Readings (Year A):
Isaiah 35:1 – 6a, 10
Psalm 146:6 – 7, 8 – 9, 9 – 10.
James 5:7 – 10
Matthew 11:2 – 11
Reflection: Do our actions bear witness to Advent hope?
In 1963, the famous Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton published an essay titled “Advent: Hope or Delusion.” His primary focus was to challenge Christians to reflect more deeply on the meaning of authentic Christian hope, especially when many have mistaken such hope for superficial optimism or wishful thinking. He argues that Advent is the season of hope, when we await the coming of Christ not with the naïveté of wishing for a “helicopter god” who will dash in and immediately solve all the world’s problems, but with faith in the true God who enters our world as it is and meets us in divine solidarity.
Merton writes: “The fact remains that our task is to seek and find Christ in our world as it is, and not as it might be. The fact that the world is other than it might be does not alter the truth that Christ is present in it and that his plan has been neither frustrated nor changed: indeed, all will be done according to his will. Our Advent is the celebration of this hope. What is uncertain is not the ‘coming’ of Christ but our own reception of him, our own response to him, our own readiness and capacity to ‘go forth and meet Him.’”
Merton uses today’s gospel to illustrate what this authentic Christian hope looks like in practice. John the Baptist, whom the Christian tradition has long held to be one of the greatest prophets given his proximity to Jesus, is facing an existential crisis: he is in prison and awaiting execution when he begins to doubt whether Jesus is indeed the Christ, the one for whom he has been preparing a way. So, he sends his followers to confront Jesus directly and ask: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” (Matt 11:3). Jesus’s response is simple: look around and see for yourself what I am doing!
Merton suggests that John the Baptist and his followers, with their doubts in the face of fear and crisis, serve as stand-ins for our brothers, sisters, and other siblings in the world today. In the midst of crisis, suffering, violence, ecological catastrophe, inequality, and discrimination, the world is asking us—those who profess to be followers of Christ—whether we are serious, whether we are the ones we say we are by virtue of our baptismal promises, or should the world look for another?
When we are faced with the needs and cries of our siblings and neighbors, can we say with our words and actions that we are bearing witness to authentic Christian hope by being Christ for others? Or are we merely talking the talk without walking in practice?
The truth is that Christ continues to come into this messed up and broken world as it is, but he does so today through his mystical body, which is all the faithful. During this season of Advent, of authentic Christian hope, it is up to us to demonstrate that hope through our deeds, so that we may, like Jesus before us, confidently ask the world: “what do you see and hear?”
Christmas is right around the corner, but the world still waits for us to give birth to Christ through our words and deeds.
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