fantastic II: 1st week advent tuesday

Our first reading sounds fantastic. The wolf shall be a guest of the lamb.  How do you make of that?  Why would the lamb invite the wolf as a guest?  Would it serve the wolf lamb chops?  And when did the lion become a vegetarian that now it grazes grass and hay  with the cow and its calf?  Can you imagine a little child made to play at the den of the cobra?  These are all fantastic.  It is out of this world, it is unbelievable, it is too good to be true.  It is not something you see every day, or even once in your lifetime.  This is what this season is all about - its about faantastic things - a virgin having a child, three kings coming from the east, angels hovering in the sky, shepherds adoring a future king - fantastic.  Not content we even added still another fantastic persona - Santa Claus.  Then we get to remember that Christ will come again - he will come in the clouds, and again angels will appear holding, blowing trumpets in the air, the dead will arise, and the heavenly court will be set up to judge the living and the dead. 

These are all fantastic things, fantastic events.  But I am not saying that these are not true.  We believe in the bible, we believe in the promises of our faith precisely because it describes a reality beyond what I can ordinarily see, a reality even beyond what I am capable of imagining.

This is the invitation of advent - to recover our sense for and attraction to the fantastic - the fantastic in our faith, the fantastic in our relationship with God, and even the fantastic about ourselves - a fascination in our human abilities and capacities.  Kis-a na lang kita naga-wow, kis-a na lang ta nagasiling sing tuod-tuod “baw grabe.”  Tanan daw ka ordinaryo na man lang.  Is there anything fantastic which happened to you this year?  Is it extraordinary, nobody is expecting it, when no one thought it could be done, against all odds, against expectations?  Is there something fantastic happening in the community - in the first year, it the fourth year?  We will see.

My point is just this - advent is appreciating, believing, accepting, longing for the fantastic things, the great things that God has done and can do.  Advent is to discover and long for the fantastic in us, in our capacity as a community, in our capabilities as individuals.