Of Celebration and Waiting

Fr. Joel E. Tabora, S.J
Institutional Christmas Party
19 December 2009.

The liturgists have tried to keep the Christmas Season and the Advent Season apart.  There are two parts to the Advent Season:  waiting for the Second Coming of the Lord; and waiting for the coming of Christmas.  There is a point to exercising ourselves in waiting.   Not everything is immediate gratification.  Not everything is granted as one wills.  The child must wait to be a teenager; the teenager must wait to be an adult.  For things beyond one’s control, one must wait.  And because one is not always in control, one does well to exercise waiting.  As in waiting for a big celebration to happen.  It has not come to pass yet.  And therefore the need to wait.  It has not been fulfilled yet.  So there is waiting.  For much, much more to come. 

But especially in the Philippines, the liturgists have not succeeded in keeping the Advent and the Christmas Seasons apart.  Notoriously, already in September, the strains of “Pasko Na Sinta Ko” and “O Holy Night” can already be heard in the media, and morning television features not  only Anthony Taberna and Pinky Webb commenting on Mayon Volcano erupting and martial law in Maguindanao aborted, but also Tita Winnie offering hysterical advice on foods we should be preparing  for Christmas and Kuya Atom suggesting gifts we could give just in case we are short on budget.  In the church, while we still wait for the fourth candle of the Advent wreath to be lit, the Simbang Gabi crowd that packs our Church already intones the Gloria, the Belen is already displayed, and the icon of the awaited Child is already bathed in warm light.   The liturgical colors purple and white toggle as waiting is undermined by celebration, and celebration is enhanced by waiting. 

There is something of this in our celebration today:  A more modest Christmas celebration as we recall the ravages of Typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng, which spared us uncharacteristically, for which we say thank you;  an unpretentious celebration in fact as we recall more than 11,000 Bicolanos at this moment evacuated from their homesites due to Mt. Mayon erupting.  Modest and humble, yes, but a celebration nevertheless, which does not commence after waiting through this Mass, but has actually already begun with it, introduced so memorably this evening by the overwhelming  strains of the Madrigal Singers.  We rejoice, thinking it would be so easy for us again to be victims of natural catastrophe, earthquake, fire or flood, yet we have been spared; we rejoice, knowing it would have been so easy for us to be displaced, uncomfortable, despondent and depressed, consoled only by Joey Salceda’s promise of Noche Buena, yet we are here in celebration; we rejoice,  convinced that in our fragile economy, it would be so easy to be jobless, or income-less, or hungry, or sick, or naked, or without a home, and yet we are here ready to party….

The call in this week’s Advent liturgy was “Rejoice, for your Messiah is near.” He has not yet come.  You must yet wait.  But it is sure that he is coming.  He is near. 

Perhaps that is what we must focus on this evening.  As the impression in the blinking lights, the sparkling tinsel and in the endless Christmas carols is that Christmas is already here, we must say it is really yet only near.  So therefore: still there is time to prepare.  Not with more food, and more decorations, and more bargain gifts.  There’s enough of that.  But still time to prepare in consciousness of a gap, a cleavage, a chasm, between our saying he is near and our saying he is here.  There is still time to enter deep down within to recall why it is we need him.  Why do we need him?  For each of us, a different life’s experience, a different point of view, a different reason, an unfulfilled need, an inner fragility, a brokenness within that does not self-heal, that leads like the Christmas star to an improbable Savior, now near.  We express this in our Psalm: “Be my protector and refuge.  Be my stronghold where I can be safe.”  Be my protector because I can no longer defend myself.  Be my refuge.  I have nowhere else to hide.  Be my stronghold.  Alone, I do not feel safe.

We are intelligent people, or so we like to think, used to a certain amount of rationality, a certain amount of control, a certain amount independence, a certain social recognition as sources of knowledge and wisdom.  For us, it is so easy to say, “This business of Christmas is all just for commerce.”  Or “This celebration of Christmas is all just for kids.”  Or, this Season’s celebration is all just for celebration.  With Santa Claus in our lives long laid to rest, Christmas too is really just a pious myth that in a secular global world needs also to be laid to rest.  So Christmas is not only “already here” with the Christmas trees, ribbons and bells.  It is passé, passed, past tense. There is no transcendent God that enters into history.  There is no God that is near.  And Christmas spirit?  Do you remember how Dicken’s described his main character, Ebenezar Scrooge, in A Christmas Carol? “The cold within him froze his old features, ripped his pointed nose, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and he spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice…”  For all that had to do with Christmas and the spirit of Christmas, he cried out, “Bah, humbug!”

In our Gospel reading, Zachariah the priest was greatly advanced in years, and his wife, Elisabeth was barren.  They had long hoped that they might be blessed with a child, but the years of waiting passed, and their youthfulness turned into adulthood, and their adulthood into old age.   Prayers of petition turned into prayers of acceptance., and prayers of acceptance turned eventually into just acceptance, while prayers degenerated into mere formulas.  The routines of life extinguished hope not just for a child one day, but hope that anything could be other than routine, that anything could be other than the same grind that was their life, day in and day out, with its manifest rationality.  In their old age, they had experienced it all, over and over again;  they knew all about everything, nothing could be different, so that there really was nothing more to wait for.  Wisdom was knowing life by rote.  Life memorized in repetition.  Life fossilized for eternity.  Life closed.  Fully explained. Finished.  Passé. 

A little bit like what happens to us who at Christmas await nothing new and in Advent have already gotten everything – used and old.  When Zachariah was told something new would happen, that Elisabeth would bear a son in her old age, that their son would break ground in preparing for the Messiah, he responded sadly with the accumulated wisdom of his old age – with cynicism. “How shall I know this?  How am I to accept this?  I am an old man.  My wife is advanced in age.”  The cynicism was not in the words, but in the tone.  “Something new happening in this life?  Something new happening to me? Bah, humbug!”  That was not faith seeking understanding.  That was understanding refusing faith:  an elderly, knowledgeable, respectable, wise old man refusing  to accept that God could do anything new, and mocking the message of the angel rather than venture away from his darkened comfort zone into the light of truth. 

Yet, God did shatter his smug complacency to work out something new.  And he worked with this old, wise, learned man  - cura personalis - in the best conceivable way:  he shut him up. He silenced him. Made him stop talking, teaching, and defining the truth.  In silence, he made him wait…   So that beyond his venerable experience and tired rationality, he could accept something new.

Rejoice, the Lord is near!  Rejoice, you brothers and sisters, you who know life so well!  Let us await…him.  Your knowledge and wisdom do not overtake his, your logic does not encompass his, your rationality does not diminish his!  Let us await… his!  Rejoice, your problems do not surpass his generosity;  your suffering does not surpass his healing, your sins do not surpass his forgiving; your barrenness does not vitiate his redeeming creativity;  your secret thoughts and your quiet despair do not leave him turned off, cold and distant!  Let us await… your Messiah, your Savior, your King – who loves you.  Rejoice, my sisters and brothers:  he is near!  He is almost here.