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We must submit to God’s will always
We use the four weeks of Advent, among other things, to imagine what it was like 2000 years ago to prepare for the coming of the Messiah. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
- Today begins that month in the liturgy when we prepare for Christmas.
- We are following an ancient tradition, going back to the earliest times of the Church, which called this season ‘Advent’. It’s a name that means “coming”.
- We use the four weeks of Advent, among other things, to imagine what it was like 2000 years ago to prepare for the coming of the Messiah.
You can probably imagine the sense of disappointment that the Virgin Mary felt when she discovered that the Romans had ordered a census.
The timing could not have been worse. She was due to give birth within a few weeks. But everyone had to go to the place of their ancestral home in order to register. This meant that Joseph had to go to Bethlehem, taking his wife with him.
The journey itself was one thing. No woman eight months pregnant wants to sit on the back of a donkey for five days travelling along rough roads. The destination was yet another problem. No woman eight months pregnant wants to be far from home, especially when she is travelling to a part of the country where she has no relatives or friends to help her.
Today begins that month in the liturgy when we prepare for Christmas. We are following an ancient tradition, going back to the earliest times of the Church, which called this season ‘Advent’. It’s a name that means “coming”. We use the four weeks of Advent, among other things, to imagine what it was like 2000 years ago to prepare for the coming of the Messiah.
Going back to the life of the Virgin Mary and her husband Joseph, it does us a lot of good to remember the hardships they had to endure. We will often ask ourselves: If God is so keen on having me do this or do that for him, why doesn’t he make it easy for me to do it?
Joseph and Mary could have asked God the same thing. If you were in their place, you might have been tempted to complain. You might have asked:
“You are Almighty God. You have been preparing the world for the coming of the Messiah ever since you spoke in the Garden of Eden, saying you would put enmity between the “woman” and the “serpent,” between her ‘offspring’ and his ‘offspring’.
You sent many prophets telling us to prepare for that day. That’s thousands of years, God, for you to prepare everything! Why does the birth of your Messiah suddenly have to be so hard? Why do we have to get up and travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem at just the wrong time?”
We must often bow our heads, as I imagine Joseph and Mary had to bow their heads, ready to submit to the will of God no matter how illogical it seems at the time. On such occasions, there is an ancient prayer that may help you:
“Into your hands, Lord, I abandon the past, the present and the future, the great and the small, what seems important and what seems unimportant, what is temporal and what is eternal. May your will be done!”
