The Advent of Hope: A Brief Week by Week Overview

We’ve heard it said and we say it ourselves: Siempre adelante! Keep going! But we’ve also

heard it said, quite bluntly: Don’t get up your hopes! Which message should we listen to?

Advent, this ultimate season of hope, challenges us to consider some fundamental

questions: What gives us hope? What keeps us going in difficult times? How can our faith
traditions help us to re-center ourselves as a Christian people, a people of hope?

First a word from an unexpected center of hope. The country of Sweden, tucked away in the northern reaches of Europe, is one of the most affluent and secularized societies in the world. It has only a very small percentage of observant Christians and an even smaller, yet

surprisingly vibrant Catholic community. From Cardinal Anders Arborelius of Stockholm,
we hear these words of tremendous hope: ". . . the dark collective night (of the soul) can
even penetrate the Christian heart. We see it in the lack of vocations and in the empty
churches in Europe. Nevertheless, we need hope to continue our pilgrimage in this world.

Hope helps us see our journey from the perspective of eternity.” Referring to the French

author Charles Péguy he continues: "We talk a lot about faith and love, but often forget hope which is, nevertheless, an enormous force—even and especially in our secular society. Hope is the little sister to faith and love. We really need this ‘little sister’ for our continued pilgrimage Because it is hope that determines the direction of the journey in our lives and helps us t survive in the hardest moments of our existence. Hope is always necessary. We must not lose hope that the Lord will help us on our path."

As Christians, we look to our Scriptures to better encounter the Holy Spirit as our source of

hope. To remind us that hope is about confidence, expectation, preparation, anticipation.
Hope is about belief in God’s promise of peace, protection, and care in and through Jesus.
Our faith further reminds us that hope is both God’s gift and response to our yearning.

In Romans (5:5) we learn that “Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been

poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Hope, this “little
sister” of love, sustains us in good times and in bad; in our individual lives as well as in our faith community-- and throughout our blessed and broken world yearning for authentic and lasting peace.

Advent is the quintessential season of hope. Our readings from Scripture for this all too brief time of preparation for the Incarnation of the Lord, the coming of Jesus at Christmas, are filled with hope. You’ve heard of the 12 Days of Christmas. Well, from now until Christmas, we can celebrate in our Sunday Advent readings no fewer than 12 words from Scripture that inspire and sustain our hope. Week by week, we are invited and challenged to take time with the Word, to let the Spirit of Jesus fill our hearts with the promise of fresh, new and renewed hope. And to give us the confidence to us to trust that God always keeps His promises.

 
Week 1: In the first Sunday of Advent, God’s prophet Jeremiah (33) proclaims a season of
abundant hope-- Messianic hope—for the Israelites exiled and enslaved in Babylonian some 600 years before the birth of Jesus: “In those days, Judah shall be safe and Jerusalem shall dwell secure.” In 1 Thessalonians 3, St. Paul enjoins his community and us to: “Strengthen your hearts to be blameless before the Lord at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones.” And in the Gospel, the evangelist Luke (21) offers us an apocalyptic vision of the end times—not to frighten us, but to call us to be vigilant and to prepare for the coming of the Lord: “Stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand”.
Week 2: Baruch (5), secretary to Jeremiah, continues the legacy of his mentor: “Up, Jerusalem! Stand on the heights; look to the east and see your children. . . rejoicing that they are remembered by God.” In Philippians (1), Paul, himself in prison, tells us not to worry: “The one who began the good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.” Most significantly, in Luke 3, John the Baptist, literally a voice in the wilderness, shouts to all the world: “Prepare the way of the Lord!... All flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
 
Week 3: The prophet Zephaniah (3) applies shock therapy to jolt people out of their
desolation: “. . . The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst, you have no further misfortune to fear.” His cry is amplified in Philippians 4 this Gaudate Sunday in the middle of Advent: “Rejoice! . . . The Lord is near. Have no anxiety at all, but in everything…. Make your requests known to God.” And Luke (3) continues to present us with the figure of John the Baptist who humbly announces the coming of the Lord: “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
 
Week 4 is the week many people will miss Mass because that Sunday is December 23 and a
lot of folks will move their church attendance to Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Still, the
drum roll increases and intensifies as Micah (5), writing 8 centuries before the coming of
Jesus, shouts to all the world: “His greatness shall reach to the ends of the earth; he shall be
peace!” In Hebrews (10), the author quotes Jesus, our new and eternal High Priest, and
reassures us that “by this (Christ’s) will we have been consecrated through the offering of
the body of Jesus Christ once and for all.”This joyous shout of living, fulfilling hope is
ultimately expressed in Luke 1 as Elizabeth confirms her cousin Mary’s greatest hope with
this cry of hope-filled joy: “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by
the Lord would be fulfilled.”

These Scriptures of Advent intrude upon us in marvelous ways. They break the cycle of our

“stinking thinking”. They jolt us out of pessimism and apathy fed by the incessant flood of
messaging produced by people who feed upon cynicism born of despair.
Advent offers us hope: firm, solid, rooted, deep, trustworthy, clear, certain, and sealed with
the promise of the Lord himself. In a paraphrase of what St. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians
about love can equally be said of its “little sister,” hope: Hope is patient, hope is kind. It is
not jealous, not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude. Hope is not quick‐tempered, it does
not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
Hope bears all things, believes all thigs, endures all things. Hope never fails.

Friar Charles Talley is the Communications Director of the Province of St. Barbara. He currently resides at San Damiano Retreat Center in Danville, CA and is active in retreat ministry, both at the retreat center and all the way to Sweden. He is fluent in Spanish, French, and Swedish.






Franciscan Friars

Office of Vocations

1500 34th Ave.

Oakland, CA 94601

Phone:  (408) 903-3422 or (510) 821-4492

Email:  vocations@sbofm.org

Facebook:  www.facebook.com/SBFranciscans

Twitter:  www.twitter.com/SBFranciscans

Website:  www.sbfranciscans.org

Franciscans and the Nativity

Throughout Christmas and up to Epiphany, God’s word proclaims Jesus’ mastery over creation.  In the Gospel readings he can heal the sick; he multiplies the loaves and fishes; he walks on water.  These miracles demonstrate and remind us of Jesus’ almighty power and how much he emptied himself when he became one with us.  Not as a man, but as an infant. 

The Creator of the world could not walk, talk, or even roll over.  The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity weighed just a few pounds; he shivered, cried, and nursed at his mother’s breast.  The message of Christmas and God's incarnation is shocking. He who created the billions of galaxies with billions of stars, who created the countless creatures of our world, became completely dependent on us for his safety, well-being and nourishment.

It seems almost blasphemous to suggest that God became human. Yet, he did so out of love for us.  A testament to who “I” to who “We” are.   That are goodness far out weights our brokenness.  That we are much more than our sinfulness.  So much so that God placed his trust and faith completely in us.  And given our track record of violence he probably should have feared us. 

Jesus, became one with us, out of love for us, and amazingly as scripture points out, "we must have the same love for one another" (1 Jn 4:11).  One of the great Christian apologists of our time, G.K. Chesterton, once wrote a parable to illustrate this point:

“A man who was entirely careless of spiritual affairs died and went to hell.  And he was much missed on earth by his old friends.  His business agent went down to the gates of hell to see if there was any chance of bringing him back.  But though he pleaded for the gates to be opened, the iron bars never yielded.  His priest also went and argued:  “He was not really a bad fellow; given time he would have matured. Let him out, please!  The gates remained stubbornly shut against all their voices.  Finally, his mother came; she did not beg for his release.  Quietly, and with a strange catch in her voice, she said to Satan:  “Let me in.”  Immediately the great doors swung open upon their hinges.  For love goes down through the gates of hell and there redeems the dead.”  

The incredible graciousness, power, and mercy that came into our world in Jesus is still, at least potentially so, in our world in us, the Body of Christ. What Jesus did we too can do; in fact, that is precisely what we are asked to do as Christians. We are called to enter the world of another; to enter their pain and suffering. We are to be reminders that their goodness far out weights their brokenness. That they are much more than their sinfulness. We are to remind others that they are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image and likeness of God and they are GOOD!

This is the true message of Christmas and the primary mission of the followers of St. Francis of Assisi.  A powerful message of our goodness and the message we are called to share with others. 

Peace and All Good,
Bro. Scott Slattum, OFM

Join the Franciscan friars of the Province of Saint Barbara in praying the "Collect" and
reflecting on the Gospels of Advent leading up to the powerful message of Christmas.

Personal Reflection:

If you feel called to religious life as a Franciscan friar of the Province of Saint Barbara are you willing to enter the world of another, to enter their pain and suffering?

Contact Information:

Franciscan Friars
Office of Vocations
1500 34th Ave
Oakland, CA 94601
Phone:  (408) 903-3422
Email:  vocations@sbofm.org
Facebook:  www.facebooks.com/SBFranciscans.Vocations
Twitter:  www.twitter.com/OFMvocation
Website:  www.sbfranciscans.org