So, due to aforementioned major transition in our lives, our family isn’t currently “part” of any parish. We’ll settle in soon enough, but for now, we’re just kind of (Catholic) church hopping around the Omaha area, basing our decisions on where to attend solely on Mass schedules that fit our fancy. Oh, sweet freedom.
Last night, to celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, we landed at a sweet little parish with the CUTEST little priest. Not relevant, I suppose, but there you have it. Anyway, I was so excited when I picked up my missalette and read the first reading for the Mass celebrating the very beginning of Mary’s life. Genesis is my favorite book in the Bible (Hence, brace yourself for more of a novel than a blog post. Fair warning.), and particularly I love the passage we meditate on during the Feast--for a couple of reasons that are super relevant today.
One is this: Advent. Waiting. I don’t know about you, but every year I start Advent really excited because I’m firmly set on saving my real Christmas jubilation for December 25 and notaminutesooner. Holding off on Christmas music, lighting the Advent wreath daily, waiting on the tree and the lights and the Santa visits (Not forever--I try not to be crazy weird about it--but I definitely wait longer than our culture encourages.), rededicating myself in prayer...I really do what I can to enter into this liturgical season because I think it’s so beautiful and it makes "actual Christmas" so much sweeter. But, then, sometime during Week 2 or 3, I go to Target. And the wrapping paper aisle and the decorations and the gifts and the Michael Buble Christmas tunes on repeat...and it just gets harder to be excited about waiting for the joy of Christmas. I want it NOW, baby!
I can blame the retail industry all I want--and truly, it probably does contribute a great deal to the difficulty of living liturgically in our culture, especially this time of year. But I think there’s something a little deeper that makes it hard for us to enter into the beauty of waiting for Christ’s birth, and that is this: In “real time,” He actually already came. We know it. We live it every day. We, the people of the A.D. years, know how the story ends. So in some sense, I think, that can make it hard for us to persevere in the waiting and preparation period that Advent is meant to be for us. We have the history on our side. We are the Easter people, which can make it hard for us to "get" Advent.
At the beginning of Advent this year, it hit me: Maybe to help myself embrace the season better, I should think about what it was like to live during the millions of years prior to Christ’s birth. And last night’s first reading reminded me of the appreciation you’ve just gotta have for those folks. In the passage from Genesis 3, we enter the story just after Adam and Eve ate the apple. Sin is here, and it’s here to stay. The first part of the reading is God’s conversation with Adam and Eve regarding what went down (more on that in just a hot second), and the second part is God’s conversation with Satan (who is, in this case, cleverly disguised as the serpent). That’s the part that interests me for the moment.
At the end of Satan’s little butt-chewing from God, God says,
“I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will strike at your head,
while you strike at his heel.” (Genesis 3:14-15)
The fancy name for God’s words here, I’ve always learned, is the “protoevangelium,” or the first proclamation of the gospel. Here, God is telling Satan, Adam, Eve, and all of us, that Jesus is coming (via Mary) to fix what has been seriously goofed up. Only, in true “God-fashion,” He doesn’t do that in a super-specific manner. Adam and Eve are left with God’s word that He will deliver them, even though they're not 100% sure how it's going to happen, giving them another chance to trust Him after they just, well, didn’t.
I heard a Bible scholar (Sri? Gray? I’m not sure who it was…) teach about this passage once, and He shared a cool fact that I had never heard before. (I swear I’m not making this up even though I can’t cite my source.) When Adam and Eve heard God say this, they actually assumed He was referring to Eve’s offspring, not Mary’s. So when their kids, Cain and Abel, came along, Adam and Eve were like, “Great! Which one of these boys is going to be our deliverer and get us back into paradise? Because not being in paradise is kind of starting to suck, comparatively.” Yikes, right? They thought that the Messiah was coming immediately, but it was going to be millions and millions of years of waiting before He did. And that’s the whole story of the Old Testament--God’s people waiting on Him to deliver them.
If you look at your Bible from the side, putting your finger in where Christ shows up, you notice that there’s a lot of pages and a lot of stuff that happens pre-Him. And all of that stuff is basically stories of people trying to (or not trying to) trust God while waiting for Him to send the Messiah like He said He would in Genesis. Mostly, they keep screwing it up at some point, but God is faithful anyway. He continues to bridge the gap, which culminates with Him sending Jesus, who is the ultimate bridge between us and God.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I skip over all of the hard-to-read-and-understand Old Testament stuff because Jesus’s (and Paul, et al’s) words in the New Testament are a little easier for me to grasp. But I probably shouldn’t do that. Because--especially during Advent--I could learn so much from the waiting people of the Old Testament.
For example: Can you imagine the joy of the people who lived at the time of Jesus and actually realized He was the Messiah? Can you believe how hard it must have been for them to do that? I mean really, without the Holy Spirit moving in the hearts of those early believers, it would have been impossible to accept, I think. Would YOU have believed it without some Divine assistance for your heart? After millions of years? And hundreds of other prophets? Would you really have accepted that He was the Savior without the Holy Spirit’s help, just basing it on your own logic? I sure as heck wouldn’t have.
Better yet, can you imagine Mary’s emotional explosion when she found out that HE--the Savior of the world--would be born of her? Her faith and upbringing had been all about waiting for THIS GUY. She probably went to the synagogue every week (Even daily, maybe? I don’t know.) with Papa Joachim and Mama Anne and heard about this Messiah that was to come. But she also knew that the waiting had been going on for dozens of generations. So hearing that HER BABY was THAT GUY was probably pretty overwhelming and unexpected and EXCITING and JOYFUL and...whoa. I bet she needed to sit down. Although, I’m sure Mary had a lot more emotional control than I do. But still. She had real emotions. And this would have rocked them.
I think sometimes our pretty little nativity sets make us forget what was really going on in the world that night Jesus was born. Those shepherds--were they skeptical? Did they talk the whole way to Bethlehem about whether or not they really saw what they had just seen? “Guys, did we just all hallucinate?” Was it awkward when they got there? "Hey...Mary and Joseph...sorry to crash your stable here...umm...you don't know us, and we don't know you...but--get this--some ANGELS told us to come here and we have no idea what's going on..." Did some of them accept Jesus immediately? Did some of them think going to see this kid was a waste of time? Did anybody wonder what the heck was going on when they realized the Messiah they had been waiting for was actually a BABY? What could a defenseless BABY do to save them? And, are you kidding me--a kid that was born into a super poor family that didn't even have a room to sleep in was going to save the world? THIS was God's answer to the age-old question of how He'd save the world? Did Herod send the three kings to check it all out because he actually knew the truth about Jesus in his heart, but refused to let himself believe it?
Bottom line is this: Jesus’s birth was big for people of the time, because of the anticipation that had been building up since, you know, the beginning of humankind. And for me, thinking about that helps me remember what a BIG DEAL Christmas is and was and always will be--and what a big deal it should be in my heart. It should ROCK me, every year, and really every day, that God became incarnate. That He delivered on his promise after so many years. That He is trustworthy and good on His Word and never going to forsake His people--and never going to forsake me. Christmas is the ultimate proof of His faithfulness.
Another quick reflection from that first reading that is super pertinent to the beginning of the beautiful Jubilee Year of Mercy that starts today: Let me preface this by saying that the reader as last night’s Mass did a truly fine job proclaiming the Word of God. Here’s the thing though, when she read the first part of the reading from Genesis--the part where God is talking to Adam and Eve about the fruit-eating situation--she read God’s words with a little bit of a “ticked off” tone. “WHY did you DO such a thing?” This is not a criticism of her any more than it is of all of us, and specifically myself. Why do we always think of God talking to Adam and Eve in a booming, mad, mean voice? Isn’t that how Satan wanted us to hear Him? As the mean, unpleasable Master? Upset with his terrible, misbehaving children, and not afraid to let it rip the minute they screw up? I think of God this way all too often when I fail Him.
But if we look a little closer, we realize that God is actually handling this situation super mercifully. (As if He could do it any other way.) He’s not impatient or gruff with Adam and Eve. He takes the time to ask them all of those questions, when, come on! Don’t you think He already knew the answers? He is God after all--He watched it all go down. And while His anger is present, His sadness is even more apparent. He knows, because He is also all-just, what Adam and Eve’s act of sinfulness will mean. For Him, it will mean separation from His children. (As a mom, I now know the pain of that is real. Ouch!) It will mean knowing that they aren’t living in the paradise and happiness He had planned for them to live in. It will mean watching them suffer. And this breaks His heart.
The only victim of his wrath is Satan. He gets really mad at the Evil, not at His kids. And before he starts doling out punishments and discipline for them, He rips Satan a new one and tells him that he’s (eventually) going down--hard! Adam and Eve get His patience, His promise of deliverance, and His protection. Sure, they also get His consequences--getting banished from the garden, labor pains, etc. (Genesis 3:16-24), and that's important to note. But read verse 21 closely, “God made tunics of skins for the man and his wife and clothed them.” God made them clothes. He knew they’d need them outside of the garden. If He was really yelling and screaming and breathing His wrath down on them, do you think He’d just stop all of a sudden to provide for their needs in this way? Further, He didn't just tell them, angrily, "And you two better figure out some way to cover yourself because it's going to be cold and awkward out there if you're naked!" HE made the clothes Himself. BEFORE He even told them about the whole banished-from-the-garden thing. He anticipated their needs and served them by performing an actual Corporal Work of Mercy in this decisive moment.
God’s mercy is apparent from the beginning of mankind's existence. And that is the focus of the next year. He’s going to allow us the freedom in our lives to not choose Him like He did with Adam and Eve, and that might mean consequences that are less-than-desirable for everyone (including Him). But it doesn’t mean He’s going to stop loving us and protecting us, and most of all providing the way back for us to rectify the relationship that He so deeply desires with all of us.
May we remember this mercy daily, knowing that it is new every morning, and may we use the next year to share this beautiful love with all of His children. He misses us and wants us to come home to Him. It’s all He’s wanted since sin entered the world and He had to let us go. He sent Jesus, and so He’s done everything He needs to do to provide the way back. Now, He simply awaits our response, and encourages us along His way. What a loving Father we serve!
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