“The Beginning” By: Andrew Scala, Fiat Ventures
2nd Sunday of Advent
The beginning. The end. Every book, every story, every life has one of each. A favorite book of mine, The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom, spends it’s beginning to end discussing the moment that man inadvertently chose to give up God’s greatest gift. He argues that when man began monitoring the sun’s movement in the sky, tracking its daily changes, and attaching numbers to its rising and setting, we gained and lost something. We gained the ability to attach time to our lives. We lost God’s ownership of our greatest gift. We, in concert with God, no longer owned our lives. Now, time did.
I suppose that’s why the beginning isn’t as attractive a topic as the end. The end implies that more time will pass and that the unknown future ultimately becomes known. There is excitement in the unknown, the future. There isn’t the same excitement in the past, right? There is no intrigue behind something so well known: the beginning. Or is there?
This week’s Gospel is the beginning in a lot of ways. It contains the first verse of the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark, which is “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.” Mark references the writing of the Prophet Isaiah, concerning John the Baptist’s proclamations. Imagine someone seeing this holy man of God, a man who had people of the whole Judean countryside going out to him. These were people seeking both an end and a beginning. Their end was the acknowledgement of their sins, so to end their spiritual burdens. Their beginning was something so much sweeter. Through John’s hands and the current of the river Jordan, the people were treated to their spiritual beginning: baptism. John would say to them, “One mightier than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; he will be baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
In this beginning of the new liturgical year in the Church with the Advent season, we are reminded of our own spiritual beginnings through our Baptism. And the beginnings in our life of faith don’t stop there. The Christian Life is filled with new beginnings every day. And when the “end” comes, whether at the end of our lives or when Jesus comes in glory at the end of time, that too will really be a beginning for us who believe. A new beginning where we’ll be in perfect union with God. Eternal life with him in heaven. So this Advent season let us prepare the way of the Lord in our hearts so we can begin again with a fresh start and a clean slate. Let us always remember the grace of our Baptism where we were brought to new life in Christ, and press on toward the finish line, which isn’t really an end after all.
