1st Week of Advent, Tuesday, Dec 5
Isaiah 11:1-10 / Luke 10:21-24
The Spirit rests upon him; He will defend the rights of the helpless.
October 23, 1945, was the day that Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson as baseball's first black athlete. Jackie's entry into baseball was not easy. Racial slurs, insults, and threats dogged him everywhere he went. One day in Boston the situation got really bad. Right in the midst of it, a southerner and popular shortstop named Pee Wee Reese, called time out. He walked over to the second base, put his arm around Jackie, and stood there for a very long time. It was a sign everyone understood and no one ever forgot. It expressed the spirit of today's reading.
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What are we doing to wipe out prejudice and whatever else threatens the rights of people who are helpless or in the minority? “He will not judge by appearance; he will judge the poor fairly and defend the rights of the helpless.” Isaiah 11:3-4
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The meanings of words change, not all the time, but more like over time. The meanings of some words changed so much that it may be surprising, and the present meanings are so different from the past.
"Awful" used to mean “worthy of awe” and in the long past it can be used as in “the awful majesty of God.” But that doesn't sound right nowadays. Today, it means something is bad or that someone looks terrible. It also means exceedingly great as in “an awful lot of money.”
Long ago, "naughty" means naught or nothing. Then it came to mean evil or immoral, then it came to mean mischievous, and then it came to have sexual connotations. Likewise, the word "innocence" may have other meanings besides naive or ignorant or immature.
Also, the virtue of innocence is often trampled upon in a social culture where winning is everything and the only thing worth measuring.
But when Jesus talks about the innocence of children, He is talking about a person's knowledge of God, and it is expressed in a life of peace and love.
Knowledge of God brings about a capacity for peace and love, and a peaceful and loving person cannot hurt or harm anyone. That is the kind of person we are called to be, because we already have the knowledge of God, we have that wisdom, we have that insight.
In this time of Advent, we go back to our innocence of heart so that we can see clearer and understand deeper. We need to understand the true meaning of peace and love in this time of Advent so that we can truly have the peace and love that Jesus came to give us.
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The olive tree is very hardy tree. It can resist drought and disease and even fire, and it can live to a great age. Its root system is strong and robust and the peculiarity is that it is capable of regenerating the tree even if the above-ground structure is destroyed. It is with this peculiarity that the 1st reading used to describe the promise of salvation for Israel - "A shoot springs from the stock of Jesse, a scion thrusts from his roots".
With that will also come about a glorious time of peace and harmony, and also of integrity and faithfulness. Yet the promise of salvation and the glorious reign of God would require patience and waiting and trusting in God's promises.
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Just like an olive tree that may take as long as 15 years to bear fruit, the glorious time of peace and harmony, and integrity and faithfulness may also take that long to come about. Yet in the meanwhile, the roots of the olive tree are spreading and strengthening itself for its growth ahead. So even if there seems to be happening above-ground, there is certainly unseen activity happening underground.
So even if we don't see it, we know it is happening. More so with God's grace, which we can't see but yet we believe is working. Yes, blessed are we to whom the mysteries of God are revealed. And more blessed are we when we believe and wait in hope and patience.
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It is those who realize their own indigence, says Jesus, who are receptive to God’s gifts. With such people, Jesus can make his new beginning, also today, in this Advent.
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Prayer
Lord our God, you never give up on people. Again and again you want to make a new beginning with us. You showed us in Jesus your Son the kind of people you want us to be. As your Spirit rested on him, pour out on us the same Spirit, that we may see our mission in life with your wisdom and insight and that we may have the strength to live as we believe and hope. Grant us this through Christ our Lord. Amen
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Saint Sabas
Feast day December 5
By the fourth century, monasteries had appeared in Palestine. Aspiring ascetics sought to be like Elijah, John the Baptist, and Jesus himself, who had found solitude in the desert east of Jerusalem. St. Sabas, a leader of that early monasticism, founded seven monasteries, three lauras and four cenobia. A laura is a settlement of hermits living in caves and huts around a church. A community of monks who live, worship, and work together is a cenobium. Sabas built well as his chief monastery, the Mar Saba, still exists after 15 centuries.
The saint dwelt in monasteries most of his life. At age eight he ran away from abusive relatives to a monastery in Cappadocia. Ten years later he went to the monastery of St. Euthymius at Jerusalem, hoping to become a hermit. But Euthymius judged him too young for absolute solitude and placed him in a cenobium nearby. When he was 30, Sabas was allowed to spend five days a week alone in the wilderness. After Euthymius’s death, Sabas finally became an anchorite, dwelling in a cave on the face of a cliff. So many monks came desiring to live under his direction that he had to establish his first monastery, which became the Mar Saba. Sabas did not give his disciples a written rule, but he expected them to follow certain basic guidelines. He did not micromanage their conduct. But he seized “teachable moments” to test his disciples’ fidelity, as he did on the occasion described in this account:
Once when journeying with a disciple from Jericho to the Jordan, this champion of piety Sabas fell in with some people of the world among whom was a girl of winning appearance. When they had passed by, the elder, wishing to test the disciple, asked, “What about the girl who has gone by and is one-eyed?” The brother replied, “No, father, she has two eyes.” The elder said, “You are wrong, my child. She is one-eyed.” The other insisted that he knew with precision that she was not one-eyed but had indeed extremely fine eyes. The elder asked, “How do you know that so clearly?”
He replied, “I, father, had a careful look, and I noted that she has both her eyes.”
At this the elder said, “And where have you stored the precept that says, ‘Do not fix your eye on her and do not be captured by her eyebrows?’ (See Proverbs 6:25). Fiery is the passion that arises from inquisitive looks. Know this: from now on you are not to stay with me in a cell because you do not guard your eyes as you should.”
He sent him to the cenobium at Castellium and, when he had spent sufficient time there and learnt to keep a careful watch on his eyes and thoughts, he received him as an anchorite into the laura. The patriarch of Jerusalem ordained Sabas in 491, and two years later appointed him head over all the monks of Palestine who were hermits. When the saint was old, other patriarchs sent him on diplomatic missions representing the church’s interests to the emperors at Constantinople. Sabas died after a brief illness in 532.
