What Are We Waiting For?

Every year, the Catholic Church celebrates Advent as a time of waiting for the Savior of the world.  As a child, I never "got" this:  why were we playing this  game of pretense, when we knew the Savior had already come?  I knew we were supposed to be "re-living" the 4000 years of Jewish history, of waiting for the Messiah, but I just could not get into that---in my mind, we were no longer waiting, yearning, hungering to be saved.  The cave of Bethlehem was an obvious reminded that Jesus had already arrived!

Now that I can better see the world around me and the world within me, I know for sure that Jesus has not  yet come into all the dark, evil, cruel, empty, hollow spaces that man creates for himself and for others.  People I know are still hungering for peace, for joy, for fulfillment; there are dark spaces in my own soul that need to be filled with the Light of the world.  There are countries where the entire population is desperate for the freedom of the Savior, countries where cruel leaders and cultures are keeping people chained and enslaved, where women cannot be educated, where children are kidnapped and forced to serve as terrorists and assassins.  There are countries where children die of starvation and from cruelty; there are homes where fathers still beat their children and wives.  In our own country, teens are routinely introduced to gangs and drugs, completely cutting off the possibility of any future but death or prison for them. 

Has the Savior of the world truly come?  Has the Light of the world reached into all the dark places where evil, neglect, and ignorance rule?  Has each one of us experienced "Peace on the earth, good will to men?"  Has the Babe of Bethlehem truly been born in all of our hearts? 

Today, I celebrate Advent with every fiber of my being---it no longer seems a game we play, but a hunger, a yearning, a waiting for the kingdom of heaven, the reign of God:  Come, Lord Jesus into each heart, into each home, into each nation, until the whole world knows the Savior, until his rule, as Isaiah says, extends from sea to sea, and the whole world knows the coming of the Lord!