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In
Search of the Spirit
A
monthly letter from the Glenmary Vocation Office
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December 2006
An Advent Challenge: Announce God’s Goodness Today!
This Advent I find myself waiting for peace and harmony to arrive. I hope it will come before Christ comes again! If not, may he come soon, for peace and harmony are lacking in our world today.
I am deeply sadden by the attitudes I have seen and by the comments that I have heard during the past election and elsewhere regarding immigrants in the United States. These attitudes seem so far from the words of Jesus: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28).
For example, the Glenmary Challenge (Summer 2006) published a picture of Brother Curt Kedley holding a sign that read, “Jesus was an immigrant”—and people were offended. Some have even questioned their continued support of Glenmary over this.
I am in the midst of reading Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt by Ann Rice. It is a marvelous piece of historical fiction in which you discover first-century Palestine through the eyes of a seven-year-old Jesus who is returning from Egypt to experience Nazareth for the first time. And on my visits to Nigeria I saw a beautiful imagein the Josephite chapel of Mary, Joseph and the Baby Jesus traveling to Egypt. (The Josephites, a home mission group dedicated to working with African-Americans in the United States, have opened their doors to immigrant membership.)
Thinking about Jesus as an immigrant (see Mt 2:13-15, 19-23) may be a new insight for some. But this is the kind of awareness that is needed to bring a more loving spirit into the present dialogue concerning immigration issues.
Matthew 25 is a great outline of our call as missioners, as baptized believers, to be alert to the coming of God’s kingdom. It states that when you welcome a stranger you welcome God (see Mt 25: 31ff for the full text). Jesus is present in the undocumented child snuck over the boarder with his frightened mother hoping to see his documented father for the first time. Jesus is in the Asian immigrant who cannot return to his country for the burial of his mother because of past political conflicts. Jesus is present in the African who has escaped violence only to meet with discrimination in this land of freedom.
During this Advent, these are the “O Antiphons” that I am praying:
O Catholics of this nation, when will we open our hearts and realize that we are all brothers and sisters and that the face of Jesus is shining on us now through these many immigrants from so many diverse lands?
O people of our world, when will it come to pass that Isaiah’s vision (9:5) ofthe leopard lying down with the kid will come to pass? The wars in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Israel… The situation in Dafur… Domestic violence and murder in the United States… These are all cries for God’s kingdom to come sooner rather than later and for Christ to speed up his Second Coming. When can we find the courage of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Archbishop Romero and Cardinal Sin to attempt to bring peace through non-violence? When can we be willing to sit down and listen to each other?
Eucharistic Prayer #4 says,
There will be no more tears, no more sadness,
O light of Christ shine on the darkness.
O light of Christ bring your hope on the sadness and evil of this world.
Let peace and harmony find a home on earth
so your Kingdom will come as it is in heaven.
My dear readers, be that light to the world. Announce God’s goodness. Do it today— wherever you live! Join us in Glenmary as we try to be that light to rural America for immigrants and native-born alike; for rich and poor; for Democrats and Republicans; for hawks and doves; for all God’s children.
As the refrain from the popular Advent hymn goes,
Awake from your slumber…
and build the City of God.
