IT HAS been said a number of times that Advent is about the coming of the Lord. But I hope that much emphasis will also be given to the importance of reflecting who we are and what we become as we wait. I have said in a previous column (last year that was) that Advent is a "very human" season in the liturgical calendar because it highlights one human reality: 'waiting.' Existence is about waiting from birth to death.
How we wait speaks loudly of who we are. If you want to know the character of a person, let him wait. Waiting reveals to the world our excitement but also our impatience. In waiting, there is hope but also anxiety. In it, there is love but also fear. It can unite people but it can also make them panic and end up divided. Waiting makes transparent those who are humble although this goes with a warning to also be cautious with those whose patience is actually nothing but plain political or self-interest.
Advent in a year of pandemic is doubly significant. We are reminded of the world's unpredictability and impermanence which yet we have no choice but to live in because of our calling. Though Christian faith is a profession of hope that salvation will come but, and let's admit it, in the real world, waiting is in many ways tied to frustration. The experiences we've been having since March are powerful reminders of our many inadequacies and inabilities despite all the grand claims of human achievement.
If there are people who should first and foremost learn from this year's life lessons, it must be the so-called forecasters and analysts. The forecasts and predictions of those who'd love to say "this and that" about the future of many probabilities (from politics to fortune) lacked a variable that was beyond their analytic power. Life is telling us that the world does not belong to us, rather we belong to it. This, sometimes, leads me to think that though we need a certain degree of analytic grasp to make sense out of this life, but life has its way of communicating to us, and this we must pay attention to.
There are many things that we have to wait for a while. But there are also some things that we have to wait, in patience, for a lifetime. These are those that we cannot understand immediately most especially if we are still in a messy situation. These are things that we will eventually understand and only in hindsight. This kind of experience also needs waiting, and thus patience and also hope. Some of the things we wait are even without the assurance of an arrival. Nonetheless in hope we live and move, and have our being.
Finally, some words on "moving on." We are getting close to the end of the year. The choice is on us whether we should close it or not. For all the problems and lapses that were encountered, it is important that we should decide to continue and move on. We cannot remain beholden to the pandemic forever. Even without the vaccine, we have to make a choice on what to do with our life as we close this chapter of the year.
The failure to move on is worse than the virus. It is more constraining than all the lockdowns imposed by the government. One way to do this is to acknowledge the fact that the failures that happened were not our fault. And even if those failures were so evident, still they cannot be the basis for the definition of our lives more so in a post-pandemic world.