Christ the Cornerstone

As we give thanks, we also wait in hope for Jesus’ coming

Today is the day after Thanksgiving and two days before the first Sunday of Advent. We are concluding what many call “Gratitude Month” and initiating the Advent and Christmas seasons. This is truly a time of thanksgiving, hope and joy.

Yesterday we joined our fellow Americans in expressing our appreciation for all the abundant gifts that God has bestowed on our nation.

In giving thanks, we acknowledged our responsibility for sharing these precious gifts with others, especially our sisters and brothers who are poor, homeless, unemployed and/or suffering from other forms of impoverishment (mental, physical and spiritual).

We are a blessed people—in spite of all our faults—and in offering thanks and praise to almighty God, we must commit ourselves to working together for justice, equality and peace here at home and throughout the world.

Gratitude prepares us for hope. Unless we can appreciate the good things in our lives, it is impossible to be truly hopeful. Without thanksgiving, the world is a dark and dangerous place. If we are always angry and resentful (even when we have good reason to be unhappy with the things that cause us grief and anguish), we cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Hope must be based on something tangible—on the good we experience even in the worst of times. That’s why we celebrate the holy cross, an instrument of torture that has been transformed from a literal “dead end” into a bridge to new and everlasting life.

The season of Advent is a time of preparation. Its focus is on waiting in joyful hope for the coming again of the One promised from the beginning of human history. Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, came to us more than 2,000 years ago to save us from the horrors of sin and death. He comes daily in the sacrament of the holy Eucharist and is really present to us, and in us, as we receive his body and blood and as we worship him in the Blessed Sacrament. And still, we wait eagerly for yet another coming at the end of time.

Advent celebrates all of these manifestations of the Lord’s coming among us—past, present and future. It inspires in us a profound sense of thanksgiving (which is what “eucharist” means). But it also gives us a genuine sense of the hope that allows us to endure the sufferings and trials of the present with confidence in the joy that is to come.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote about the two great figures who dominate the Scripture readings during the season of Advent. Mary, the mother of Jesus, and John the Baptist, the last great prophet and forerunner of the Messiah, teach us by their words and example what it means to be patient, humble, pure and wholly obedient to God’s will. They are true Advent figures, signs of hope in a world threatened by despair.

It is fascinating to note that the Gospel readings for Thanksgiving Day (Thursday of the 34th Week in Ordinary Time) and the First Sunday of Advent both contain the same passage from St. Luke:

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on Earth. Nations will be in dismay, perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand” (Lk 21:25-28).

Jesus is telling his disciples, and all of us, to be people of hope who stand erect and raise our heads because we believe with unshakable faith that our redemption is at hand. This is the culmination of thanksgiving, hope and joy that we celebrate during this most holy time of year.

The first reading next Sunday from the Book of Jeremiah recalls these prophetic words: “The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and Judah. In those days, in that time, I will raise up for David a just shoot; he shall do what is right and just in the land. In those days, Judah shall be safe, and Jerusalem shall dwell secure” (Jer 33:14-16).

The trials and tribulations symbolized in sacred Scripture by ominous signs in the heavens and on Earth are not a cause to give up. Rather, they challenge us to increase our hope both in Jesus’ presence and in his future coming.

Christ is coming again. Let us await this blessed hope with gratitude and joy. †