The story of John the Baptist runs throughout the season of Advent, his calling of people to account for themselves, to recognize that they haven’t been their best selves, and to get off their duffs and do something about it. In traditional church language, it was people’s “sins” that he was dealing with. We should get a better sense of that.
In G.K. Chesterton’s words, “…sin, whatever else it is, is not merely the dregs of bestial existence. It is something more subtle and spiritual, and is in some way connected with the very supremacy of the human spirit.… The reality of sin arises, in fact, from the same truth that makes the reality of human poetry and joy. It arises from the fact that the smallest thing in this world has its own infinity.” An awareness of the packed potential in each thing, in each decision, and in each action, is what sin – and salvation – is all about.
Our lives swim in an ocean of actual dynamic grace and potential future grace. In all of the things that we do and see every day, it may be the smallest ones that have the most profound, unannounced, and probably even unknown effect. This is the “butterfly effect” from chaos theory applied to human relationships. A decision that you make or an action that you take bears real immediate and future consequences, both for you, for others, and for the world around you.
One good example of this is found in the Gospel for the 4th Sunday of Advent, which is the story of the angel Gabriel visiting Mary and telling her that she will be the mother of Jesus. Despite her puzzlement, in the end she said “May it be done to me according to your word.” That “Yes” changed the universe. It was a “Yes” that did not know what would follow, or what would happen, but it was the “Yes” that led to Christmas, where God’s grace was truly joined with our humanity.
Because of that “Yes,” our lives may today share in God’s presence through the cultivation of the presence of Jesus within our hearts, and flowing from there to our thoughts, actions, and dispositions. St. John Baptist de La Salle writes in his meditation for the 4th Sunday of Advent that, with God’s grace, “…you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, who will make you firm in goodness thanks to his dwelling in you. This Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Beg him to establish your heart firmly…. (Med 4.3) It all begins with a choice and an action.
We make choices all the time, in all sorts of situations. One estimate says that we make 35,000 choices every day. A way of thinking about their cumulative effect is to imagine a grid that is divided up-and-down between “doing” at the top and “talking” on the bottom; “giving” on the right and “taking” on the left. Where among the four quadrants do most of your decisions cluster? Just in terms of your relationships – with yourself, others, and God – where do the bulk of choices fall? And what of the consequences of all those choices? There’s a lot going on here that deserves our consideration, particularly during Advent.
Annie Dillard cautions us about what’s involved: “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. … we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.” Here is the dynamic of God’s grace stripped to the core.
Christmas is just around the corner. We shape our capacity to receive God’s grace in Jesus Christ by our choices and actions. Whether we are able to say “Yes” with the same courage as Mary did will determine how much “Christmas” comes to be part of our own future.
