Week 1: Tuesday

Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; The calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them. (Isaiah 11:6)

Reflection

The old joke about this passage is that the leopard might light down with the kid, but the kid won't get much sleep. We chuckle at this because Isaiah gives us an image that goes against all our experience and expectations. Take note: the kingdom of God will not be how we expect it! Assumptions about natural friends and enemies are not true in the kingdom of God. What is the modern, urban equivalent of Isaiah's pastoral image of lamb and wolf? Black and white folks breaking bread and worshipping together? A teenage delinquent and an older person sharing a cup of coffee? "The wolf shall be a guest of the lamb…"

We are fallen

by Archbishop Fulton Sheen

God certainly did not create us this way. We are fallen. All the facts support this view. There is a voice inside our moral conscience that tells us that our immoral and unmoral acts are abnormal. They ought not to be there. There's something wrong with us, something dislocated. God did not make us one way. Or rather, he did make us one way. And we have made ourselves, in virtue of our freedom, in other ways. He wrote the drama; we changed the plot. We are not jut animals that failed to evolve into humans. We are humans who have rebelled against the divine. If we are riddles to ourselves, we are not to put the blame on God or on evolution. But we are to put the blame on ourselves. We are not just a mass of corruption, but we bear within ourselves the image of God. We are very much like a man who has fallen into a well. We ought not to be there, and yet we cannot get out. We are sick; we need healing; we need deliverance; we need liberation, and we know very well that we cannot give this liberation and this freedom to ourselves. We are like a fish on top of the Empire State Building. Somehow or another we are outside of our environment. We cannot swim back into the stream. Someone has to put us back.

Source: Through the Year With Archbishop Fulton Sheen. IgnatiusInsight.com

Gospel Reading: Luke 10:21-24

Jesus said, "All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him" Luke 10:21-24

This small section of Luke's Gospel has what would be called a "very high theology" which emphasizes the divinity of Jesus.

In the story of Jesus' birth, the angel Gabriel said to Mary: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you…Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God."

Make no mistake about it. The child born in Bethlehem is not simply a great prophet…not simply a miracle-worker…not simply someone specially chosen by God. The child born in Bethlehem is the Son of God.

In our relationship with Jesus, we always have to balance intimacy and reverence. Jesus did not come for us simply to look at him from a distance. He came so that we could join intimately with him and share in his own relationship with the Father.

On the other hand, we need to be reverent. We need to be aware of who it is we are relating to so closely…whom we are joining with in the Eucharistic prayer…whom we are receiving when we take the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ at Communion.

Intimacy and reverence. I could work on both right now as I spend some time with the Lord.

Spend some quiet time with the Lord.

Advent Action

Send a card to a friend or loved one who lost a family member during this year. Let them know you are praying from them and thinking of them this Christmas.

Prayer