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Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,

Patience, people.

The message of the second reading from the letter of St. James last weekend:

Be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and late rains. You must be patient. Make your hearts firm; because the coming of the Lord is at hand.

I remember growing up on our family farm. We would plant winter wheat in the fall – it was hard work, and expensive. Would there be enough rain? Too much? Will there be a harvest? Have we spent our savings for?… Our kitchen windows looked out over the fields. Every breakfast you would look to see if something had sprouted. Finally, finally, you would see a faint green start to cover the soil.

Winter is a difficult time for many. It has been for me. Days get darker and darker – it is dark now already in the afternoon! Consider how times in our lives can feel like winter – like right now. There is so much darkness in our world, in our country.

Henry Nouwen, a Catholic writer, says that Advent is a time of waiting, but not like waiting for a bus. It is a time in which we sharpen our senses, not dull them, we sharpen our senses to recognize the presence of the One for whom we wait in every moment, every situation. We find him more and more throughout the short season, so that our experience of him when he comes is our fulfillment.

Often when taking a parish pilgrimage to Ireland, we visit a place called Knowth, north of Dublin. There are Neolithic tombs there on the bank of the Boyne River, (Bru na Boinne) from the year 3,200 BC – 1,200 years before the story of Abraham in the Old Testament. There is one large passage tomb there and 17 smaller ones, the large one about the square footage of a football field, a mound 40 feet high.

We don’t give it much thought any longer, but primitive people were truly worried that the days would just continue to get shorter and shorter, darker and darker, ultimately leaving the world in darkness. They would gratefully look for the light in every moment. This is the reason why the Winter Solstice was such a huge celebration in the pagan world – it celebrates the return of daylight, of light, as the days slowly start to get longer again.

The cool thing about this large passage tomb in Bruna Boinne is that on the east side, perfectly aligned with the sunrise at the winter solstice, there is an entrance to a hallway that goes deep into the mound. At the very center is a large stone bowl, where the stone age farmers would place the ashes of their dead. They believed that at that moment of sunrise on the solstice, the only day that the beam of light touched the stone bowl, the spirits of their ancestors would travel on that shaft of light to the afterlife.

What an amazing, beautiful witness of a pre-Christian understanding of the power of the light that comes into the world. We know the light as Christ. It is with that nervous anticipation mixed with joy that we celebrate Advent. In the midst of the waiting, even as the darkness seems to grow and grow…

The worship of the sun was indigenous to Romans and there were many temples to the sun in Rome at the time of Jesus. In the Julian calendar, December 25 marked the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. In 312, Constantine decreed that the pagan feast of the unconquerable sun, sol Invictus, would be the date to celebrate the birth of the Son of God. In that year he also proclaimed (with an exception for farmers) Sunday was to be a day of rest. “On the venerable Day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed” (Codex Justinianus, III.12.2). The resurrection of Christ also occurred on a Sunday, the day after the Jewish Sabbath. In AD 386, Theodosius, Patriarch of Constantinople, decreed Sunday to be holy, a day of obligation (Codex Theodosianus, II.8.18). It was a natural association, therefore, to identify the birth of Jesus, the “Sun of righteousness.” Saint Cyprian identifies Jesus as with the Sun itself, “the true sun,” in his work on the Lord’s Prayer.

He is the beam of light through whom we pass to the Father, he is the source of our joyand the fulfillment of time. Christ, be our Light, shine on your Church, gathered today.

The Lord be with you,