By Sarah Bueter
Sunday, December 15, 2024
Zep 3:14-18a | Phil 4:4-7 | Lk 3:10-18
God indeed is my salvation; I am confident and unafraid. -Isaiah 12:2
What should we do? A people “filled with expectation” pose this question to John the Baptist. How often do our own hearts burn with the same question? Look at our world! We wake up to cold, dark mornings and combat realities of forced migration, violence, and poverty. What should we do? What can we do?
In September, I visited communities in Tocoa, Honduras, to meet the people who defend the Guapinol and San Pedro rivers against mining megaprojects. Their community leader Juan Lopez had just been murdered, the fourth murder since 2023 of protesters of the mining project.
After Juan’s murder, the community leaders asked themselves: should we continue the struggle? What will happen to our families? Do we migrate? A significant root cause of migration is violence, against the poor and the earth.
What should we do? What can we do?
John the Baptist offers a moral exhortation: share with those who have none, stop taking more than is prescribed. Change your ways. Convert. But what grounds such conversion? What can ground such justice so that it remains rooted in compassion instead of resentment or bitterness?
Faced with the question whether to flee, Daniela, one of the leaders, decided to go to the mountain. She takes her children with her. I go with them.
Let’s go to the mountain. Let’s put hands into the earth. Let’s harvest tomatoes. Let’s trace constellations. Let’s be reminded of all that we love about our home.
She rejoices in God in creation. “Shout for joy, O daughter Zion … be not discouraged! The Lord, your God, is in your midst.”
Renewed, Daniela returns to Tocoa. How can we leave this place? God is here with us now. In the middle of the struggle. She will stay. The encounter with God brings joy and hope that outlasts, overcomes, defeats destruction and despair.
Like Daniela, Saint Paul and Zephariah are no strangers to desolation. Paul writes from prison while awaiting his eventual execution, and Zepheriah prophecies even as the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and exiled its remaining people. They counsel: “Rejoice in the Lord always.” God is in your midst now.
The third week of Advent calls us to hope. We might be in a dark place: mourning the loss of a loved one, far from family, discouraged by violence. But like Daniela, Paul or Zephariah, we can hope because God is in our midst now, exactly where there is suffering, to bring restoration and healing, or right relationship and restoration, “to bring glad tidings to the poor.”
The Risen Christ tells us that division and destruction do not have the final word. Communities can be healed. Rivers can be saved. Divisions between families can be repaired. Peace can prevail in our hearts. The light will not go out.
This reflection was originally published in the 2024 Advent Reflection Guide: One Family of God.
Feaured image: A memorial altar pays tribute to Juan López, an Indigenous rights activist and environmental defender who was killed in Honduras on Sept. 15, 2024. (Courtesy of Guanipol Despierta and Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns/Honduras)
Questions for reflection
- Have you been inspired to hope and joy by someone who took the migrant’s path – or perhaps by your own family’s migrant journey?
- How have migrants helped you to be more aware of God in our midst?
Prayer
Merciful God,
Our history as human beings, and even before, has been a history of life on the move. As your sons and daughters, we continue to search for a place to sleep, food to eat, and families and communities to support us.
We are a people on a journey.
We are grateful for the earth that sustains us, but we do not always take time to thank you.
Also, we lack compassion for our brothers and sisters who have been uprooted by violence, natural disasters and poverty.
Help us to remember that we are always on a journey with them and with You, to a new way of life in abundance.
Amen.
– Paul Masson, M.M.
