Joy, hope, and love

The Advent season marks the beginning of a new liturgical year. In preparation for the coming of Christ at Christmas, it is a time of spiritual renewal which invites us as Christians to reflect more deeply on the meaning of our common human history. To rediscover our vocation and mission in Christ which calls us to reach out to all of humanity, peoples, cultures, and across the path of time.
 
In our lives we can all experience the call to begin again, to rediscover the meaning and the goal of our lives in relation to God, and to all of humanity through Christ. It is similar for the human family in rediscovering the common path and horizon that unites us. This horizon of hope for all of humanity has been revealed to us in Christ, who was the incarnate Word of God.   

The season of Advent can restore in each of us this horizon of hope. It is a hope which does not disappoint for it is founded on God’s word. It can be a time to deepen our longing and anticipation that God will do what the prophets of the Old Testament promised. To fully reveal the promise of His love, the promise of salvation that is founded on hope and which unites us in Christ to all of humanity.

Pope Benedict in writing about this season of Advent stated: “The purpose of the Church’s year is continually to rehearse her great history of memories, to awaken the heart’s memory so that it can discern the star of hope. It is the beautiful task of Advent to awaken in all of us, memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope.” (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) in Seek That Which Is Above, 1986)

​Advent can also teach us that there are two ways of experiencing this common history of memories: one is a human or sociological vision and the other is religious that invites people of faith who believe in God to see a much deeper horizon in our common human history. The first experience of time or history is chronos, which is essentially cyclical and is often without the sense of purpose or meaning. The second, karios, is the living of our history, our lives through the lens of knowing we have been redeemed by God in Christ Jesus. This is the experience which brings us the joy and hope which we rehearse each year in Church’s memory of the celebration of Christmas.  
 
In Evangelli Gaudium “Joy of the Gospel” Pope Francis reminds us that “The joy of the Gospel fills the heart and lives of all who encounter Jesus. …  With Jesus Christ joy is constantly born anew.” (EG, #1) In Scripture joy is expressed or described through a multitude of personal and collective human experiences e.g., religious ceremonies and feasts. In the Old Testament, it was the most common experience that identified the presence of God or the awareness God acting in human history. The Psalms are filled with this experience of joy which celebrated the nearness of God in the life of our human experience.   

In John’s Gospel the experience of joy is the Messiah’s gift. It is what Jesus desired for his disciples that the joy that he experienced in the presence and nearness of his Father would be with his disciples, and that their joy would be complete. In the Gospel of Luke, the experience of joy proceeds the birth of Christ, that it is expressed by the angels and the shepherds. It is the same joy that accompanies those who encounter Christ each and every day, and which becomes attractive to those who are open to receive the Good News. Joy anticipates the coming of Christ, it is a sign of the God’s Kingdom, and as St. Paul stated, it is an enduring fruit of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives.

In the past few years during this time of Advent in preparation for our celebration of Christmas, we as a Diocese have introduced the I am Blessed campaign. It is an invitation to see how our lives have been blessed by God as a way of entering more deeply into the season of Advent and in preparation for Christmas. This year the theme is “We love because He first loved us. (1 John 4:19)"

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Written by Most Rev. William T. McGrattan, Bishop of Calgary
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​Dec. 5, 2022