THE PILGRIMAGE OF HOPE

The Commission of the Journey!

First Sunday in Advent – December 01, 2024

Jeremiah 33:14-16; 1 Thessalonians 3:12 - 4:2; Luke 21: 25-28, 34-36

Let us wish ourselves a Happy New Year! A happy new liturgical year! And this year’s Advent, apart from ushering in the new liturgical year, gives us another special commission too, it commissions us a journey towards the Jubilee Year, the threshold of which shall coincide with the celebrations of the Nativity of our Lord this year.

We are challenged to be Pilgrims of Hope… and the upcoming year shall encapsulate that vocation in a myriad of ways, but the journey begins now. That is why, this Advent can be very well considered a Pilgrimage of Hope! And that certainly coincides with this first Sunday of Advent, the Sunday dedicated to the theme of hope. The Word this Sunday invites us to understand this commission, this call for a pilgrimage of hope in its depth. The pilgrimage has begun, with the commission of this journey.

The Journey begins, as everything, with God! God has raised us and God has convoked us to this journey. Jeremiah speaks of this in the metaphor of raising up a righteous branch – the Lord-our-integrity raises up the branch for David and that branch shall reign. The Raise, is a promise, and that promise is the foundation of hope, for the Lord is righteousness and integrity. Our minds, our hearts, our spirits are raised, and it is the most rudimentary meaning of advent, which invites us to see everything from the point of view of God, God’s promise and its fulfillment – the stock of Jesse, the branch of David, the Lord our Saviour.

The Journey is all about a reaffirmation, from the Lord who increases our love for each other and confirms our hearts in holiness and righteousness, after the Lord’s own heart. This Reaffirmation, is all about reassuring us on our journey that we are on the right track, or even if we have spotted ourselves drifting that we are not clueless about the return. We know the coordinates – love of God and love for one another, which alone can make us holy and blameless before God! The key is in learning to see the mercies of the Lord that surround us. The journey that we begin this day, is not a lonesome adventure. We are accompanied – the by the very One who has commissioned this journey, and the co-pilgrims who are commissioned along with us. Our responsibility is twofold – that we recognize with hope this commission we are presented with, and secondly, we share this hope with every co-sojourner along this pilgrimage.

The Journey is ultimately about our rising, being enlivened by the call of the Lord to “stay awake”, “to stand with confidence”, and “to stand erect and hold our heads high,” come what may. The Rise, is not about an escape from fearsome happenings, but it is all about looking at that liberation that is brought to us by the Son of Man. The Saviour shall come with glory and power, and those shall become ours too – depending on the assent that we give to the Lord who reveals, the Lord who has inaugurated this pilgrimage of hope, right when he spoke of the Reign. This is actively our response, while the first two were what God would do for us – while it is the Lord who would raise us up and reaffirm us, it is we, who have to rise; we have to decide to rise! To rise and shine, that we may make this journey, this pilgrimage of hope.

The first week shall underscore for us the commission of this journey – explicating right at the outset the nature, the destination, the expectations and so on, related to this pilgrimage. Being a pilgrimage of hope, it has to be filled with the presence of the Lord. And that is what we ask of the Lord this day – that the Lord accompanies us in this journey commission by the Lord himself, a pilgrimage of hope.