Main news for 6 August 2011

"For now salvation is nearer to us than when we first believed." From the moment of our conversion to Christ, we look at the world with different eyes. For each of us something changes in life. And, receiving Communion, we become closer to Christ: we receive Him and the path of salvation that He offers us. And each of us "will be upheld, for God is able to make him stand."

We fall and rise on our path after Christ. A fall in the eyes of this world is prepared for us as the path of salvation. We ourselves will see the depth of our fall in repentance - but He will raise us up by His mercy, raise us on the day of the resurrection of the dead into eternal life.

The texts for the first Sunday of Advent call us first of all to watchfulness. Not only because we cannot determine the moment when a child will be born. But also because our expectation of seeing Jesus now must be like what parents feel when they have already been waiting eight months for the birth of a child. There is no patience left at all: when at last will we be able to see, to know who this is, what He is like? Life is about to change at any minute, and there are too many of those minutes.

The changes in our life that Jesus gives us are immeasurably greater. He will come to us as a newborn infant, who cannot speak and who will not get anywhere unless we carry Him. In the time left to us before His birth, we must accustom ourselves to the thought that, like any little child, Jesus means cares, constant anxieties, and watchfulness at any time of day or night.

Is He well with us? Is He warm? Will we teach Him to smile? And will we unlearn how to wage war when He appears in our life?

We are used to taking disorders in human relationships as a given, and if we are upset by them, it is often simply because they throw us off balance. But for the apostle, our quarreling and dark feelings toward a neighbor who has done something a little better than we have are things of the same order as feasting, drunkenness, and sensuality. This is exactly because both drunkenness and quarrels are the result of self-will, the result of our concerns for ourselves, both bodily and emotional, subordinating our striving for the good.

It is not for nothing that Paul, a little earlier, repeats Christ's words about the greatest commandment, which embraces all the others: to love your neighbor as yourself. After all, quarrels and envy, that is, sins against our neighbor, have their source in our lack of love both for our neighbor (and this is more or less obvious) and for ourselves (and this is no less important). This second part of the commandment is often not fully understood by us. Love is acceptance, and its foundation is self-acceptance, an adequate understanding of our abilities and their limits. To accept ourselves, it is very important to understand that we are not superhumans and never will be, that our abilities are not unlimited, and that we often take on too much and from exhaustion begin hurting our neighbors. Many quarrels can be avoided simply by acknowledging our tiredness and realizing that a constructive conversation should be put off until later. And our flesh often experiences many needs that require satisfaction. But for food not to turn into gluttony, it is important to understand ourselves and our needs well; it is important to understand that simple food is in fact enough for us. This is what Paul is talking about: "make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires."

And if we love ourselves as we are, accepting and recognizing our sins without turning repentance into self-torment, it will become much easier to love our neighbor. Because others are exactly the same as we are, just as imperfect. And God gives us only one means to cope with our human limitation: love.