Advent begins – a new year for our journey of faith through our time in salvation history. As good a time as any for each one of us, layperson, religious, priest – in whichever current position or stage of life and well-being – to take a personal spiritual inventory. The question at the end of the Year of Faith that has just closed is the same as the one to face us as a new liturgical cycle begins: Where is the center of my life? Who or what is ruling my heart?
Scriptural passages proposed to us on recent Sundays are all about focus. Father Francis Martin calls them “perspective Gospels:” They force us to focus on what really matters. Temporalities all dissipate, sooner or later, and leave us down. Eternal life brings hope.
So who or what is the main object on my radar screen? To what or whom am I giving the lion’s share of my heart’s attention? Before answering too quickly, it seems reasonable to wonder how one is even able to make a response. After all, most of us are involved in so many activities, with so many demands on our time and talents and resources, that it seems difficult to know at the beginning of any day where we might be at day’s end.
Yet time itself is a good measure of who or what is running our life. How much time is my attention, my mind and heart focused at all – on anything or anyone – and, if so, to what or whom is it called? One can only hope and pray that the focus, the center, the calm in the middle of the storm is the Lord and that His name is Jesus Christ!
Jesus does not really take up a lot of space when we let Him be our life’s center. He is, if anything, more the enabler who helps us get things done than the party-pooper who rains on our parade. Our God is a God of “yes,” not “no,” a Creator and a Savior, not a destroyer of hopes and dreams. And if we believe Him to be who He says He is, does He not deserve to be treated as the God and King He really is?
True enough, Jesus has His own reality – He is who He is – regardless of the time or attention we pay to Him. He will not go away or stop being our only hope for a future, even if we get stuck in the muck of our past sins and failures. As we get “caught up” in the maze of our anxieties, fears, attitudes and addictions, He will not stand by idly as only a spectator like the world tends to do when observing, reporting and documenting tragedy or disaster.
This King – unlike any other the world has ever known – gets down and dirty in the lives of His people. He is the Good Shepherd who wears the smell of His sheep, the carpenter’s son Whose hands are splintered by the wood of the cross He carries, nailed to it by the blasphemies committed against our humanity – by ourselves and others. Christ the King is the God Who dies for us; His throne is the Cross that we hanged Him on.
Will we let Him in as the center of our life, our heart’s hope, or is something or someone else, some pretender or imposter, usurping His rightful place?
In the end, it comes down to this: Let Jesus be our King and know the peace that the world cannot and will never give us. Or go on longing and searching for some idol and spend an eternity groping in the darkness of a living hell where the heart never finds rest or solace.
“Peace I give you,” Jesus said. “Peace is my farewell to you.” As He prepares His disciples for His final passage, which will become a violent one, He wants to reassure them that they will be at peace if they remain faithful to Him as Lord and Savior. It is not just a wish; it’s a promise and a guarantee!
Our King will never leave us orphans – if we let Him enter and take His place on the throne of our hearts. An Advent spent preparing for Him to be born again in our hearts is our best insurance for Christmas peace.