One of the virtues of the Advent season is hope. In fact, it is THE virtue of the season. Surely, hope is not wishful thinking: I wish it were otherwise. I wish I always had my teachers to guide me, my friends to assure me that my ideas were worth a hearing. I wish I could go the full length of the mission trip. But they are wishes in my heart; they are not what make up hope.
If there is anything that characterizes human life, it is that there seems to be a cry luring us, drawing us, driving us. Nikos Katzanzakis captures it well when he articulates it. “Onwards” challenges this call. So we do not only leave the process of maturation to nature; we take it into our hands. Each is a project unto himself, and in this respect, not to decide is already to have made a decision! We become more, and we strive to be more, to bring about possibilities. We are, say Sartre and Heidegger, the beings that negate ourselves, that are never coincident with ourselves. “Onwards”—so I learn a craft, perfect a skill, read more, meet new friends, perpetually reinvent myself. That was what our mission formation was all about. That was - that is - the root of hope, for if I did not hope that my striving to be more would make me more, I would cease all striving at all.
But Advent is about the Absolute Future—at once continuous with the hope that makes us human, but also discontinuous with it for it is something that “eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it ever occurred to man...” The hope of advent does not have to do with setting sights on particular projects and achieving status; it has to do with the fulfillment of life and the fulfillment of history. It has to do with my grief over not being able to go for teh full mission trip. The hope of Advent does not make my not being able to go the full length any less real. Christianity has never taught that human anguish is illusory. It has faced human anguish squarely. But it is hope precisely because of the confidence that completion, fulfillment, eternal meaning and value—captured by that quasi-mythological, theologically provocative concept “Parousia”—do not depend on our faltering efforts, always derailed by opposing events. It is all captured in that simple invocation: “Father in Heaven...your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.” When we reach this level of hope, assertions give way to invocation, descriptions to supplication, certainty about oneself to certainty about what is to come that cannot be from us but from the “power of the Most High” that overshadows all those who believe.
I am still hoping that God would allow me to go the full distance of the mission trip. At the same time, thy will be done Lord.
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