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Advent is a time of waiting. Waiting for what? It can’t really be for Christmas, as if Christmas were going to be some kind of surprise birthday party for Jesus. There are no surprises about Christmas. Jesus was born two thousand years ago. Everyone knows that. We are not waiting for his birth. Rather, we are waiting for the consequences of his birth to be realized in our own lives and in the whole world.

Waiting implies an element of hope. When I was in India in the fifties and sixties, our main way of long-distance travel was by train, and India has a marvelously extensive network of rail lines. But in those days, at least, much of it was single track and the result was that there could be long, long, long delays. Like everyone else, I would just sit cross-legged on the platform and wait and wait and wait. And then we would hear a train whistle in the distance, and everyone would get up, move to the front of the platform and look up anxiously in the direction of the sound, only to be disappointed. A freight train would rumble by. And we would wait and wait and wait. But we never lost hope. After all, the printed time table did promise that a train would come, and we would have faith in that promise, and eventually the train would come.

I think we have, all of us, experience of waiting in our lives. We waited to be born. We waited for the school day to end. (That was endless. Wasn’t it?) We waited for Santa Claus at Christmas. We wait in lines at the store, the theatre, and, in the coming days, at the Post Office. Long lines! And waiting can only be tolerated when there is hope, when there is promise that the waiting will not be in vain. Indeed we know in our hearts that all of our lives are really advents, a waiting for something. We may not always be quite clear as to what we are waiting for. But we long for it and we hope for it, with all of our hearts.

The liturgical season of Advent we are beginning, a time of waiting, is implicitly a time of hope and, by extension, a time of discernment as to what that hope is. And, as we spend this time discerning our hopes, I think one word will come to mind again and again and again. And that one word is “peace.” First of all, peace in our own hearts, and we know instinctively, I think, that that peace can only come when we have established or deepened our relationship with our God. As St. Augustine said, “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Advent is the time for us to examine our relationship to God in the light of the gospel message that this God became human. Then peace in our families, in our relationships to our neighbors, to co-workers, to schoolmates, and again we know that that peace can only come when we see others in relationship to the God who shared our humanity, who took flesh like ours, and showed us how to relate to one another in a peaceful way. Peace in the wider world and, as we look back on the year that is passing, that might seem a distant hope indeed. We are numbed by the senseless violence not only in far away Iraq but in communities much closer to home. And we long for the peace that was sung by the angels and promised by Jesus.

And so in Advent we are asked to reflect on how we might contribute to that peace, by the way we accept other people, not judging them, and by our concern for others, especially for the homeless, the poor and the marginalized. That is how peace is going to be established, by our concerns. So we begin this new season of grace with great hope. It’s not simply wishful thinking. It is not ignoring the many obstacles to personal community or world peace. It is a hope that is based on the promises of God, promises that have been fulfilled in the birth of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, but the full-flowering of which we still await with patience and with confidence.

I know I’ve told you before of the occasion when I was up at Tahoe and met this casino manager who said to me, “I believe, Father, that you and I are in the same business.” And when I looked at him puzzled and asked him what he meant, he said, “ We are both selling hope.” Well, I’m not ashamed of that business. In fact, that’s what I am doing today, right now. I’m telling myself and you that the darkness that may seem to envelop our hearts, the darkness that envelops our world, will give way to the light of the Christmas star, to the light of Christ, the hope for our world that is always new. Goodness is not defeated. During this Advent season of waiting, goodness is simply renewing its strength through reflection, prayer, and a hope that is unshakeable. Our waiting will not be in vain. Amen.