So, how’s the ADVENT CHALLENGE going with you? If you remember (and how could you possibly forget anything I say?!), I offered my traditional Advent Challenge once again this year: During all the noisiness of daily life—which often gets even more frenetic during the Christmas Season), dedicate yourself to 15-20 minutes of silence every day. Maybe at the beginning of the day, or as a mid-day break, or at the end of day before going to bed, just give yourself 15-20 minutes to be quiet and still. No phone, no music, no tv, no distractions, nothing. Just sit in the quiet and stillness for 15-20 minutes. And when the noise of the mind comes along (and it will, many times) just gently return to the quiet and stillness. There’s still time to join the challenge!
Why is the silence so important? Because in today’s gospel, Jesus tells us that you and I are even greater than John the Baptist. Yes, you read that correctly. Jesus says that “among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
Well, that “least in the kingdom of heaven” includes you and me! You see, Jesus ushered in the Kingdom of Heaven, the Reign of God, the Heaven-on-Earth-Way-of-Living. And so, he is saying that anyone who lives in that Kingdom which he initiated with his own life, death and resurrection, is “greater” than John the Baptist. It doesn’t mean we are morally superior to John. It means we live in a “greater” time than John, a time that John himself looked for and helped to prepare: a time when God’s ways of love and justice and peace would begin to spread over all the earth. In other words, we are greater than John because we have received greater gifts than John did before his beheading.
We have received the gift of living in the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God Times! We have been given the Spirit of the Risen Lord which means we have been filled with the death-conquering and life-giving Love of Christ. We have been empowered to live as Jesus Christ lived and to love as he loves and as God his Abba loves. And with that love we can do our part to help transform the world. Just as Jesus enfleshed his Father’s love for all to see and experience, so too can we.
Now, looking around at our broken world it can certainly seem that this “Kingdom of God Times” is a pipe dream, a fantasy, a naïve wish. War and conflict, poverty, oppression, racism, hatred towards those who are different, injustices of all sorts are all around us. We can “be patient” as James encourages us in the second reading today, hoping to see change. But James also tells us to “look around,” to see the signs of the times, to recognize where God is here and now breaking in with Love and Peace and Power.
And that’s where the Advent Challenge comes in. It’s in moments of silence and stillness that we can begin to hear and see at a deeper level. We can move beyond the surface of things and take a deeper look at the underlying Love sustaining you and me and everyone and everything, always and everywhere. And with time, we can see signs of that powerful love breaking through, even in an incomplete and often dark world. We can see the light that is in all things and joining all things together in love. And we can live in sync with that Source, becoming enfleshed love for the life of the world.
So onward we go, my friends! May this Advent make us ever more aware of the greatness that is ours as those who may be the “least” in the Kingdom of Heaven, but who are in the Kingdom nevertheless, with its love breaking through within us so that we can bring that love all around us.
Advent Peace,
Father Liam