December 17: Final Advent Preparations / Prepraciones Finales de Adviento

In much the same way that the Church “amps up” the tension and intrigue in Holy Week, before we celebrate the grand Feast of Easter, she does so during this final week of the Advent season. We still await the Forth Sunday of the season, but we find that the calendar now brings us to one, final week of preparation for Christmas. 

To check out the Church’s use of what are known as “the O Antiphons” in this final week of Advent, go here: https://www.usccb.org/prayers/o-antiphons-advent

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Helping us further, the Church’s Daily Mass offers us Matthew 1, 1-17 (the account of the Genealogy of Jesus). St. Matthew’s community treasured family trees and wanted a record of Jesus’ origins, all the way back to the distant past. 

Our own times have seen a growing interest in genealogies, with more and more people researching their own family backgrounds. “Who are the people who have made us the people we are?” Each of us knows that our ancestors are an important part of our own story. They are the part of our story which is below ground, so to speak, like roots of a tree. 

Again, St. Matthew used the story of Jesus’ ancestors to throw light on Jesus’ own story. Like us, He had parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. Some of the people mentioned in Jesus’ family tree were anything but saints; all shades of human nature were mixed there. Yet it was out of that very imperfect succession of people that God brought to us the Savior of the world. 

There is still hope for us, despite the scandals that have defaced our Church and our own personal faults and failings. The Lord continues to bring good out of human imperfection and failure. We need to trust that He is always at work, even in situations that seem on the surface to be hopeless. With God, there is always hope.

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Las lecturas litúrgicas del tiempo santo de Adviento llaman nuestra atención sobre Cristo en su realidad humana: humano como nosotros en todo – excepto en el pecado, como San Pablo aclara – descendiente de pecadores, quienes, tal como recalcan los Padres de la Iglesia, incluso aparecen seleccionados, según San Mateo, en el árbol de familia de Cristo. El Evangelio nos dice bien claro que era hombre nacido de mujer, bebé en un pesebre, niño en proceso de crecimiento hacia la adultez, hombre recorriendo los caminos de Palestina, que lloró y pasó hambre, que se rodeó de amigos, que tuvo sentido del humor, que asistió a bodas… Ciertamente, Jesús fue plenamente humano, Dios en forma humana.

Oremos. “Padre, tu Hijo vino al mundo y se hizo hombre como uno de nosotros; ser humano en medio de otros seres humanos; sencillo, accesible, aunque fue también tu rostro humano y la medida de lo que debe ser una persona humana. Señor, danos la gracia de reconocernos en su espejo. En los últimos días de Adviento, líbranos de nuestro egoísmo, de nuestra cobardía, y de nuestras actitudes de conformismo, para que lleguemos a ser un poco tal como tú quieres que seamos, semejantes a tu Hijo Jesucristo que vive y reina contigo por los siglos de los siglos. Amén.”