4th Sunday of Advent

Good Morning: Digital Neighbors, ADD Irregulars, WSN Niche’ Curators and Memeing Maniacs! The Fourth Sunday of Advent and the Messianic Title of O King of the Nations. As the final Sunday of Advent the readings at Mass always turn our attention to the person of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We look at how her yes opened to the door to the Mystery of the Incarnation.

Yes to God or a Higher Cause, to the Mysterium, to the Numen can change your life. Some embark on the path of selfless sainthood or mysticism, others become the worst type of demagogues and fanatics that menace their neighbors. Not all higher causes are good or praiseworthy, some are menacing and destructive. While many want to blame religion for the worst events in world history, it is really human nature pushed through various funnels of behavior, indoctrination and the removal of critical thought and questioning that brings out the worst in us. Sadly for many, it doesn't take much to remove critical thought and thus questions and doubts never arise. They are the potential for the best of herdthink and worst of mob mentality. I am not sure how much of humanity prefers to be led and told, but the number is worrisomely high. Good leaders (not perfect, there are none), real shepherds are invaluable to the safety, well-being and improvement of the flock. If your higher power or cause is impersonal, your treatment of other will be impersonal. Ask any citizen in a communist country how well it goes with a party or ideology of grievance and division.

For good Jews & Christians, our God is a personal God, a God who calls us to covenant, a God who binds Himself to a people and to individuals. When that is remembered and embraced, God can use humble men and women for great good in the world. Small works of mercy, acts of grace can make all the difference in the life of others. Often unnoticed by the world, such acts of mercy are the delight of the Divine. A quote from the Screwtape letters came to mind this morning and will conclude my thoughts, the wisdom/warning of Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood.

“One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His.

We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.” - C. S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters.