Monday of the First Week of Advent
Advent is the favorite time of year for many, shining with the virtue of hope. All religions are about faith and love. But Christianity alone places hope on equal footing.
Unique to Christianity is the belief that what we have been waiting for has already arrived. Yet with God there is always more. And so we wait for more — when all will find its fulfillment and totality in Christ Jesus.
Americans are good at so many things — innovation, optimism, generosity to just name a few. But if there is one thing we are never good at, it is waiting! This is true in part because we rarely have to do it. As we head into that time of year when many of us can get caught up in the compulsion to “buy, buy, buy,” we see impatience rise. December shoppers expect that all the lanes of the check out will be open because they can always shop someplace else. This is a rare thing for the rest of the planet.
The exception is found at mainline grocery, pharmacies, and post offices in less affluent neighborhoods. If I am in the suburbs, I know that the chances that I’ll have to wait in line are slim whereas if I go to our local “ghetto Kroger” (as UD students call it) the lines will often be very long. The same seems true regarding the post office. Our local PO has lines that are rarely seen in wealthier neighborhoods. At least when I’m there.
Despite receiving petitions from shoppers, our local grocery will not provide paper bags, only one-time-use plastic bags. (Plastic bags will be with us until the sun engulfs the earth millions of years from now.) Underlining it all is the less than subtle message : “just be grateful that we still keep a store in your area!!” And when major pharmacies are cut across the country, inevitably those in poorer neighborhoods are the first to go. (This summer a nearby pharmacy on Linden Ave. closed leaving people who need to walk to the drug store, who can’t afford cars, without a place to shop for their health care.)
Isaiah speaks today of a world that is egalitarian above all else. Jesus spoke of that world, too. In fact, that was his “Kingdom.” Advent is a season wherein we await that world, “the already-but-the-not-yet.”
Yes, “Isaiah ‘twas foretold it…” the reign of God that we await but for which we must diligently labor. Still we wait for God to make things right, while God is waiting for us to do something about it. And we must not discount even our smallest efforts — from trying to get the local grocery chain to offer paper bags in poorer neighborhoods to shopping in those neighborhoods to decrease the possibility that the poor will lose the services they so desperately need.
As Saint Teresa of Calcutta liked to say, “You cannot change the whole world, but you can change your small part of it.”
-Timothy J. Cronin