“Take the waiting out of wanting.” Some years ago, this was the advertising slogan for the launch of a new credit card. Buy now and be satisfied! How false and simplistic!

 

Time in Advent is completely different. We enter God’s time, not human time. As a season, we look forward in hope to the coming of Jesus Christ, celebrating again His incarnation and birth, thanking Him for His presence with us every day, and looking forward to His coming again at the end of time. We walk together through Advent as pilgrims of hope in his promise. It is an opportunity to discover again that God loves each one of us intimately and deeply, even to knowing the number of hairs on our head.

 

In today’s busy world it is hard to wait. We want instant answers or an immediate reply; we buy instant coffee; we become demanding. Advent invites us into a different rhythm. Some things cannot be rushed: the healing of a wound, a pregnancy of nine months, or when we die. These happen in God’s time.

 

We share in the hopes of the Jewish people for the Messiah who brings liberation from evil, sin, slavery to self, and death. The readings of the Mass invite us into this mystery of Christ more deeply.

 

As we approach the joyful feast of Christmas, we gaze into the crib and see Mary with her newborn son gurgling and crying, Joseph His faithful and protective foster father, and the Christ-Child who looks at us with love just like a baby.

 

We are invited to see Christ in every human face, “for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men’s faces” (Hopkins).

 

In the faces of the poor, the sick, the lonely, the dying, and the abandoned, we can see the face of Christ if we ask God to open our eyes. His flesh suffers in human flesh; we are called this Christmas to extend Christ’s love to others, to alleviate their need and help them hear again the hope of the words “Happy Christmas”.

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Archbishop John Sherrington

Archbishop of Liverpool