12 DAYS: Entering Advent

Uncle Al here, somewhere in China. Please be patient with my blog sharing today as we enter into the last 12 days of our preparations for our Bicol mission trip.  

There is nothing like studying a foreign language to make one learn and appreciate how grammar works. I grew up speaking Bicol and Filipino as my native language, so I didn't care all that much about grammar. But when I studied English and Spanish in high school I figured out that certain parts of speech functioned differently than I at first thought.

For example, the word "advent" means "coming" - and I always placed that word in the future tense. As in: "He's coming to the restaurant for dinner," meaning that he's not here yet but at some point he will be.

With that rationale, "Christ is coming again" could be construed as some event in the future that really doesn't affect me yet. So for anyone prone to procrastination, understanding Christ's promise in that way is simply an invitation to postpone the personal change that conversion entails.

But Advent is not simply about preparing for some future occurrence. If I really understand the word "coming" as a present participle (which it is), the "advent," or "coming" of Christ, means that it is a continuous action.

Advent reminds us not only that Christ will come again at the end of time (on a day and hour known only to the Father) but that Christ is breaking into human history - indeed, everyone's story - all the time.

As today's epistle explains, there is really no "delay" on God's part - thus, we should always live our lives in expectation, always ready, like John the Baptist, to "prepare the way of the Lord."

Also, as is clear in both the first reading and the Gospel, that preparation, first of all, entails repentance and restoration of right relationship with God.

Just like our preparations for our mission trip in Bicol. Our mission, really, is a continuous action - we should always be in the "prepare the way of the Lord" mode all the days of our life.

Unlike human beings, God does not procrastinate or delay. Through Christ, he continually reaches out in love to you and me.

According to the grammar of faith, we need Advent as a reminder not to procrastinate in our response to God's invitation.