How do we hasten the day of the coming of the Lord?

IIt was a homily of Fr. Nick Schnieder, my pastor in the parish where I grew up. Twenty years later, I still remember it. “Sigh! Sigh! When is it going to come? I’ve been alive for all these years, and each advent I preach the coming of the kingdom, And each year, it does not come. When will the kingdom come?” And he sighed again. Beneath that sigh, in that moment that just stood still for me, I saw the longing, the real passion and longing of a man for the kingdom of God. He wanted God to return. He was doing his part to hasten the day. And he was genuinely sad that it had not come yet in his lifetime. It had not yet come. I don’t think I had ever taken the kingdom that seriously that I would yearn for it with that kind of passion, that I would miss it if it didn’t arrive; that like a lover, I would pine and long for it’s coming.

How do we hasten the day of the Lord’s coming? How do we live as an advent people? For a long time, I lived this question internally. What is the disposition I must have, how do I keep an inner watchfulness, how do I leave at peace were the questions I would ask myself. Not unlike the people who swarmed to John’s baptism for the forgiveness of sins. As long as it was just about their own forgiveness, that was enough for them. The older I get, the more I realize that is a pretty limited vision of what Jesus has in store for me. He wants me to be about the kingdom and all I am interested in is my own small soul. “One more powerful than I is to come after me. He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit.”

How do we hasten the day of the Lord’s coming? The older I get the more I realize that for me it is about ‘seeing’. About seeing a different world. About seeing a deeper reality than the one that presents itself to our senses. Second Isaiah sees a different picture than the normal Jewish person of his time saw. Instead of a people in exile, tossed willy-nilly by Babylonian and Persian empires, he sees the hand of God at work. Instead of a crumbled city of Jerusalem, which will take years to rebuild, he sees a city filled with the presence of God. And because he sees, he hastens the day.

I remember at one of the parishes where I served, each time I would drive into the car port, I would notice the basketball backboards that were stored between the rafters. New backboards that were up in the playground for about a week, and then taken down, because some folks from the other side of the parish were among the people using them. Though there were a lot of excuses and a lot of stories about safety for the kids and gangs, the truth was uglier than that. Those standards were there because people could not see – they couldn’t see a different world where people’s diverse backgrounds enriched each other, where children could play and compete and interact. And because they couldn’t see it, they sat in the garage, a grim reminder of that the day can be hastened or slowed down for lack of seeing, for lack of vision.

For you and I this Sunday, what keeps you from seeing the kingdom so clearly that, like Msgr. Schneider, you long for its coming? What, like the folks who came to John along Galilee needs to be repented of, needs to be washed clean? For if we don’t see it, it won’t come to be. If we don’t dream it, we can’t hasten the day. If it is not a part of our vision, then what will draw us out of our complacency into action?

“What sort of men and women must we not be?” says the reading from the letter of Peter. We are called to be visionaries like Jesus, people who see clearly a deeper truth and hasten the day of its coming.

Sigh. Maybe this will be the year. Maybe this will be the advent. Sigh. Maybe… Lord, let me see clearly enough to hasten the day of your advent…