Soon calendars will appear in our newspapers indicating how many shopping days remain before Christmas. The frenzy, if not too hot before then, will begin in earnest. As the days diminish in number, the pressure to make all things ready, to have everything done continues to rise. Into this pressure cooker, John the Baptist appears-bold, loud and energetic. We all know that Advent is the time of waiting, the waiting for the coming of the Lord, for the flowing of the tree of Jess, for the dayspring to come from on high.
Advent is also the time for the church to be the church.
Reflected in the call of the old testament prophets we read this season, Isaiah, Micah, Baruch, Zephaniah, his is a call to you and me for all of humanity to grow in awareness of the gift of living as the body of Christ, those called out to be something special living in the Spirit of Jesus. This growth does not happen all at once, not even in one Advent, but gradually over the years, it comes. This time of waiting, this gestation period, is a gradual growing into openness to the revelation of Jesus Christ already present in our midst. Some years ago I read a book entitled, Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism. The author of this book is a professor of theology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.