In the blink of an eye we are already in the second Sunday of Advent.  Preparations for Christmas are truly underway.  Christmas decorations are up in our churches, homes and in our streets.  The sounds of the season are also ringing in our ears.  It’s all happening so we say.  Christmas is arriving and who can stop it?  But who wants to stop it, right?  Given the busyness of this time of the year, Christmas will come before we know it.

Christmas will come like a fast train; the door will be open for us to hop in and then quickly take us on our journey.  Advent is that time when we are waiting at the platform for our train to arrive.  Advent gives us some time to think and reflect on what is coming.  All the necessary external preparations must be accompanied by interior reflections on the meaning of what this season is all about, otherwise we will get on that train and not know where we are going.

The readings of the season of Advent are consequently preparing for the arrival of our special guest at Christmas.  They give us little hints of who this mysterious guest is.  What will be the consequence of his arrival to the world and to us individually?  Because of hindsight we can take for granted the effect of that first arrival over 2,000 years ago, when God stepped his feet at the doorsteps of humanity.  It may do us good to restrain ourselves from thinking and talking too far ahead and cast our minds back to the time before all that happened at Bethlehem.

Someone is coming!  John the Baptist exclaims!  He refuses to give away the details of this person and keeps his identity anonymous.  He simply calls this person “someone”.  Perhaps John wants us to discover this person ourselves or maybe he also wonders what this person will do and be like.  Fr Hoang in his reflection last week said that when someone is coming to us, there is probably a mixed feeling of both anxiety and hope because we do not know how the encounter will turn out.  Hoang then posed the question: “what do we hope for?” in our guest and our encounter with him?

In the first lines of the Gospel of Mark, which we read this Sunday, he gives us hints to what we can hope for.  Mark’s Gospel simply but eloquently starts with the words: “the beginning of the Good News about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  This first sentence sums up the rest of the book and at the same time invites us to discover who this person is in its subsequent pages.  Mark tells us that this person is of divine origin and coming to bring us Good News.  More importantly, the story Mark tells is only ‘the beginning’, that means it is ongoing.  It doesn’t stop at that first appearance.  John’s ‘someone’ is coming to set us free from the captivity of what Mark’s Gospel often labels as “demonic possession”, or as Brendan Byrne explains “forces and compulsions over which they had no control – transpersonal forces that robbed them of freedom of choice, stunted their human growth, and alienated them from God, from life in community, and from their own individual humanity.” (Brendan Byrne, “A Costly Freedom: A Theological Reading of Mark’s Gospel,” (Strathfield NSW: St Paul’s Publications, 2008), Introduction, xii).

The first reading from Isaiah gives us another hint to the character of this special guest coming to us at Christmas: “a shepherd feeding his flock, gathering lambs in his arms, holding them against his breast and leading to their rest the mother ewes.”  This, and the gospel, already give us plenty to reflect upon the joy coming our way at Christmas.  The Church gives us four central themes for our contemplation in our time of waiting for the arrival of the One who is to come: Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love.  I suspect we should expect nothing less than something of each of these four qualities from the mysterious guest this season of Advent calls us to wait and prepare for.

Personally, these four qualities sum up my weekend of Ordination and Mass of Thanksgiving two weeks ago.  I’ve been overwhelmed with the love and joy shown me from parishioners, friends and family at the Ordination which marked the beginning of my ministry as sharer in Christ’s shepherding of God’s people.  I felt a deep sense of peace at my Mass of Thanksgiving as I looked around the church.  Your supportive and loving faces are, for me, the presence of God which offer me a sense of deep peace.  Fr John Salvano’s last words in his homily instils in me a sense of hope for the future: “Tien, may the love of Christ, which has carried you to this day, continue to urge you on, and may the good work God does in and through you continue to its fulfilment.”

As I’m reflecting on what happened on those two days, 25 & 26 November 2023, I’m grateful for the love, support and prayers you have shown me.  In a sense life continues, and those historical events will surely fade away.  Yet, they are important memories that become part of our lives and will remind us of God’s love for us whenever we visit them.  God’s love is historical.  It is the thread that knits our individual stories.  May the hope, peace, joy and love we experience during the days of this joyous season make us a little bit more grateful to the ‘Mysterious Someone’ who we are waiting to meet.  And let us pray that our grateful hearts will turn into service bringing hope, peace, joy and love to those who are waiting to meet us.

By Fr Tien Tran

Published: 8 December 2023