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NOW JOHN was clothed with camel's hair, and had a leather girdle around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey. And he preached, saying, "After me comes he who is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." [Mk 1:6-8]

Artist: Victor Luciano Rebuffo

(1903-1983)

Buenos Aires, Argentina

GOSSAMER POSSIBILITY ^_[1]

SIGN OF DELICACY

1. Tiny things are a sign of delicacy, even fragility. A little dandelion seed floating in the air can be tossed anywhere. Perhaps the seed will come to rest in the rich soil of a newly tilled garden. Just as likely, it could be permanently entombed in the melting tar of a hot roadway. A tiny spider floats on a spun, gossamer thread. It, too, must risk drifting toward the shelter of shrubbery or onto the windshield of a passing truck.

2. The wind, blowing this way or that, often determines the life or death of small creatures. Mans perception of creaturely superiority often obscures his own marked fragility. The marks of human prowess--a large brain, the lithe coordination of fingers and thumbs, upright posture, and the remarkable gift of language--cannot obscure man's vulnerability nor can they spare him from the vagaries of nature, especially the experience of death.

MIRACLE OF REGENERATION

3. The house of David and Solomon had been cut off at the root by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, who drove the captive Israelites by forced march to Babylon. Though freed from exile after many decades, the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem never recovered fully from this devastation. Isaiah prophesies that the ugly, even grotesque stump of the House of David will birth a tender shoot. Defying the laws of death, the bud will grow and blossom.

4. Other astonishing spectacles will testify to the miracle of regeneration: the wolf co-existing with the lamb and the child playing by the cobras den. [cf. Isa 11:6] Our all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-powerful God has graciously willed [cf. Lk 10:21] delicacy and fragility to be the environment in which the Gospel invitation is made. Strikingly, Almighty God places himself into the hands of man and his free will. Any one person in this elaborate and delicate scenario could have said no. King David, Mary, Joseph, the Wise Men, the shepherds and the disciples were free to reject God's Gospel plan of salvation.

LOVE, NOT NEED

5. God himself wills--out of love rather than need--to become dependent upon the human creatures assent to faith. Our acceptance is the key by which we enter the Kingdom of God: "For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it." [Mt 13:17] God has entrusted the custody of his mystery and message to the safekeeping of merest children [cf. Mt 10:25-26], those adults who nurture a child-like soul and to real children.

6. These are the heralds of the mystery and message of God's hidden glory. Heed the message of Christ: "You will not see me until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" [Lk 13:35] You have the freedom to answer yes or no, writes James the brother of the Lord, "but let your yes be yes and your no be no". [Jas 5:12]

MYSTERY AND MESSAGE

7. The Kingdom of God, however, does not offer anyone the luxury of neutrality as Our Lord himself testifies, "So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth." [Rev 3:16] With all the delicacy and fragility of the tiny spider, God extends a gossamer possibility into the world. [cf. 1Kgs 19:12] Launching himself into the tumult of human life, Our Lord seeks a home in every human heart. The mystery and message are at the heart of the Church's mission of evangelization.

8. Missionaries sail on a tide of hope and expectation. Tossed about on a sea of vicissitude and exigency, they seek to establish a temple for the fragile gospel in the soul of every man and woman. Dare to be a bud which blossoms on the stump of Jesse. Dare to surrender to God in thought, word and deed. Dare to grasp the thread which trembles before you: "The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit." [Jn 3:8]

CONCEIVED BY DIVINE DECREE

9. Choosing for God means surrendering completely to God. By making of himself an offering of love to God, man makes possible his most tender and poignant act of surrender. He who loves God will sacrifice everything, including his very life, for the God who loves him. By creating man, God revealed his love from the beginning. And he proves it anew with by ordering the conception of every human being.

10. Among all the conceptual possibilities that present themselves at the moment of fertilization, God wills one human being as necessary, and thus a unique and irreplaceable child is conceived by divine decree, empowered by our Creator for birth, and given a unique destiny that intends the perfection of his humanity in union with God's will. From the moment of conception, every human being is oriented to God on a path of love that threads its way through a prejudicial, even malevolent world broken by sin.

KINGDOM CITIZENSHIP

11. If one were to abandon the path of love to God, he enters impenetrable darkness and a labyrinth of suffering--"I am utterly spent and crushed; I groan because of the tumult of my heart. Lord, all my longing is known to thee, my sighing is not hidden from thee. My heart throbs, my strength fails me; and the light of my eyes--it also has gone from me." [Psa 38:8-10] Spiritual blindness is remedied by contrition and humility, enabling a penitent to see the Spirit of Truth with eyes of faith. [cf. Jn 14:17]

12. With direct intervention and a trusted guide--the Lord Jesus Christ, the Spirit of Truth, or a steadfast and courageous apostle of faith--the contrite and humble penitent returns to the path of love, the truth that frees, and the life of the world [cf. Jn 14:6]: "And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not pass over it, and fools shall not err therein." [Isa 35:8] As a lover of God, one advances in the spiritual realm while he discerns the world. His first citizenship and unceasing allegiance is to the Kingdom of God, most perfectly manifested by the Church in this imperfect world. The disciple of love allows God to lead his human spirit, to develop his human wisdom, to call forth his human goodness, to treasure his creaturely body, and to direct all of his intentionality and activity to the welfare of the spiritual kingdom.

TO HIS SAVING CROSS

13. The Father entrusts the mission of man's salvation to the Son. Christ Jesus, God's son, gathers all men to himself as a groom would his bride. Our Lord leads his bride to the Father and makes a home for her in the heavenly Jerusalem: "Lift up your eyes round about and see; they all gather, they come to you. As I live, says the Lord, you shall put them all on as an ornament, you shall bind them on as a bride does" [Isa 49:18] and "Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure-- for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints." [Rev 19:7-8]

14. The leadership of Christ is two-fold. Consider that Jesus Christ proceeds--as the new Moses and the new high priest [cf. Heb 4:14-15]--at the head of his pilgrim people guiding them to their heavenly homeland. [cf. Heb 11:14] Our Lord leads us, not to Mount Sinai in the desert, but to his saving cross. He guides us through our temporal existence into spiritual reality. True God and true man [cf. 1Jn 5:20], Jesus Christ leads his people into the spiritual kingdom. He conquered death that his bride could trample death in the passage from life temporal to life eternal. Because Our Lord loves the spirit and flesh of the human creature, he redeems all men in the fullness of human personhood.

BE HOLY AS GOD IS HOLY

15. Further, consider that Jesus Christ protects the members of his Bride as a shepherd protects every lamb. Christ's love is personal and intimate for all who acknowledge his sovereign rule in their lives. The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ commands all who freely give their love to Christ to accept his headship over the totality of their lives--families, work, recreation and religion. We advance far in the spiritual life if we accept as our model and exemplar the gospel way of life of Jesus Christ. What does the Lord require but to be holy as our heavenly Father is holy? [cf. Mt 5:48] For a great chasm separates the true servant of Christ and the vacillator who loiters about salvation's periphery.

16. Make no mistake, to the last man, woman and child, Christians are called to spiritual perfection, for God clothes himself in holiness for the sake of his glory and man's salvation. Christ pleased his Father who transfigured his countenance like the sun and his garments like light. [cf. Mt 17:1-2] Thus the man who chooses not to clothe himself in holiness covers himself with darkness. How then can he expect to be recognized by the Father's Beloved in the hour his spirit departs the flesh and presents itself for personal judgment? [cf. Eph 2:12-13] The Lord Jesus will not save those whom he does not know. [cf. Mt 7:21-23]

ALL-ENCOMPASSING ATTRIBUTE

17. When contrite and humble persons consent to clothe themselves in holiness, love and all other spiritual gifts are ordered to God's justice, that is to say, rendering to others what God wills as their due. We cannot cling to our old ways and our old selves. If anyone acts as though God were disrobed of holiness or presumes to know God's love apart from his justice and mercy, that person is prostrating himself to self-interest and aggrandizement. His idolatry will condemn him. We must be holy as God is holy: "...even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him". [Eph 1:4]

18. Created in God's image and likeness [cf. Gen 1:26], we must die to our old selves in the baptism of grace and take on the garment of our salvation. The contrite believer should tremble that mankind, awash in its own blood, could not redeem itself, and though adrift in an ocean of its trespasses, could not find forgiveness. Yet, in Christ "we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us". [Eph 1:7-8] God expects of his followers nothing less than that holiness become our all-encompassing attribute as he has chosen it for himself.

GRACE CONSISTS IN THIS

19. What man lives whose soul does not prompt him to seek deliverance from corruption, to be restored and renewed whole and entire? What man does not want his life to evidence coherence and meaning? In choosing for God, we discovers our true nature and the spiritual birthright of our freedom. Certain in the knowledge that good prevails over evil, the gift of man's potential to the service of God is manifested perfectly in the birth of a baby. The miracle of every birth is a resounding rebuke to Satan and his cohorts. No wonder that the birth of a child is honored in every culture and re-birth through baptism is revered by the Church.

20. Thus we seek the sanctifying grace God prepared before the beginning of time for those who love him and delivered to us through the redemption won by Christ on the cross. And grace consists in this, that God gives us a daily portion of the merits of his divinity by which we are perfected in his image and likeness [cf. Gen 1:26]: "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit." [2Cor 3:17-18]

^[1] Cycle B /Second Sunday of Advent /Isa 40:1-5, 9-11 /2Pet 3:8-14 /Mk 1:1-8.