By Fr Dominic Robinson
‘A favourable time for the rediscovery of a hope that is not vague and deceptive but certain and reliable, because it is "anchored" in Christ’ [1].
Thus Pope Benedict described so succinctly the season of Advent.
To many I am sure around our diocese and in the country at large hope this Advent may seem illusive. We live in very troubled times which can easily drive believer and non-believer alike to despair. Even though we have a strong faith in Christ we can easily despair at the godlessness of the world, of the abuses of power in institutional Christianity, of structural sin which gives rise to such injustice in society where the poor are punished and the wealthy rewarded in this life. The conflicts in the Holy Land and Ukraine can lead us to despair. For the Christian believer we can profess our faith in Christ and his Kingdom of justice, peace and life and allow hope to pass us by. We can miss the seeds of hope in the goodness of God’s creation. Advent calls us back to true hope in the God made human who has redeemed us and wants to draw his beautiful creation to himself.
The Canticle of Creation, composed by St Francis eight hundred years ago, has inspired generations up to our own to renew hope in God’s power in our world through his creation. St Francis situates our hope in God in our relationship with the world around us. He encourages us to praise God for all that he has created, and to take responsibility to help her to flourish. In Laudato Si’ Pope Francis, in our own time of crisis, is encouraging us to renew our hope in a God whose face is to be uncovered in our world. God is in the communion between nature and humanity and we are called to love, respect and protect her just as we, his beautiful creation, are loved by God. Pope Francis’ urgent call is rooted in the saving love of Christ which grounds us in hope that we are redeemed, that as Julian of Norwich famously proclaimed all will be well and all manner of things be well, and that the whole of God’s good creation will be consummated at the final judgment. So it is through our living out the command to love as Christ did in his dying for us that true hope inspired by faith takes root in our hearts.
Advent then gives us another new start. It is a season of the heart calling us to hope even in the darkest of times. At the start of his pontificate Pope Francis famously said we are now not in an era of change but this is a change of era, and we are called to turn again to Christ who is our light in the darkest of times. The call to embrace this new era is urgent. This new era is often expressed in negative terms lamenting the decline in active Church attendance, in the rise of secularism, in fundamentalist and extremist positions which encourage us to panic. Pope Francis has indeed expressed how urgent the care of creation is to save the planet but this call must not lead us to panic. Rather we can be confident of the future if we are rooted in true Christian hope in the goodness of redeemed creation and our responsibility for it. As we celebrate this Advent season again we are reminded that the future is very much in our hands as Christ’s Body yet ultimately in the hands of a God who loves us so much he is calling us into closer communion with each other, with our environment, and with himself risen for us.
[1] Pope Benedict XVI, Homily at Solemn Vespers for the First Sunday of Advent 2007.
