Today’s Advent readings give us a glimpse of a transformed world, a world in which all the pieces fit together to form a harmonious, undivided whole. All strife and danger will have ended. Listen:  “The wolf shall be a guest of the lamb. . . the cow and the bear shall be neighbors. . . [and] there shall be  no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain.”

How can this come about? It is the very opposite of what we experience now. It seems impossible to believe. Yet, “nothing is impossible with God.” We look to the day when the Holy Spirit will come upon our world as it came upon Mary at the Annunciation. Already God is drawing all things to himself in ways we do not, cannot understand. We do know that “for those who love God all things – all things – work together for good.” We have been promised a new heavens and a new earth. God is faithful. He has promised and he will do it.

Watch — wait — hope and longing — faith — trust — eagerness and joy — peace –  These are all Advent themes that we meet over and over again during these days of preparation for Christmas.

Today we look at faith, the faith of an ‘outsider’ whose faith surpassed that of those who had been specially chosen and prepared for the coming of the Messiah. The first reading invites all without exception – those with faith and those without it – to come to the Mountain of the Lord. At the Lord’s table we will receive instruction on how to live in peace: War never again, we are told, when we walk in the light of the Lord.

The Gospel recounts the faith of one man, a non-believer, who believed in the power of Jesus to save. The centurion typifies for us the sincerity and humility we need when approaching God’s mysteries and the boundless joy that is ours at receiving even more than we had hoped or imagined; and even more, it shows us God’s own wonder and joy to have found faith enough to accept his offered gifts.

God’s gifts are there, for the asking; we need only open ourselves to receive them.

Watch, we are told. Wake up! Watch – and wait.  Something is happening. . .  We may miss it if we are not on the alert, watching for it, waiting, hoping.

Look around – so much despondence, so much unrest: the economic and political worlds are collapsing; wars and rumors of wars abound; thousands of peoples on the march for freedom from injustice; the entire planet groans in pain. Where is the peace we long for?

And yet, and yet – unless we realize our need for help we will not be willing nor prepared to receive it.

Advent calls us to ‘watch,’ to become aware of, first of all, our human helplessness in the face of so many evils. We are as small children lost as it were in the vast universe we call home.

Advent also points us to where the answer lies:  God is here to help us. Can the small child accept the hand stretched out to rescue us?

May our prayer be: O that you would rend the heavens and come down! Rend our hearts that we may be open to receive you.

Come, Lord Jesus. Come and save us.

We are in the last week of the year and the Liturgy reminds us to look to the end of all things.  ” We have not here a lasting city.”  Life as we know it will pass away.  “Not one stone will be left upon another,”  Luke tell us in this morning’s Gospel reading. All will be destroyed.

Yet the emphasis is not – cannot be – on the end but on the beginning. All endings herald a new beginning. We finish one task, we begin another; one day ends and we look to tomorrow. Even the loss of everything, even death itself, points to something new. God is greater than all. Life itself cannot be destroyed.

At Office of Readings – in contrast to the Gospel’s destruction of Jerusalem – we read Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones.  “Can these bones live?”  Indeed, bones dead and dried for centuries, in a twinkling of an eye, at God’s command, returned to life. New life.

And so it is with us. Endings, with all their grief and pain, are never really  ‘the end.’  There is always hope for something new and beautiful before us. God has promised and God will do it.

The Gospel this morning was of the woman who offered the two small coins – all she had to live on – placing them in the temple treasury. Is this not an image of Mary who  in offering the smallness of her own being, entirely and without reserve, received back the Author of Life himself – for herself and for the entire world?

Each of us is asked to give of ourselves, some more, some less, each according to the measure of God’s own giving to us. We may do so generously or stintingly, joyfully or sullenly. Our gift may be of straw, or wood, or silver, or gold. No matter. Each in our own way is building up the Body of Christ. The results will be revealed at the end of time – and it will be magnificent to see!

As for Mary and the poor widow – these are our models. They each gave all without counting the cost. And they each received their reward: the widow was given the highest praise possible by Jesus himself; and Mary was crowned queen of heaven and earth.