In darkness, spread the light from the next tent
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On a Manresa retreat one summer, Jesuit Father Richard Buhler used an image that has resonated with me for years.
Father Buhler presented in a new way – at least for me – the image from John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”
“Jesus didn’t just come to visit us,” Father Buhler explained. “He pitched his tent among us.”
Jesus’ level of solidarity with our human condition – the fact that he would take on human flesh and live elbow-to-elbow with us in the midst of our weakness and sin – offers the tangible hope the world needs right now.
Nowhere is that solidarity and hope more necessary than in New Orleans, where a deranged man mowed down 14 holy innocents on Bourbon Street on New Year’s morning, ostensibly compelled by the unquestioned voice of his god.
Wars, poverty, hunger, hatred, racism, indifference, terrorism and suffering manifest the inscrutable futility of a broken world.
We cry out to Jesus in the next tent: “Can’t you just do something about this!”
At a recent Advent morning of retreat for staff members of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Sacred Heart Brother Ron Travers acknowledged the fractured jigsaw pieces of our lives that so often seem to be incapable of being put back together in any coherent fashion.
They just don’t fit, and it seems they never will.
“Hope for us is a tall order,” Brother Ron said. “So many think that hope is magical or wishful thinking – as if it will take us out of a situation or make something happen at our request.”
But that’s not true hope at all, Brother Ron explained.
“Hope does not take us out of situations, but it does get us through them – with determination and perseverance,” Brother Ron said.
Advent is a graced time of waiting for the Lord exactly because, he said, “it connects us with the salvation of our God who loves us and wants to be with us at all times.
“We long for our God to come because we know that when God is here, all our pieces of the puzzle of life are put together, and we will have peace of mind and heart. How good is that?”
It’s good enough to find Jesus in the next tent.
At my parish’s Mass last weekend, a missionary priest from Cross Catholic Outreach explained his organization’s work with the poor and reflected on the darkness and pain he had seen on Bourbon Street. He viewed it through the lens of the journey of the three Wise Men to the baby Jesus, asleep in the horse trough.
“These Wise Men humbly prostrated themselves, and we are told that they brought gifts to the Lord, not knowing who he was,” Father Bernard Olszewski said. “But they were open to the fact that our world is filled with miracles. And, the miracle that we celebrate this weekend is that we are a people of light, and nothing can diminish that light.
“God created a perfect world – a world of justice and harmony and peace and love. But, because we thought we knew better than God, sin entered the world, and it continues to enter in time.
“But, Jesus entered into our world. He was one like us in all things but sin so that we could see in him how we are to live in this world.”
As the three wise men of our present time would agree, our challenging mission is not to be consumed by the darkness but instead follow the light of the infant – and spread that light, one tent at a time.