THOUGHT FOR THE WEEKEND
The word “journey” is used nowadays to the point of overuse. It’s become a pervasive metaphor, it seems, for anyone who’s been through a process of change, a life-changing crisis or appeared as a contestant in a TV reality show.
You could be forgiven for being somewhat weary or wary of all this talk of journeys until you step back for a moment (very short journey: pun intended) and realise that the idea it conveys is inescapable, for the obvious fact is that we live in two dimensions, time and space, and that’s what journeys are: movements through time and space.
But metaphors involve something more than the physical, and that something goes by the name of metaphysical — those deep realities or further dimensions that we intuit do exist but are harder to measure, capture or define.
Religion and, let’s be specific here, the Christian gospel, makes dynamic use of the creativity generated by metaphors, the imaginative leap from the physical to the metaphysical, the natural to the supernatural, the ordinary to the extraordinary.
This Advent Season, which begins tomorrow, like every previous one, sees the Church make a liturgical journey on the four Sundays leading up to Christmas: hope, peace, joy and love. What it seeks to re-enact is the different features of the several characters who travel here and there in the gospel narratives: an expectant couple, Magi from the east, shepherds from the fields and angels from heaven too. Hope as the outer pull or inner push that sets us on the way to something special. Peace as settled wholesomeness instead of the trauma we’ve long endured. Joy as the erupting fountain of all that feels best in life. Love as the most endearing, inspiring and enduring connection we have with others.
Goodness knows, given the rancour of much of our politics, never mind the appalling suffering in numerous areas of conflict in our volatile world, we could do with larger measures of hope, peace, joy and love. Advent reminds us that these can’t be self-manufactured but are God’s to give if we would receive. Whatever else, our Christian calling is to be in awed adoration of all these wonders incarnate in the one we know and name as Jesus.