Nov. 28—First Sunday of Advent
Readings: Jer 33:14-16; Ps 25, R. To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.; 1 Thes 3:12—4:2; Gospel—Lk 21:25-28, 34-36
Today, the First Sunday of Advent, we begin the season of waiting and preparations both for Christmas and the Second Coming of Christ. This year’s season carries a special significance as we anticipate the 2022 Philippine elections.
Advent is a time to renew the graces of hope, peace, joy and love. These are the four themes we celebrate in each of the coming Sundays before Christmas. Let these be our prayer for graces as we prepare too for the elections.
Partisan politics aside, I invite you to pray that the coming days—27 before Christmas and 162 before election day—deepen in us these graces and virtues. We will reflect toward the end of the article on this season’s importance to the coming electoral exercise.
Unique significance
Christmas this year has a unique significance. It is the second we celebrate amid this pandemic, yet it is one filled with a greater sense of anticipation of our coming out of the crisis of this pandemic.
Pope Francis laid out a framework not just to emerge from this pandemic, but to come out better. The path to this is for us to “see clearly, choose well and act right.” These are stages in a process that will result in our choices, our actions and our very self being better.
Consider seeing clearly as seeing with hope. Hope helps clear our vision—the vision of our eyes, heart and soul.
Crisis has a way of focusing us on the “problem,” the negative aspect of the situation. In the process, we lose perspective.
Seeing clearly with hope is regaining perspective, rising from the downside of an experience of crisis and regaining equanimity.
Hope, or pag-asa, brings us to the perspective that there is more to the situation than the negative. “May maaasahan,” there is someone or something we can depend on.
Hope is a lifeline, but beyond this, as we emerge from the negative, it gives us once more stable ground to stand on and to regain our equanimity.
I think it is at this stage when we truly see clearly with the proper balance between the “hard facts” of our situation or reality, and the hope for a better future inspired by visions and dreams.
Now we are ready to choose well. St. Ignatius of Loyola prescribed the state of equanimity as one of the important conditions to choose well.
Choosing well
Choosing well needs to be accompanied by the virtues of peace and joy. Peace is a sign of both the state of equanimity and the presence of God. This is always a good gauge if we are in a right state and making the right choice.
Joy is a blessing. In the words of David Brooks, “Joy is something that rises up unexpectedly and sweeps over you … joy comes from offering gifts … doesn’t fade. To live with joy is to live with wonder, gratitude and hope. People who [live in and with joy] have been transformed. They are deeply committed. The outpouring of love has become a steady force.”
Joy is the pivot point to acting right. With and in joy, choosing well, we act and live in and with love as “a steady force” of our life.
To see clearly with hope, to choose well in peace and joy, and to act in love—the blessings and graces of the season that we pray for.
If, in the coming 27 days before Christmas and beyond, we can nurture through prayer and action these graces, they will be our best path to come out of this pandemic.
Likewise, it will be our best process and state of mind and heart in choosing well for the coming elections—the right choice that can lead us and many others to act right.
To act right and build, with the right leaders, a society and nation closer to the promised Kingdom of justice, equality, hope, peace, joy and love.