Echoes of Advent

“Reparation requires messianic hope. To hope, then, is to hope for the reparation of the irreparable. It is to hope for the present. The hope is for now…It is not a question of hoping to escape time, but of hoping for new time, for a new day and a new birth.” (Weakness of God, John D. Caputo, 251)

We are waiting for justice. We are waiting for the fulfillment of what is ours, both by law and by nature as human beings. We are waiting with hope and we are waiting with action. We have seen results of our esperanza and we have strength to continue. We share what we have with those who have not yet received and we comfort those without hope with the promise of what is yet to come. We know that we can never go back to the way things were before, but we hold out and work towards something even better. We are waiting– to be lifted out of poverty, for our name to be cleared of associations with terror, for health, for education, for remembering moments of horror so horror does not return.

“the miracle of resurrection is the miracle of the child, which is a new beginning, a new life…humanity’s on-going internal auto-resurrection. Life is passed on to life, thus enabling life to elude the snares of death, which arrives too late for life has already moved on to the child and a new life begun with which death will never catch up.” (Weakness of God, John D. Caputo, 252).

We are waiting, but we are not passive. We are waiting for a promise, yet we live with promise. We are acting out the life we are waiting for, for what else can we do? We are being dignified even if we are not yet living in dignity, forgiving even as we wait to receive forgiveness. We fall down, we fight, we are tired, but we walk forward with the promise of new life, as we celebrate the new life we are given at every moment. Baby turtles hatch in the backyard; we greet each other with a blessing.

“The kingdom of God is not a far-off place but the rhythm of God in time, the way God gives us each day, from day to day, the way God rules in each day, like a melody that God is playing. Let us listen to the beat.” (Weakness of God, John D. Caputo, pg 163)

Mampuján echoes of advent- we are also waiting, waiting for the coming of promises, waiting for the coming of our hope, yet we already have hope, for without hope, we would not be waiting. We have seen glimpses of what it is like to live in the kingdom come, so we work to live in the kingdom today. Our job is to wait for what is to come, but to live as if it is here. Justice is so far away, yet it is as close as our next breath. We are waiting…