18 Dec 2016
4th Sunday of Advent, Year
A
God wants to know us personally. That’s been said many times in Scripture, and
it’s been the cornerstone of the Church’s spiritual life since forever. God wants to know us personally, and he wants
us to know him personally: our human nature in sync with his divine
nature. Jesus even goes so far as to
call his disciples his brothers and sisters, and his friends. There’s a personal connection we’re meant to
have with God.
Nonetheless, the Lord is still the Lord. He is the King of Glory; he is Emmanuel; he
is the Son of God. And so, our
relationship with the Lord is a little complicated. We’re meant to be his friends; we’re meant to
be intimate with him, and bare our souls to him. And yet, at the same time, we’re not equal to
him; he is far greater than we are.
And so, what we end up with in our relationship with God is
not only friendship and intimacy; we also an alliance with him; an alliance and
an allegiance. God becomes the one whom
we trust with our lives. And we can understand
the idea of that.
When you’re going through a rough patch—maybe there are
financial problems, maybe the kids decided to be atheists, maybe you’re just
generally frustrated—when we’re going through a rough patch, what do we turn
to? Food? Work?
Sleep? Prayer? The internet?
When life gets tough, we turn to whatever takes our mind off it for a
while.
We know where to go for comfort or support; we turn to our
allies. For a lot of people, food is a
tasty ally. Or sleep is an ally that
helps us to escape. Of course, if you
really want to get away from troubles, the internet is a great ally; you can
get totally distracted there. When life
gets tough, we turn to our allies—and we know who and what those allies are.
The trouble, of course, is that our allies aren’t always the
best choice. That was the problem with
Ahaz, the King of Judah. When he was in
trouble with the King of Israel (and his fellow Jews), he turned to the enemies
of the Jewish people; he turned to the Assyrians for help. Now, God had said to Ahaz, “I’ll be your
ally; ask me for a sign.” But Ahaz
trusted more in the Assyrians than in God, and so he rejected God’s offer. Ahaz survived, but he ended up being a slave to
the Assyrians. Ironically, his trusted
ally turned out to be his conqueror.
And that’s perhaps a danger in putting all our trust in other
things or people or ourselves, and not in God.
God has no interest in conquering us, but all those other allies we make
for ourselves—those may actually end up conquering us. And then our allegiance may not be to God at
all, but to those other things. And if
it got to that point, we’d have to question if we are actually a people of
faith. We’d really have to wonder if
it’s true that “in God we trust.”
If there’s one thing that connects all the lives of the
saints, all the lives of “holy” people, it’s that alliance with God built on
friendship with the Lord. And it’s an
alliance that a good portion of the population out there sees as silly, as
foolish, as uneducated. But, you know,
it’s the foundation of what we’re about as Catholic Christians. Our allegiance is to: an unseen God, a God
who died a humiliating death on a cross, a God who sometimes appears weak and
impotent. That’s our ally: our friend
the Lord.
As Americans we reverence the stars and stripes. Ideally, that’s what connects us as
Americans: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and
to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with
liberty and justice for all. That’s
where our allegiance is as Americans: for the ideals embodied in the stars and
stripes.
And as Christians, we reverence Christ. He’s our one common ally, and the crucifix is
our flag. That’s what we hold up as
Catholic Christians. Whenever we’re in
procession, at the start of Mass, at the end of Mass as we go, in a procession
to the cemetery, and so on, we’re led by the crucifix. That’s why it takes a central place in the
church; we don’t tuck it away into a corner, because that’s the one we pledge
allegiance to: Christ the Lord, Christ our ally.
At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. We’re sinners, of course. As much as we say that Jesus is Lord, and
that God is our ally, we still put other alliances ahead of our friendship with
him. Whether it’s with parish decisions,
or relationships at home or with friends, or whatever we can always be better
about really trusting in our friend, Christ the King. We can always hold the crucifix just a little
bit higher in our hearts and in our minds to let him lead the way.
And Advent is certainly a time to do this; to reorient our
lives toward Christ, our one true ally, our one true and eternal friend. It’s a time, again, to say, “I pledge
allegiance to Christ the Lord,” and mean it.
And maybe that’s what makes the coming of Christmas even more of a
celebration.
In the midst of all the presents and the parties, the food
and the music, the candy and candlelight, is the realization that God really is
with us. “I pledge allegiance to” . . .
one who is here; to one who comes not just to “us,” but to “me:” to one who is
with me when I am frustrated, who is with me when I am afraid, who is with me
when I am confused or hurting. With Christmas
we celebrate God our faithful ally who is
with us.
Just like he did with King Ahaz, God comes to us—to each of
us—with an offer; an offer of alliance, protection, and guidance; an offer of
friendship. And he places that offer in
the form of the Infant Jesus lying in a manger in Bethlehem. He places that offer into our hands at Communion. What more of a sign do we need of God’s
alliance and friendship with us than the incarnation of Christ at every Mass?
God is with us; the offer is made and put into our
hands. What’s left but to accept it, and
to let the Lord really be our friend and ally, in both good times and in bad .
. . never to be parted.
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