On His first advent
He was wrapped in swaddling clothes
and laid in a manger,
on his second coming
He will be clothed in light
as in a mantle.

(SAN CYRIL OF JERUSALEM)

Waiting is a companion of movement: it is a waiting without giving in to laziness and immobility, or without letting oneself be taken up by frenetic external preparations. I am speaking of a movement often unperceivable by the naked eye, a dynamics of interiority different from intimacy. It is such an attentive and delicate preparation, as it may not submerge the awaited person into the tangle of noisy and sometimes empty preparations. The comprehension of events, of their sense, depends also on the time we dedicate to it, seeking healthy forms of stopping and planning. Silence has a relevant importance: I think that it is the main ornament of our man hidden in the heart. In this rubric, several times we have shared the desire for a healthy and deep silence at the root of every journey in search of the truth.

I wish that our preparation for this Christmas were like this, so that it may have the sense it deserves. It is not the almost ritual sentence, which we take for granted, «Christmas is not important because of exchanged gifts”, when the attention paid to the gifts absorbs much of our waiting and joy. We must try not to fall into the resignation of the routine and look for motives to wonder of something else, in the awareness that the gestures, rites and celebrations will always be the same.

Like the rose

A plant has filled me with stupor! I wish to associate it to each one’s spiritual life: it is the rose of Jericho, the so-called plant of the resurrection. It is apparently lifeless, and becomes a dry cocoon in unfavourable circumstances, but it lasts long and prepares itself for life. Once set in contact with water, it opens its branches fully and acquires a woollen green colour, assuming a completely different aspect.   

Many legends are associated with this plant and the most diffused legend narrates that Virgin Mary, on her way to Nazareth, quenched her thirst with the water contained by the heart of the rose and, grateful to that plant, she blessed it and gave it eternal life: this is almost a paradigm of the life of the believers. We screw up on ourselves; sudden storms of wind toss us, thus we run at a speed superior to the energies we possess, and our beauty hides in all this, but the encounter can definitively transform us. The visit of the woman from Nazareth changes the destiny of the Jericho rose: water gives the original beauty back to her! Meeting Mary means our possibility of access to water forever.

Paradoxically, this depends also on us, on our desire of opening ourselves to history, on the awareness of a kairòs that we must recognise, safeguard and cultivate. It is the attitude that helps us to avoid the risk of putting within brackets the more or less serene awareness that we are always suspended between an “already” and a “not yet”. Just like that rose, we wait for water and pronounce the words of that woman from Samaria. «Lord, give me some of that water» (John: 4,15).

Fetching water from new wells

Listening is an important way to know oneself, valid for every human relation as well as for the relation where, in faith, we are at home with the Lord (2 Cor. 5, 6-8).

Only after the dialogue and an active listening, the Samaritan woman ran to manifest to others the wonder of her encounter (See John, 4, 29). There is not even the shadow of humiliation or moralism in the dialogue between Jesus and the woman, there is no lie! Jesus asked her to let him drink and led her to self-knowledge in a new perspective (See John 4, 13-15). The fetching time is a time of doubts, of clashes, of painful evaluations, but also a time to depart again. Sometimes before fetching we need patience do dig out in unexpected places and to find out that there are more possibilities.

None of the phases that we live is deprived of sense, but it is of vital importance to question ourselves. It is important to give a name to each thing, just as Isaac did near Gerar, where he persisted guarding the old wells of father Abraham. Only after his confrontation with a history of conflicts and quarrels he reached the new well Recobot (which means large, “spacious”), built up an altar and fixed his tend (See Gen 26, 22).

The surprising unity of the Word in the Scriptures allows the believer to identify dimensions that look like structural characteristics of man. According to the story, Isaac had to set on a journey because his relation with the people that hosted him was at risk. It was a relation apparently wounded by the envy of the Philistines, «Abimelech said to Isaac, “You must leave us for you have become much more powerful than we are” (Gen 26, 16).

In reality, Isaac had been cunning –as his father was- lying about his relation with Rachel (Gen 26,7). When he accepted to take a different form before the other, establishing the distance without exasperating the conflict, he noticed that the Lord was by him and blessed again (Gen. 26, 24). Then Isaac was able to fetch more water in free spaces (Gen 26,32s). He learnt the way of not giving in to the delirium of omnipotence: he learnt the way to subtract himself and to go into the deep.

Every human being happens to understand the limits of situations, but often the contrary happens, that is, the wilful sense of pride makes persons stubborn and rigid, thus water cannot be found, “Omnipotence here means that man does not accept the limits of his condition”.

Omnipotence consists in abandoning the human condition in order to have an access to what one is not, to become god, to go on without God, considering oneself as God”. [1]

Between Bethlehem and heaven

God becomes a child, in an altogether different perspective: hope starts again from little ones. Child is also synonym of vulnerability, and Bethlehem reminds it to us even today. His impoverishment makes us to see the fruit of devastation on behalf of strong powers. Yet, many do not know anything about the communities crushed by the delirium of omnipotence of others, “Every power is violence on men; the time will come when the power of Caesar and any other power will be no more. Man will enter the kingdom of truth and justice, where no power will be needed”[2]

In the liturgical celebrations, the Church suggests us not to forget that the temptation of omnipotence is in the heart of every single person. This is why the word “to watch” recurs frequently during the preparation for Christmas. Vigilance allows us to be awake in order to prevent the currents from dragging us. However, the most beautiful aspect of being awake is that of leading us to the delicacy of relations, to the transfiguration of the heart, cautioning it against the temptation of becoming a stony heart (Ezekiel 36, 26). It is the matter of a life-style, which is a gift of grace, but also fruit of the awareness that we are pilgrims towards a new scenario (1 Cor 5, 1-10), and wait for the revelation of God’s children (See LG 48). The Bible leads us to an interiorisation rich in meaning, and being awake is the fundamental attitude of the believer. Awake is the man who waits and commits himself trustfully to a changing world, though he knows that the scene of this world will pass, because He will transfigure our mortal body (Phil. 3, 20-21).

Waking is not only a mental state: it is a way of living, of cultivating the waiting. This helps us in non making ourselves absolute and to welcome with realism the flare of newness in the very opacity of historical scenario, as the prophet says, “Sentinel, how much of the night is left?” and the sentinel answers, “The morning comes and then the night comes, if you want ask, ask, convert yourselves, come!” (Is 21,11-12). We must cultivate the desire of going back to Bethlehem in order to remember heaven. This is a paradox that Jesus himself lived in his human and yet perfectly divine life! Remaining between Bethlehem and heaven and being present: «Let us not limit ourselves to meditate on the reading of His first coming, rather let us live in function of the second one».[3]

The sense of Advent is also a discovery of the humble co-operation that the Lord has handed over to us for the birth of a new world. Humble because it is rooted in the life of the little ones on earth (Mt 25, 45), and built up on the fundamental vocation of everybody and each one: the vocation of love (1 Cor 13). Therefore, it is deeply rooted in the humus, but with eyes looking beyond.

Going down into the heart

Many night road accidents, which the newspapers speak about, and many family conflicts ending in tragedies are fruit of an unhealthy attitude towards life. Let us think of huge strategic choices, which end off in massacres of entire populations! We cannot present the journey towards Bethlehem and our preparation for Christmas as simple folklore, rather they must lead us to a deep reflection. It is good to nourish questions that may help us to grow and to beware of escapes built up at table: the obsession of a carrier, the image of an immaculate and always young body, the public reputation, abundant and easy money, etc. These are all palliatives against the awareness that we are not God.

Yet we are made to His image, «teach us to count up the days that are ours and we shall come to the heart of wisdom. Come back, Yahweh! How long must we wait?» (Psalm 90, 12-13). Counting our days is a freeing exercise because it disposes us to a new consideration of history.

The masters of spirituality teach us that prayer is an ocean of re-generation, where the encounter with the Lord’s mercy allows us to live a kind of on going transfiguration: we must question, but also entrust ourselves not to fall into desolation. When the pilgrim goes to the   starets, in order to understand the practice of everlasting prayer, the master says to him, “They have granted you to understand that neither the wisdom of this world nor a mere desire of knowledge can lead us to the heavenly light of everlasting prayer. On the contrary we can find this in the poverty of spirit and in the active experience of a simple heart”.[4] In the journey towards Bethlehem, we must not miss the dimension of research, of trust and of praise.

Prayer helps us not to remain cardiolesi and solicits us to discernment, «I prayed and understanding was given me: I entreated ad the spirit of Wisdom came to me. I esteemed her more than sceptres and thrones; compared with her I held riches as nothing» (Wisdom 7,7-8). As Salomon did, we, too, must invoke, search and recognise wisdom, because, «Although she is alone, she can do everything; herself unchanging, she renews the world and, generation after generation, passing into holy souls, she makes them into God’s friends and prophets» (Wisdom 7, 27).

The contemplation of the Nativity of Jesus is a memory of Wisdom that has assumed the human nature, and in this wonderful exchange (Leo the Great), it renews the invitation to revive the awareness of life as a journey. In the silence of watching, we understand the urgency to build up the grammar of the dialogue that makes peace and justice to germinate, as visible signs of the earth that opens to heaven. «…It was not their own sword that won the land, nor their arms which made them victorious, but your hand it was and your arm, and the light of your presence, for you loved them» (Psalm 44,4).

Antonietta Augruso
Lecturer of religion
Via Eurialo, 91 - 00181 Roma

[1] S. PACOT, Torna alla vita, Queriniana, Brescia 2003, 85.

[2] M. A. BULGAKOV, Il maestro e Margherita, Newton Compton, Roma 2009, 28.

[3] «Dalle Catechesi di S. Cirillo di Gerusalemme, vescovo», quoted in Liturgia delle Ore, I, 139.

[4] 4 racconti di un pellegrino russo, Rusconi, Milano 1977, 30.