WE ARE now in the season of Advent. This year’s Advent officially started last Sunday. The Advent season is marked by four Sundays before Christmas. A special wreath with four candles (three purple and one pink) is prepared and placed next to the altar.
The word Advent comes from the Latin word adventus which means coming but it is also the equivalent of a Greek word, parousia which St. Paul uses and it means the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
The liturgical color for the Advent season is purple similar to Lent. This reminds us that Advent like Lent is a time for repentance or penitence. But the third Sunday of Advent is called Gaudete Sunday. Gaudete means rejoice and the priest wears the liturgical color pink to indicate that the season of penance is coming to an end and we are about to celebrate Christmas. The entire season of Advent is a time of expectation, preparation and penance. Through penance we prepare ourselves, our inner house, our hearts for the coming of Jesus Christ.
Our waiting in Advent is finite. We know that it will end in Christmas. And that our waiting will end well with joy and happiness. But most of our waiting outside the Advent season is a question of when will it end. We wait for healing when we or a loved one is sick with cancer. We wait for a child to be conceived. We wait for love and marriage to come our way. We wait for justice. We wait. This is the hardest part of waiting not knowing when it’s going to end or if it’s ever going to end.
I used to volunteer at a youth detention facility in the Bilibid National Prison Complex. Every Sunday, I went to the prison for young men under 18 years old waiting for their cases to be decided. We were allowed to facilitate catechism classes but most of the time just listen to them. Many of them shared about what it is like to wait. Many of them come from poor and broken families. Then we also visit the Maximum Prison complex where most of these young men would probably spend their sentence.
I cannot imagine to be in the state of not knowing how long you have to wait and knowing that your waiting could be as long as 15, 20, 30 years in prison. Like them we spend most of our lives sitting and waiting, hoping in our hearts for our circumstances to change or for someone to change. In the beginning the waiting is full of anticipation until we get tired of waiting. For many it becomes a hopeless situation.
Trust in God’s time! Advent teaches us the art of waiting well. If most part of our lives are to be spent waiting, let us learn to wait well. Waiting has five elements according to Henri Nouwen. It is a movement, active, patient, open-ended and hope.
Waiting is a movement. Nouwen believes that people who wait have received a promise that allows them to wait. We can only really wait if what we are waiting for has already begun for us. So waiting is never a movement from nothing to something. It is always a movement from something to something more.
Most of us think of waiting as something very passive, a hopeless state determined by events totally out of our hands. But waiting is also active that requires patience. Nouwen adds that those who are waiting are waiting very actively. They know that what they are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing. For him the secret of waiting is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun. Active waiting means to be present fully to the moment. A waiting person is a patient person.
This is why waiting is open-ended. When waiting is open-ended it allows God to surprise us. Waiting is not controlling the future but allowing God to take the wheel. And most of all waiting is about hope. Nouwen explains that hope is different from wish. When we wish, we want God to come to terms and conditions but in hope we come to terms to God’s will and plan for us.
Just wait. God is preparing a surprise for you. Great things take time to happen. Often times it is in our waiting that the greatest miracles happen.
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6