Sunday, December 17th (Third Sunday of Advent):
This is the third Sunday in Advent. Today we light the candle of joy, to shine alongside the candles of hope and peace. What is your witness? Do you testify to the joy that is known through the love of God shining over you, in you and through you in all circumstances? This is what we are called to witness to, to testify to. How would your testimony hold up in court?
Besides affirming life and remembering it, celebration is filled with expectations for the future. If the past has the last word, a man would imprison himself more and more the older he became. If the present were the ultimate moment of satisfaction, he would cling to it with hedonistic eagerness, trying to squeeze the last drop of life out of it. But the present holds promises and reaches out to the horizons of life, and this makes it possible for us to embrace our future as well as our past in the moment of celebration…
So celebrating means the affirmation of the present, which becomes fully possible only by remembering the past and expecting more to come in the future. But celebrating in this sense very seldom takes place. Nothing is as difficult as really accepting one’s own life. More often than not the present is denied, the past becomes a source of complaints, and the future is looked upon as a reason for despair or apathy.
When Jesus came to redeem mankind, he came to free us from the boundaries of time. Through him it became clear not only that God is with us where our presence is in time and space, but also that our past does not have to be denied but can be remembered and forgiven, and that we are still waiting for him to come back and reveal to us what remains unseen.
Henri Nouwen