Short-term or long-term?
Fourth Sunday of Advent (A), December 22, 2013 – Is 7, 10-14; Rom 1, 1-7; Mt 1, 18-24
A sign for you: an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger (Lk 2, 12)
God urges us to ask for a sign, even one that is extraordinary. But we do not like signs too much. We want our liberation right now, thinking little of the harm that may result. Notwithstanding our no, God gives us a sign.
Ahaz says no. The situation is urgent, so the king rushes headlong into an Assyrian alliance, with terrible consequences. The short-term solution brings about in the long-run worse problems. He learns the hard way.
Righteous Joseph, in contrast, does not carry out the quick decision that seems demanded by his discovery of the mysterious pregnancy. Rather, he obeys the angel of the Lord. Thus he finds strength in quiet trust (Is 30, 15). By faith he attains intimacy with “God-with-us,” the long-term salvation.
Among us, of course, it should be nothing of Ahaz, but rather everything of Jesus’ foster father. Unlike the king, we will heed the warning: “Unless your faith is firm, you shall not be firm” (Is 7, 9). We will not be so entrenched in our certainties and resolutions that we hinder God and know only “a god who fits our measure” (Pope Francis).
We will not rush into supporting any war, for example, without considering the conditions of a just war. We will question even the just war theory, given the destructive character in a massive way of modern weapons. With the peril of a war that annihilates, “it no longer makes sense to maintain that war is a fit instrument with which to repair the violation of justice” (Pacem in Terris 127; GS 4), or that it will not be like blowing up a house to get rid of cockroaches.
Nor shall we lock ourselves up in our assets, interests and whims, in “excessive centralization” (Evangelii Gaudium 32), in the myth that we have absolute control over our bodies. We shall respect life that is other than ours, whether beginning, nascent, already born, mature or declining, no matter how bothersome we may find it, insignificant, despicable and even deserving of the death penalty. We will widen our horizon and will not be like those described by St. Vincent de Paul as lazy people “who confine their views and plans to a fixed circumference” (Coste XI, 92).
In the spirit of St. Joseph, we will consider trust in God as “the strength of the weak and the eye of the blind,” especially when all seems to be lost (Coste, III, 149; Rules of the D.C. I, 8). God saves the one who says to him, “You are my only hope” (Ps 39, 8-9). Our wealth and wisdom cannot save us; only God can ransom us from death, the lot of those who trust in their riches and the self-complacent who flatter themselves (Ps 49).
And the sign that increases our trust in God is Jesus, the glory in the highest and, on earth, the grace and peace of greetings and best wishes. Strong in weakness because he trusts in the Father, he offers himself in the manger and the Eucharist as food. He thus shows the basis of all liberation.
Ross Reyes Dizon
Tags: A Vincentian reading of the Sunday readings