaps we will discover that our guest is God himself.