ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHING
January 5, 2022
How do we create an attitude of expectation? In the weeks leading to Christmas, there was little effort required. Everything created expectation. Let me date myself – when I was a kid, expectation started to build with the arrival of the Sears Christmas Catalogue. Over the next week or so, I marked pages and circled items. There was a period of time when I spent more hours with the catalogue than I did watching TV or studying. How do we help create expectation beyond the usual seasons of the year? One way is our approach to scripture. This coming Sunday is Epiphany, and the traditional text associated with this Sunday is Matthew 2 – the Magi following the star. These curious astrologers eventually found the young child (Jesus was probably two years old by the time they arrived), they knelt before him, gave him gifts, and then it says they “left by another way.” It was to avoid Herod whose growing insecurity was dangerous. But I find the language to have a dual meaning – they left forever changed by the encounter. Do we read the story as a historic event, a happening locked in time? Or do we see it as a human story, one being relived over and over again? Is there an opportunity to once again feel a deep yearning to go and find, to honor and give, and to live forever changed by the experience? The second reading creates expectation… real expectation.
Even as Christmas is now in our rear view mirror, we know the call of faith to continue in the ways of Christmas. O God whose grace creates anticipation and spiritual fervor, may I feel a sense of expectation in this moment; an expectation of something amazing; an expectation of something life-altering. Amen.
