The arrival of the first Sunday of Advent is a reminder that one year of grace and peace—the first of year of the Third Christian Millennium—has come all too swiftly to its end. Now, a new year of grace and peace—the second year of the Third Christian Millennium—is dawning. And, just as with the secular calendar—where the world marks the transition from the old year to the new year and many of us make resolutions about how we will act to improve the quality of our lives in the new year—so, too, the religious calendar gives us time to pause, to reflect, and to make resolutions about how we will act to improve the quality of our spiritual lives in the opportunities God affords us with a new year of grace and peace.

Advent is a time to pause.

For many of us, daily life is so busy and hectic that we barely have time to pause. If we’re not supposed to be here, we’re supposed to be there. If we’re not supposed to be doing this, we’re supposed to be doing that. Just as we complete Project X, we find ourselves behind on Project Y and contemplating what Project Z is going to require. Just think about the weeks during November and December. We first have to get things together for the Thanksgiving holidays and, then—if not concurrently—get things together for the Christmas holidays.

Advent is a period of four weeks to pause from the “busyness” so characteristic of our daily lives. This time provides the space we need to come to a deeper realization about what the last year of grace and peace has meant for our lives, for better and for worse.

Advent is a time to reflect.

Two experiences occurred during the course of the past two weeks that have challenged me to reflect.

The first experience occurred on Thanksgiving Day.

In my sister’s family, there’s a tradition we’ve enacted for many years. My sister first introduced this tradition years ago, calling it “thankfuls.” Basically, a couple of hours before Thanksgiving Day dinner, my sister gives each of us a stack of loose-leaf paper with each person’s name emblazoned across the top of a separate page. Our task is to write down at least one thing about which we are thankful for the person named. When we’ve finished, my sister gathers the slips, staples each person’s pile together, spies what’s written on them, and places each individual’s thankfuls on the plate assigned to that individual at the dining room table. Once we’re all seated, we read our thankfuls. Only after reading our thankfuls, do we say the blessing and, then, dig into the turkey and all of the trimmings.

This year, one thing was different. My sister wasn’t bossing and pestering us about not forgetting to write our thankfuls. No, this year, it was my niece, Gretchen—a high school senior—who took charge with all, if not more, of her mother’s bossiness and pestering. Not only has my niece inherited the strength of her great-grandmother’s, grandmother’s, and mother’s index finger, but Gretchen also was so persistent that by at 3:00 p.m., she made each of us sit down and supervised us writing our thankfuls. My sister said that my niece inherited my personality. I don’t think so, however, because of what Gretchen wrote in her thankful this year.

To set the background, in a family setting there’s nothing like a game of “ten thousand questions” especially when there’s fresh meat for the feasting. And so, following dinner the previous evening, several family members were seated around the table and engaged with my niece in a conversation about her current beau. From our interactions with him, he seems like a very nice, young man who is a hard worker in school, on the football field, and on the wrestling mat. However, further interrogation—the type only an older brother, an uncle, and a mother can administer—my niece admitted that he’s been a little more than elusive about a small, perhaps trivial matter. It may not be that the fellow is lying about it; but, it is also clear that he’s not being fully candid with Gretchen about the matter either.

So, when Gretchen said that it was “no big matter” because “he’s a nice guy” and “I like him,” I went right for her juggler. “Gretchen,” I said, “this is a matter of character. Either we are honest or we’re not, especially in a relationship. If he’s not going to be honest to you in this small thing, how will you be able to trust him in bigger things? And, if you’re willing to accept that flaw in his character now, later on you’ll only have yourself to blame because how could you blame him for something you’ve already overlooked?” Then her brother chimed in. So did her mother, saying, “Honey, that’s what dating is all about. You get to learn about someone and to see if that person’s character is what you want to make part of your life. Nobody is perfect, but unless someone is willing to work their character flaws, then it’s time to look for another person with the type of character you want to build a life together with.”

Gretchen took it all very well, I’d say. In fact, she asked if we’d interrogate her beau that evening. “No,” each of us told her, “that’s your job because it’s your life and it’s your relationship.” “Gretchen,” I said, “You have to have the courage to do the right thing.”

Now, having set the context—and fully expecting to receive something less that really thankful—here’s what Gretchen wrote to me in her thankful on Thanksgiving Day:

Dear Uncle Rich,

After growing up some more, I’m beginning to realize how noble you are. Your consistency and principles keep you ahead and “in the know.” I can see how beneficial these qualities are and I am now determined to become more mentally organized like you.

Love always, Gretchen.
 

Writing thankfuls can be a challenging task. Think about it: you’ve got to write a thankful for your spouse, kids, and in-laws. Over the years, the task becomes increasingly difficult because, after all, there’s only so much to be thankful for. Or, so it would seem until one is capable of seeing the immense wealth that is there and for which one can be thankful.

For me, the exchange of thankfuls challenges me to look at others not as experience has taught me, for better or for worse, but to look at them through the lens of thankfulness. Knowing that I will have to write thankfuls, I resolved years ago to “have an eagle’s eye” during the coming year so that I can have something new, something more concrete and personal, to write for my thankfuls. Then, when Thanksgiving rolls around—as it did once again this year—I can pause, reflect, and write something that those who read my thankfuls know that I really mean what I wrote. The exchange of thankfuls also challenges me to give my family and others reason to be thankful for me. That the real challenge: to live one’s life each day in a way for which others will be thankful.

Contrast that experience with a second occurring just this past week.

I visited an older gentleman who has had somewhat of a rough going of it. The details of his situation aren’t important. What is important is that practically every statement coming forth from this gentleman’s mouth didn’t express one iota of thanks but was filled instead with dissatisfaction and frustration.

Advent is a time to pause. It is also time to reflect. This gentleman had done both. But, what struck me is how he had grown increasingly blind over the years. It was not a year of grace and peace but one of misery, leading toward the precipice of despair. It was as if God was absent from this gentleman’s life during the past year. But, God wasn’t absent and this gentleman has very much for which he can be thankful. Try as I did, he could find nothing about which to be thankful nor was he willing to resolve to act in a way for which he would be thankful. In fact, the four times that I attempted to explain how each of his dissatisfactions and frustrations was, in reality, an opportunity to be thankful, he graciously invited me to leave.

Advent is a time to make resolutions for the new year of grace and peace that is dawning in our midst.

In a homily delivered on the first Sunday of Advent around 1980, a wise pastor by the name of Tom Fitzgerald said this season of the Church year is a time to discover all of the “jewels laying in the rough.” Advent, Fitz said, was a time to pick up, to polish off, and to behold all of those jewels.

The trouble, Fitz reminded his congregation, is that many of us choose instead to see stones, rocks, and boulders caked with muck and mire. We see only what’s on the surface and don’t scratch beneath it because we’ve already concluded that nothing of value is to be found there. And so, we cast aside what is potentially most valuable, firm in the delusion that we are completely justified to do so.

In that sense, the season of Advent is a holy time to seek healing of the blindness we have allowed to creep into our lives during the past year of grace and peace. But, it’s so easy, isn’t it, to deceive ourselves in our blindness and ensuing misery into believing…

…that only I see things as they truly are?

…that only I am right and everyone else is wrong?

…that just if everyone else would just be the way

   I want them to be, the Kingdom of God would be

   present here and now?
 

But, the proof of our erroneous conclusions emerges when we pause and reflect upon the fact that we have so little or nothing for which we are thankful. The simple truth is that we haven’t take time to pause and to reflect, to seek healing, or to amend our ways. Instead, we’ve freely chosen to turn another year of grace and peace into another year of thanklessness. We have no one to blame for our misery and despair other than ourselves.

Advent is a time to reflect upon how God has been present in our midst but we have chosen not to see God. And, where we haven’t seen the jewels in the rough—concluding incorrectly that God is absent—Advent provides time to ask God to forgive us for requiring that He to manifest His presence…as we define it. Then, full of the grace and peace that is the gift of reconciliation, we can resolve to take the pathway of thankfulness.

The season of Advent concludes as Christmas Day dawns and as we give thanks because God has become incarnate. “Glory to God in the highest and peace to His people on earth,” we sing. While God did become incarnate in a lowly manger in Bethlehem, we give thanks on Christmas Day because God continues to make Himself incarnate in this new year of grace and peace.

During this holy season—the next four weeks when the Church calendar gives us time to pause, to reflect, and to make resolutions about how we will act to make this new year one of grace and peace—let our resolve be to look for God’s incarnation in those relationships where we believe Him absent. It may be our parents and grandparents, our spouses and children, our in-laws, relatives, friends, and all of those who bother or grate against us. And, where we don’t see God, let it be our resolve to ask God to heal the self-chosen blindness which renders us capable of seeing only a grimy stone, rock, or even, boulder.

As the Gospel of Matthew suggests, imagine what would have been if only the Pharisees and Saduccees, the Jewish elders and priests, Pontius Pilate and King Herod, and yes, Judas, too, had been able to see and love in Jesus what Mary and Joseph saw and loved in him. Imagine, too, what would have been had these individuals only realized what Jesus saw and loved in them.