Sunday 15 December 2024
Third Sunday of Advent - Year C
In Advent the Church invites us to centre our thoughts on hope.
Purple vestments are worn – the colour the Church uses traditionally as a sign of penitence and hope.
Hope is a theme present in the background of the readings and prayers the Church uses in this time.
Bishop Stephen in his recent Pastoral Letter spoke of the coming Jubilee Year in which we are invited to be Pilgrims of Hope.
Hope is one of three foundations of the spiritual life along with Faith and, supremely, Love.
As the Bishop pointed out the Penny Catechism describes Hope as that virtue which ‘is a supernatural gift of God, by which we firmly trust that God will give us eternal life and all means necessary to obtain it, if we do what he requires of us’.
We recognise hope as being God’s gift to us and so it is more than a simple stubbornness of the mind to refuse the inevitable. It is something God gives us for this present life so that we might find our way to him in eternity. This means it is a gift which looks forward to what is to come and yet is for the here and now.
In a telling way the first Preface for Advent speaks of a hope that looks forward to the coming of Christ. It meditates how ‘we who watch for that day may inherit the great promise in which now we dare to hope’.
What does it mean to ‘dare to hope’? When we dare to do something there is always the possibility that things may not work out. Do we think that is possible – that the Day of the Lord might not come?
Our hope is based on a promise in which we put our trust. Trust is different from being certain. There is the possibility that our trust is misplaced. Even at the moment we commit ourselves to rely on God’s promise we know that there is always a chance that we could be wrong. ‘Faith’ and ‘hope’ are worthy of those names only if they squarely face the possibility of contradiction.
This is why we ‘dare’ to hope. In a world demanding proofs and guarantees we maintain a dare. In a world of health and safety that avoids anything risky we take the chance that our acrobatic leap in the dark will not leave us broken. For the world of media, hungry to find failure and eager to predict approaching collapse, we dare to hope in a promise made to us.
It is often the young who are most daring as they risk what older heads would avoid. In saying we dare to hope we reaffirm that the Church is ever young and always has the possibility of an extra spurt of growth or that extra burst of energy with which we shall bound forward.
In Advent the days are short and dark and we can feel the cold and gloom of winter snatching at our confidence. It is at times when we worry about our own future or what is to happen to our loved ones that we must dare to hope. When sickness seems ready to overwhelm us or financial difficulty is a mountain impossible to climb, it is at this moment that we must be our most hopeful.
These are great days to be living as members of a Church that dares to hope. The solid certainties of knowing what is going to happen deaden the heart and dull the imagination. To dare to hope is to let our thoughts touch on wild possibilities and to notice out of the corner of our eye that miracle of God’s presence which changes everything.
The Preface speaking of our hope is echoing a line in the Scriptures. The book of Lamentations (a title which we might think takes us far from hopefulness) says ‘Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: the unfailing love of the Lord never ends’ (Chapter 3 verse 21).
Our hope is in love. Our hope is in a love that is beyond the feelings of our own hearts that waver; burning brightly one moment and then flickering another. Our hope is in a love that never ends – God’s love for us.
Amidst the clamour of those who offer so many ideas of how we should live there is the message of the great prophet of Hope, John the Baptist. He invites us to place our trusting hope in the one whose sandals we are not worthy to undo.