longing: 1st week of advent wednesday

Our responsorial Psalm today is the famous Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd with the response made appropriately for advent - I shall live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.  This is a looking forward to the time when we too will reach our heavenly home, and home is not just a place to dwell in but the fulfilment of everything.  This would then be affirmed by today’s gospel where Jesus, concerned for the situation of the hungry crowd that followed him, fed 4,000 with just seven loaves and a few fishes.  It is Jesus who alone can feed us, who alone can satiate our hunger, and fulfil our needs.

What do we make out of this gospel in Advent?  Advent is a time for taking stock with what we are longing for in life - not the superficial ones but those longing found deep inside us, a longing which defines who we are.  What are these?  Get in touch with this longing, this thirst, this hunger in your life.  What is it that you hunger for in your life? What do you want to do with your life? How would you live a mark?   Perhaps, I have observed rightly that there are indeed no more fantastic things happening in us and in our community because in the first place, there is no more longing and if there is, there is no real attempt to respond to such longing.  Everybody seems content with what is.  There is danger here. 

In advent we become aware with the best that we can still become.  There is no fulfilment in this life.  For as long as we live here on earth there is to be no contentment. The struggle for perfection has to go on.  We will never be satisfied because we continually look forward and work onward for the best that we can still become.