surprise us, Lord: 2nd sunday of advent C benediction

Today if all goes well according to our calendarium this will be the last Benediction for the year.  This is the last time we will gather as a community in prayer before the Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament for this year 2012.  The next time we will gather again in the same setting and with the same intent and purpose will already be next year in 2013.  Tempus fugit - time flies.  We started with 127 seminarians, now we are down to 120 even before the school year is over.  As far as I can remember this is one of the smallest number of seminarians this institution ever had in many years.  Despite all these the problem regarding finances continues and there seems to be no permanent solution in sight.  We live on a daily basis.  If we sit down and make financial projections for the coming months and the coming years we would end up closing this school overwhelmed by the thought about where the money would come.  We have many difficulties in our program.  We have difficulties among our staff leading to petty squabbles that delay these programs.  Programs were affected because of misunderstandings among people who direct them.  There were hurt feelings too.  We ourselves in the admin have not been consistent in our resolve and even in just our initial agreements.  Time can take away the luster of the initial enterprise. 

Among you I believe, you too have problems with your council, broken relationships with people in charge, misunderstanding with your leges and leaders.  There were quarrels I believe and serious exchanges that may have, even now, put a dent or a wedge and may have even wounded deeply relationships.

This is our setting just as Luke, in the gospel he wrote, presented the context and setting of John’s preaching, the very human situation before he started to announce the coming of the messiah.  Luke established the setting by presenting the huge political machinery that was at work in this tiny country situated in the crossroads of the Roman Empire.  The relationships must have been complicated.  How does this tetrachy work for example among two brothers and somebody called Lysanias.  Borders and jurisdictions must have complicated too not just their governance but even the relationship of these brothers.  We know for example one complication regarding Herodias and Salome.  And what about Pontius Pilate.  How did he work hand in hand with the high priests who govern the vast temple netwrok which comprises practically almost all of Jerusalem.  And having two high priests was unprecedented complicating the situation further.  It might have been akin to the situation of siamese twins, joined in the body but with two heads.  To each his own. 

It must have been confusing in Jerusalem and Galilee as it is also sometimes with our little community.  Nevertheless this too becomes the setting of the surprises of God.  In the gospel after reading the big names, and the who’s who of Jerusalem Luke inserted a virtually unknown man.  If you are from Jerusalem those days you would nod your head when you read Pontius Pilate, Philip the Tetrarch and Herod and Annas and Caiphas.  Then all of a sudden in this list of big time names you come upon the name John - sin-o ni sia ya?  Too small to notice, too small to deserve our attention and yet .... and yet what?  Pilate, Herod, Philip, Annas, Caiphas - they are now just names in history but John the Baptist continues to shake the world.  It might be good to remember that in the midst of this all God comes disguised in human weakness, he comes disguised in a vulnerable child, he comes disguised in a seemingly nobody, he comes disguised as bad fortune even.

Be open to surprises, then.  Why?  Because God comes in disguise, redemption comes in disguise, blessings come in disguise.  Be prepared, for somebody dressed in camel’s hair and eating locust and honey has just become the precursor of the long-expected Messiah; be surprised when fishermen become apostles and pillars of the faith; be ready for a big surprise when the number one persecutor of Christianity by the name of Saul just became its number one promoter, this time as Paul.  Prepare yourself to be surprised because God is doing great things without our knowing, God is doing great things without our recognising. 

Surprise us Lord, surprise us by the marvellous things you will do in each one of us and for all us.