Get Excited, By Brian Flanagan, Fiat Ventures

Get Excited

by Brian Flanagan, Fiat Ventures

Third Sunday of Advent

On our honeymoon in Rome, we got to see lots of statues.  Some were Renaissance masterpieces in beautiful ornate Cathedrals and Basilicas like Michelangelo’s Pieta (the artist, not the Ninja Turtle).  Others were statues out in the open that had been weathered by the years, and some were missing heads, arms, and hands that had broken off.

Inside one of the Churches, we saw a statue of a head laying on its side.  At first glance it looked like it had fallen off another statue and they brought it inside and rested it on the table, but upon closer inspection, we realized it was actually the whole statue…it was a statue of John the Baptist’s head on the silver platter…

Before things went south for John, he was a pretty popular guy.  In the Gospels during Advent, we read about him preaching to very large crowds.  He was a great preacher, but that wasn’t the only reason that people came out in droves to see him.  Many of them were hoping that he was something even more.

This week’s Gospel says that “the people were filled with expectation, and all were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Christ.”  That line really captures the spirit of Advent.  The Jewish people had been waiting for the promised Messiah to come since the prophets first wrote about him.

It was the kind of waiting where, when you see a glimmer of hope that what you’ve been waiting for might finally be happening, you start getting really excited.  Is this my college acceptance letter that came in the mail today from Rutgers or just more promotional materials with their logo on the envelope?   Are the two main characters from my favorite sitcom finally going to realize they have feelings for one another? Is school going to be cancelled tomorrow because it’s starting to snow pretty hard?

I remember being excited like this after my first date with my wife.  I tried not to get my hopes up going into that evening since we had only just met the week before and didn’t know much about each other.  But after appetizers, dinner, desert, 2 cups of coffee, and 3 and a half hours of conversation, I went home with a goofy smile on my face that didn’t wear off for days because I had that glimmer of hope that this might be the real thing.

That’s how the crowds felt with John the Baptist.  And he basically said to them, “You’re right to be excited about the Messiah, only it’s not me.  But he’s coming soon.”  That was John’s whole purpose – to prepare hearts for Jesus.  He gave them homework – he told the crowds to clean up their acts so they would be ready when the Messiah came.   That’s how we should approach the second half of Advent now – we want our hearts to be ready when Christ comes at Christmas.  We don’t want to go through the motions on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day of going to Mass just to get the spiritual stuff out of the way so we can focus on eating and presents.   We want to show up at Mass with an excitement that has built up from all this waiting so that it can explode in celebration in our hearts and then in a practical way with the eating and presents and time with family and friends.

So take John’s advice and get ready.  Christmas is almost here!