What Are We Waiting For?
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Advent is a time of waiting. I pose the question: “What are we waiting for?”
Jesus the Incarnate Word of God has already come into the world. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
Br. Tim Sucher, OFM
Through Jesus, the love and mercy of our good God already reigns in our world. Through Jesus, the world has been redeemed and salvation is available to all women and men. According to St. Francis of Assisi, all of creation participates in salvation because Jesus became one with the entire created world. On the flip side, Jesus is the best way that humans can relate to the Father.
The Franciscan view on the Incarnation emphasizes the love of God enfleshed in Christ as the center of reality rather than focusing on sin. In the 14’th century, Blessed John Duns Scotus, a Franciscan scholar, was asked, “Would Jesus have come if Adam had not sinned?”
He answered, “Yes. Jesus came because the divine Trinitarian communion of persons wished to express divine life and goodness.” For that reason, the whole universe was made in the image of the divine Word, and that Word came to participate in the life of the universe as a created being, a creature, to show in a concrete, material way the form and model of all creation, made in the divine model. (Taken from Custodians of the Tradition, “A Franciscan Language for the 21 st Century,” by William Short, OFM)
However, sin seems to reign in our world today. We are experiencing huge divisions among people, wars and talk of wars. There is extreme poverty and injustice throughout the world. All one has to do is walk down our city streets and one will encounter many people who are poor and homeless. As a result of all of this, it can be difficult to truly believe that God’s love and mercy is present today.
I would like to suggest that if we were to enter more fully into the Incarnation, not only as individuals but as a Church and a nation, the world would be a different place. If we would live in the reality of God’s unconditional love, our lives, our Church and our world would be filled with love, mercy and justice.
What are we waiting for? We are waiting for the return of Jesus in order that He may establish His ultimate reign in our lives and in our world.
This article originally appeared in the December 2022 issue of The Catholic Telegraph.
Posted in: Advent and Christmas
