‘Advent in a world that seems dark,’ by Father Miguel Vasconcelos
The world seems dark.
Advent is a holy time, full of encounters and memories,
But it's also a complex time, in which the serene memories of childhood contrast with the hustle and bustle of our days and our busy schedules. It's also a time when each day dawns later and gets dark earlier as we approach the winter solstice.
And, almost in keeping with the rhythm of the seasons, today, for many reasons, the world seems dark. The world seems dark when we receive the news of the war in Ukraine and its more than 1,000 days. The world seems dark when we hear what is happening in ‘our’ Holy Land. The world seems dark when we learn that one in five Portuguese people won't be able to afford to keep their homes warm during the cold months we're about to begin.
But, as their builders were well aware, it was also on the winter solstice that the few rays of sunlight fell precisely on the centre of the great prehistoric monuments, such as Stonehenge or Maeshowe. As if in a Christian theology avant la lettre, the ancient peoples knew that when darkness reaches its peak, it also means that light begins to conquer it. In these times and in a world that seems dark, the light breaks through the darkness and, as St John tells us, ‘the darkness has not overcome it’ (Jn 1:5).
The faith we share doesn't guarantee that living this holy season to the full will solve our problems, nor does it promise that the world's difficulties will be quickly overcome. But Advent can remind us that God risked vulnerability when he visited us as a newborn, defenceless, completely exposed to whatever we wanted to do to him, when he took on the harshness of human existence throughout his public life, when he was crucified so that darkness would not have the last word, but light.
This, then, is Advent: despite the darkness, or because of it, we open ourselves to the beauty of the light that is coming.
Father Miguel Vasconcelos