THE WORD IN ADVENT
Second Friday in Advent - December 12, 2025
Isaiah 48: 17-19; Matthew 11: 16-19
Daring to behold the Reign is all about protagonism on behalf of the Reign, that is taking responsibility for it and making it present wherever we are. However, such a task runs into a danger when someone, in the name of protagonism, makes it a personal project, according to his or her own whims and fancies!
Just imagine some great political leaders today who in the name of making their country or society great, have recourse to policies that are highly personal and arbitrary - wanting to promote one's own causes, interests and popularity; much worse, to the detriment of the others and to the destabilisation of a wholesome future. Can this be justified? That is exactly what Jesus explains with that parable of the children playing in the market place - who are worried about nothing more than what they wish and desire, for themselves and from others.
As psychology would have it, one of the marks of maturity in a person is the capacity to distance oneself from one's own subjective feelings and finding the space for the other. Spirituality would add to the other, an Other! For us in Christian parlance, it is opening ourselves to the Will of God... Reign in fact is the Will of God being done - on earth as in heaven. Is that not what Jesus taught us?
The Lord speaks to us through Isaiah today, assuring us that it is not all together impossible to know what God wants of us - because, the Lord himself teaches us, the Lord himself leads us in that way, the Lord shows us by so many different ways and means what we need to do and what we need to choose, to do the will of God. Reign of God is the will of God executed with readiness and joy... indeed, it is fullness of our lives, the radical living of what God wants of us and that fullness is truly the Reign that God has willed for all, and for each of us.