Fulfill your duty as a Christian pilgrim

November 30, 2003 -- First Sunday of Advent

By Bishop Robert Morneau

	Bishop Robert Morneau
	Questions for reflection: 1. How does God "come" into your life? 2. How do you prepare for the Lord's coming? 3. Have you saved another's life?

If you want to read a good "Advent" book, pick up Paul Elie's The Life You Save May Be Your Own. With great craft Elie describes the pilgrim journey of four Catholic writers, who experienced the coming of Jesus into their lives including, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy.

Near the end of her life, Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, said in an interview that ". . . she tried to treat the stranger as Christ: speaking kindly to the guests, making sure they were well fed, earning their respect" (452).

When St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians in our second reading he pleads: "May the Lord increase you and make you overflow with love for one another and for all, even as our love does for you" (1 Thess. 3:12). Day took this Advent reading and transposed it into life. Her houses of hospitality could have been called "Advent Houses" because the poor who came to them met Jesus.

Merton, a Trappist monk and prolific spiritual writer, made this claim: "Indeed we exist for this, to be the place he [God] has chosen for his presence" (403).

We have here a whole philosophy/theology of life. The reason for our being is to house God. We are called, therefore, to be open continually to the divine visitation be it by way of success or failure, well being or sickness.

O'Connor, a southern Catholic writer, died of lupus at the age of 39 but not before writing several novels and more than 30 short stories. Her experience of God's Advent involved the embrace of suffering. She wrote: "In a sense sickness is a place, more instructive than a long trip to Europe, and it's always a place where there's no company, where nobody can follow" (282). There is much truth here but not the full truth. She was accompanied by the Lord who came to her in her suffering. At another level, however, it was a deep, long loneliness because our suffering is unique and no other human being can get fully inside it.

O'Connor would surely have loved our Gospel passage for this first Sunday of Advent. It is a great wake up call as the Lord speaks about approaching anguish, fright, and destruction. Jesus was calling the people of his day to be in touch with reality. Indulgence and drunkenness and wordily cares block people from an awareness of God's comings. O'Connor's stories are filled with darkness and anguish. She maintained that when people are hard of hearing you have to shout, when people cannot see well you have to draw large and distorted pictures.

Percy, another southern writer, studied medicine but quickly turned to writing. A major concern for him was that we, in our contemporary culture, are so influenced by consumerism and hedonism that we are no longer open to "the human longing for transcendence."

Percy speaks about people who are adrift and weary of life. "Everydayness" leads to depression. The postmodern person is alienated both from others and from himself. We need a "zone-crossing," a passage into another realm of existence if we are to be authentic human beings.

Jesus came to set us free. Jesus comes this Advent, in word and sacrament and community, to end our alienation. Life is more than those long, ordinary Wednesday afternoons. Life is filled with opportunities to be instruments of God's peace and justice. By responding to our longing for transcendence and by making those "zone-crossings" (visiting a prison, working a food pantry, teaching catechism, saying "yes" to whatever the Lord asks) we fulfill our duty as Christian pilgrims.

The Life You Save May Be Your Own is worth reading and pondering. Of course, we don't save our own life - only Jesus does. But we still drive carefully because we might save the life of others and, in the process, our own as well.

(Bp. Morneau is the auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Green Bay.)