Several years ago, I had the opportunity of traveling to the Holy Land (not Ireland, but Israel!), with a group of priests and seminarians from Rome. For those who have gone, you know what an unforgettable experience it is. Later, at home, when you hear the places mentioned where Jesus visited --- The Sea of Galilee, the Mount of Olives, Jericho --- all take on a new significance when you have seen and visited the places. One of the remarkable discoveries is the size of the Holy Land – how small it is, especially Jerusalem --- the very center of the drama of human history. It is a little more than three thousand feet from wall to wall. Here is the Golden Gate of the Palm Sunday entrance; a few minutes’ walk and one stands at the place of crucifixion. Over to your right, just a short hop across the Kidron Valley, is the Mount of Olives.
This is where God made all things new.
The exciting “newness” of the Incarnation of Christ is not found in the perpetual, and finally futile search for novelty, but in the renewal of the routine world --- in the surprises of our taken - for –granted world.
When, in the fullness of time, God acted decisively for the world’s salvation, he did not create a new nation worthy of receiving his visitation. He came into the world through the same nation whose own people had often grown weary of waiting. Most of the Jewish people, far from living in heightened expectation of the Messiah’s coming, had more or less given up on the whole idea. Again and again, we read in the Hebrew Scripture how the children of Israel were fascinated by the exotic religions of the nations that surrounded them. We are told that they went seeking after foreign gods and strange cults, for these provided a novelty and excitement that was lacking in the dusty old promises that the Lord had long ago made to Abraham.
Picture the old man, Simeon and an old woman, Anna, in today’s Scripture. Scripture tells us that they both waited and waited and waited. The hope never died; the expectation stayed alive.
Some of us live to be entertained by television, videos, and the internet, 24/7. But the business of enriching our human relationships and keeping them filled with hope and promise is not a matter of being entertained. It is a matter of being committed. We hear people talk about how the “the magic” has gone out of their marriage or out of friendship. They become bored; they have seen it all before. The same jokes, the same habits, the same complaints, become tedious. They must wander off to some new marriage, new friendship, some new distraction, to keep themselves amused.
The Incarnation reaffirms the mystery of the human community. Until we have discovered him in a spouse, a child, in a parent, in a friend, we have not really begun to discover the people we think we know best. Then we discover the secret face of the Lord Jesus Christ in the ordinary faces of our brothers and sisters.
God bless! Have a wonderful week!