The earth rejoices

From time to time, people will ask me for advice about how they should pray.  If I am speaking with children, I might suggest that they learn the Lord's Prayer, or the Hail Mary, but if I am speaking with an adult - one who has already learned the rote prayers that are part of the Church's traditions - I might explain prayer as a discipline of spending time with God.  Sometimes we use words, but at other times, we can simply be with God.  Spiritual masters refer to this wordless presence as meditation.

The third Sunday of Advent is known as the day of great rejoicing, or Gaudete Sunday.  The words of the scriptures provide us with an abundance of images upon which we can meditate in these coming days.  In anticipation of the coming of the Lord, the prophet Isaiah says: The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom (Is 35:1).  Anyone who has visited Israel will know that some parts of that country are a vast desert where there is less than 100mm of rain every year.  In recent years, there have been severe droughts.  As a result much of the land is dry, yet Isaiah's prophecy foretells a time when even the dry land will rejoice and blossom.  At the time when these words were written, human beings did not possess the technology needed to make this happen.  Even today, while our understandings of the science of irrigation have advanced greatly, we still can marvel at the way God continues to work in people's hearts, helping us to identify the need for sharing our knowledge with others in order to make it possible for miracles to happen.

Today's gospel passage presents yet another image for our meditation.  From his prison cell, John the Baptist heard about the deeds that Jesus was accomplishing and sent some of his followers to inquire about whether Jesus was the one they were waiting for (cf Mt 11:2-3).  Jesus did not answer clearly; instead he pointed to the things that he was doing as proof: Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them (Mt 11:4-5).  Who else, except for God, could make such miracles come true?  Even today, if we were able to see the world through the eyes of faith, we would also find these things to be taking place in our midst, but in order for this to happen, we need to cultivate hearts that are able to step away from the frantic pace of always needing to get things done so that we can begin to appreciate such miraculous happenings.

Perhaps in the coming week, we can begin by asking God to grant us the grace to recognize the miracles that are taking place all around us, but first we need to rely on yet another of his gifts.  The letter of James, from which we read today, suggests that we should be patient ... until the coming of the Lord (Jas 5:7).  Patience is also a gift from God.  Without it, none of our efforts will amount to anything, but with it, we too will be able to accomplish amazing things.