Looking for the Lord
by Jenny Snarski
As Advent begins, the world around us has been in Christmas-mode for weeks. Consumerism and store-front glitter threatens to swallow up the sense of waiting and wonder that the Church invites us to with the liturgical season.
It is striking to see the image of a mountain from which the Lord provides in today’s First Reading and Gospel. Mountains are typically symbolic of transcendence and spirituality, of closeness with the divine. We are less likely to romanticize what it takes to climb, to decide to set out and then persevere amidst difficulties on the path, but those elements are what Advent is really all about.
“This is the Lord for whom we looked,” Isaiah states. He leads with what is promised but makes clear that the gifts of God, while always freely given, they are most fully enjoyed as the fruit of a searching desire.
Isaiah speaks of physical nourishment, but also of deeper healing – destroying death and wiping away the tears from all faces.
In the Gospel it is the healing that takes center stage first. “Great crowds came to him” with the lame, blind and deformed. Jesus cures before he feeds. He heals before he nourishes – not as a condition but in invitation to more fully, more completely receive all he has to offer.
What mountain am I called to summit this Advent? What healing would benefit me to make room for all that God wants to give me with the gift of his Son this Christmas?
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