Noise – it has been suggested – is the home country of today’s generation. Noise is where we live, whether we know it, admit it, like it – or not. Evidence of this is the discomfort that so many experience with the presence of silence. We say “presence” because silence is more than just the absence of noise. It is where God speaks to us most directly and naturally – when we turn down the volume of our thoughts, preoccupations, worries and, yes, electronic devices.
Not to cause undue anxiety, but it might be instructive to try an experiment. Is it even possible to find a time and a place where you can be free of any interruption for simply 15 minutes? Try spending those 15 minutes doing nothing but letting God’s silent presence embrace you. To think that Jesus himself spent 40 days and 40 nights in the desert before He began His public ministry, so that He could be alone with His Father! If He needed this quiet time, maybe we do too.
Advent is such a time. Or, at least, it is supposed to be. The Thanksgiving weekend approaches and, with that, one of the busiest times of the year, a season when we are driven by lists and duties and expectations and crowds just to keep up with the mad pace of making what we call “the Holidays” happen. With the wilderness so loud and jam-packed with traffic, what is the chance of the “voice of one crying” in it to be heard?
Contrary to what we are accustomed to think, Advent is more than a preparation for Christmas. Its appearance in the Church’s liturgical calendar actually preceded the placing of Christmas on Dec. 25. It certainly makes sense to prepare for the coming of the Lord with a spirit of reflection and recollection. The Scripture readings, at least in the early part of Advent, call our attention not so much to the Lord’s first coming but His coming again – both at the end of the world (in the cosmological sense) and at the end of our own lives (in the personal sense).
Advent, literally, means to wait for something – or someone – that is coming. Waiting takes patience, especially if we are expecting something important to happen in the distant future. Whether good or bad, a significant date that will inevitably occur places a stamp on our present life. The reality is that both the earth and our individual lives have a limited shelf life. In fact, it has been suggested, our lives are as fragile as a light bulb in someone’s hand that, when let go of, will smash into pieces on a cement floor. We do not know “the day or the hour.” No doubt it is the fear of mortality, among other terrors, that is at the root of much of the modern world’s escape into the chaos of noise and frenetic activity, especially now, the one time when we most need to do just the opposite: Stay still and listen!
Yes, it is true, the Church may not be in step with our times. Nor should it be. We need to stay ahead of our times instead of just keeping up with them. And we would all be so much better off to accept that God does have a great desire to get a message through to us. The message is the Good News – which is what “Gospel” means – that we do not have to drown in the suffocating whirlwind of the holiday madness. We do not have to surrender to the notion that Christmas is just another “to-do” list or that we cannot find at least some time – like an hour or two on Sunday – to pull away from the crowd and hear the Lord speaking to our heart.
It takes a specific choice, however. Love is always a decision. It cannot be forced, only invited. And God is doing just that. Jesus today is that “voice crying in the wilderness.” He is the peace and security that we seek, if we will let Him be who He is: the only one who can save us from whatever web we are entangled in. No time like the present to accept the invitation.