Dismantled to Be Reassembled in God’s ImageRead Time 9 min

First Sunday of Advent

Jeremiah 33:14-16

1 Thessalonians 3:12—4:2

Luke 21:25-28, 34-36

Once more, it is that time of year when we are so easily drawn into musing of life’s comings and goings. Children look eagerly for the coming season of Christmas about to burst upon us, a time when all of life seems draped with colors and lights, when families and friends gather together. But it is also the beginning of a new year about to come, a time pregnant with the hopes and dreams that what had not borne fruit this past year may yet do so with the one that comes. And with it all, the turning to light as days will soon begin to slowly grow longer.

“The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill my promise,” proclaims the Advent prophet Jeremiah. It is a promise not simply for the coming of this season, but a promise when God will come with justice for all who long and work for peace.

Yet, if we look for life’s comings, these days are marked as well with an abundance of goings, of endings. The year itself drifts day by day toward its going when like all other years it will take its place on the shelf of stored memories. The calendar’s December page awaits its last and final flip. Each day, too, fades so much earlier now, stolen by a darkness that grows heavier day by day. The past season’s harvest has long been taken in, its fruitfulness now stored away, not unlike we ourselves.

If Jeremiah proclaims new days that are coming, we are also aware of how the prophets’ messages let it be known that new days always begin to take some dismantling of the current ones (as the Gospel this Sunday reminds us).

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon and the stars,” says Jesus, “and on earth nations will be in dismay … for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” It does sound like a dismantling of our lives that is about to occur, does it not?

Such dismantling, such taking leave of what had once seemed an abundance, does take place, and more than once. It is also true, however, that such dismantling often ushers in unexpected advents of God’s presence.

The fanciful and free-for-all days of childhood are dismantled by adolescence and early adulthood. We discover infatuation then and at times are unsettled by it, yet all of it is a necessary prelude to eventually discovering the wonderful beauty of true love and thinking that such love is surely God with us.

For those who marry and raise a family, the emptying of the nest eventually dismantles a life of 20 or 30 years in the making. When one is faithful to the process, the love that began the journey is there to be rediscovered, or if not rediscovered perhaps refashioned, now deeper if not more mysterious and even holy. It too becomes the unexpected advent of our God.

My father lived to the age of 85. The last 10-12 years of his life, however, were marked by growing aphasia, the growing inability to verbally articulate what one wishes to say. Over time, his gestures became his voice, and we came to understand his wants and needs and what he sought to tell us. After my mother’s death, he was able to continue living on his own and care for himself.

In time, he went to live in a small assisted living residence where the staff came to know him and were very kind to him. Whenever he began to feel he wasn’t getting enough attention, he would pack up his belongings intending to leave. One of the staff would then discover him packing. They would give him a hug and tell how they would miss him if he left. So once again, feeling loved, he would unpack and stay.

I happened to visit him on one such occasion and found him all packed. With gestures of helplessness and sadness and frustration, my father pointed to his two small suitcases and one brown paper bag — gestures I could only interpret to say, “look how my life has been reduced to these few worldly possessions.” His life that once had been so full of abundance had been dismantled.

There is for all of us a final dismantling of our lives that ushers in what we have in faith come to call the journey into resurrection. We begin life totally helpless and in need of care, and so also it is how the journey ends — totally helpless and in need of care. St. Theresa of Calcutta noted that such emptying is so much a necessity “for even God cannot fill what is already full.” It is God then who dismantles our lives bit by bit, time and time again, only so that we can be reassembled into the image of God made flesh, once again another advent of our God, only now so for all eternity.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

What are the comings and goings currently taking place in your life?

What have you learned about dealing with the dismantling times of life?