Fourth Sunday of Advent
But God, more often than not, operates with patience. Take for example that our first reading from Micah, where it was prophesied that the ruler of Israel would come from Bethlehem, was written 800 years before the birth of Christ. If you think you waited a long time for your Big Mac, imagine waiting 800 years!
From before time began, God the Father knew that He would send His Only Begotten Son, Jesus, to take flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. But He waited for the perfect time. We hear that on Christmas Eve at our Mass at night (7:30 p.m.) in the proclamation of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ from the Roman Martyrology: “when ages beyond number had run their course from the creation of the world,…when century upon century had passed since the Almighty set his bow in the clouds after the Great Flood,…in the twenty-first century since Abraham…came out of Ur of the Chaldees; in the thirteenth century since the People of Israel were led by Moses in the Exodus from Egypt; around the thousandth year since David was anointed King.” So much waiting!!
In the face of such waiting we can give up hope. We can forget that God will fulfill His promises. The Blessed Virgin Mary is praised in our Gospel today by St. Elizabeth because she “believed that what was spoken…by the Lord would be fulfilled.” Mary was patient herself, but Mary as the type and image of the Church was patient as she waited through all of those millennia and centuries for Her Messiah to come.
We, too, are invited to wait for to fulfillment of all time, when Christ will return. Perhaps we have lost hope that it will happen. Perhaps we don’t even think that it will happen. But, at the right time, in God’s time, everything will be subjected to Christ, and God’s Kingdom will be all in all. But it cannot be forced; it cannot be rushed. One of the popular Advent and Christmas hymns is “Lo! How a Rose ere Blooming.” Just as with Jesus’ Nativity in the flesh, so with Jesus’ second coming: like a rose, it cannot be forced open. The seed must die in the ground first, and then ever-so-slowly rise up through the ground; and then the bud must come forth from the stem, and then the bud start to blossom. You cannot force a rose to bloom without ruining the rose. So we cannot rush God to fulfill His promises. We simply wait in joyful hope that what was spoken to us by the Lord will be fulfilled.
Patience is a virtue. I’m sure we’ve all heard that from our mother, grandmother, religious sister, or someone. A virtue is an acquired habit that has become second nature. The only way we acquire that habit of virtue is by doing acts of patience. In these last days before Christmas, the temptation will be to practice impatience in trying to finish last-minute shopping; traveling to see friends and family; waiting to open presents; and so many more ways. May the Holy Spirit fill us with His grace so that we can be like Mary, the perfect image of the Church, who waited patiently for the Messiah to come and God to become man, as we wait for the fulfillment of the promise that Jesus made before He ascended into heaven: that he would return. The Kingdom of God is not an app nor is it a drive-thru. To experience its fullness, we must be patient. Lord, make us patient people.