Advent hope for a fate that cannot be changed
Guest Writer: Don Follis
“We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation as its helpless victim, when facing a fate that cannot be changed.”
---- Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor
When you suddenly lose a child as I have – losing my 21-year-old son some years ago just before the start of Advent – part of you gets instantly amputated. And that “leg” does not grow back. I now walk with a permanent limp. Those who know me well recognize my limp. Writer Brennan Manning says the one who became flesh limps with us, giving us a “victorious limp.”
One of my friends has a prosthesis and occasionally his stump gets irritated where the prosthesis rubs it. That happens to me, too, often during Advent. Since my son died just days before the start of Advent, during Advent my feelings of grief often are heightened. As I walk through Advent readings and prayers, feelings of grief get coupled with emotions of deep longing for the hurting world to be made right. Over and over I sing Charles Wesley’s “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus.”
Not long ago I saw my son’s best friend from high school-days. He was with his bubbly wife and their 3 rambunctious children, all under age 6. They were laughing and squealing. I laughed with delight, feeling so happy for them. But I experienced a sting of pain, too, when suddenly I felt robbed of ever having the joy of watching my son play with his own children.
With the coronavirus invading our world this year, thousands of families the world over lost a loved one. I can only imagine the grief they will experience this first Christmas without their loved one, and the profound sadness of not having that loved one at the table.
With a wide array of both painful and positive emotions, this year we will again display our creches as we await the coming of the Christ child. That is as it should be. But we also will long for the final consummation, that ultimate coming, when this world will be fully redeemed. We trust God to give us the grace to embrace that tension and press into the mystery.
Jesus is once again standing at the door of our hearts, saying, “Listen, I am standing at the door knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come into you and eat with you, and you with me.”
Indeed, the God who became a baby can turn our mourning into dancing. And so, by faith, however faltering, we raise our Advent voices and say with St. John at the end of Revelation, “Amen. Come Lord Jesus.”
Don Follis
