“No more will you weep.” (Isaiah 30:19)
Reflection
Advent is not just about preparing for Christmas, but also preparing for the coming of Christ, when he will reign in and over all.
The Old Testament readings of these days are telling us what life in that eternal Kingdom will be like. Today we hear, “no more will you weep.”
Tears — those telltale signs of pain and suffering — are a part of human life on this earth. “Everyone suffers in this world: whether they believe in God or reject Him.” But while suffering is a universal experience, the pope observes that “tears are not universal, they are ‘my’ tears. Everyone has their own. … They are ‘my’ tears, that no one has ever shed before me. Yes, they have wept, many. But ‘my’ tears are mine, ‘My’ pain is my own, ‘my’ suffering is my own.”
Yet the Lord, as the Holy Father says, is “aware of our troubles” and is “not indifferent to the tears we shed.”
In fact, in a vivid expression, the Psalms tell us that God keeps count of all our tossings, and puts our tears in a bottle, recording them in a book (cf Psalms 56:9).
More than that, Jesus himself wept. That, too, is part of what we celebrate in Advent: That this little God-baby has come to weep with us.
I will tell you something: it is good for me, in difficult moments, to think of Jesus weeping; when He wept looking at Jerusalem, when He wept before Lazarus’ tomb. God has wept for me, God weeps, He weeps for our sorrows. Because God wanted to make Himself man — a spiritual writer used to say — in order to be able to weep. To think that Jesus weeps with me in sorrow is a consolation: It helps us keep going.
Yes, God comes as a Baby to accompany us in our tears, to share them with us.
But one day — and yesterday we heard that this will be in “but a very little while” — “no more will you weep.”
Prayer
O God, who sent your Only Begotten Son into this world
to free the human race from its ancient enslavement,
bestow on those who devoutly await him
the grace of your compassion from on high,
that we may attain the prize of true freedom.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
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