Fr. Patrick Nogoy, SJ
1st Sunday of Advent
November 27, 2016
I remember in my student life how sleep was a luxury. Seemingly endless group projects, research proposals and papers to write, overlapping org duties and activities gnawed my typical day. It was only in the months between graduation and work when I finally enjoyed sleep without much pressure of waking up the next day. As I moved on to work, vacation replaced sleep as a luxury. I looked forward to holidays, stretching the quiet and recreation weekends that afforded me personal space and time. I longed to travel and waste time in different places but that was but a wish in the middle of a hectic corporate life. Light traffic became a part too of luxury. It was not as heavy as it is now but I do remember how I dreaded Mondays, cursed Fridays, and detested the regular 1 ½ to 2 hour drives in between, memorizing various side streets and routes just to reach home and avoid heavy traffic especially in rainy afternoons. I longed for Saturday mornings, Sundays, and holidays because of the ease and breeze of going around the metro. As I live another kind of busy-ness—the seminary life and priestly ministry—personal prayer turned out to be a luxury. Responding to various apostolic demands, sometimes, I found myself justifying work as prayer, finding God in informal times and spaces yet not having enough room for depth of conversation and reflection.
It is striking how the first reading describes Israel’s luxury in a dream-like fashion, how she was filled with emotional longing, almost a holy longing, in her coming to the Lord’s mountain, and how she dreamt of truth and justice flowing from such place of lasting peace. This luxury was proclaimed repeatedly in the psalm through her rejoicing. For Israel, coming home is a luxury. After suffering under the hands of different enemies and foreigners and of her own kings, she has been living in exile for too long. She dreamt of peace, a lasting peace in that day of her homecoming. Little did she know that God has the same longing, wanting to come home to her as expressed in the Gospel, His coming like a thief in the night. An unexpected surprise—a luxury indeed!—to meet and be with one’s own beloved face to face. Two longings trying to reach out and wrap one another can only be a momentous event. With much investment and desire, coming home to one another can only be matter of time.
We begin this new year of faith through the season of Advent, popularly interpreted as the opportune time of waiting. With depth and prayerful reflection, new dreams and hopes can blossom from the soil of our ordinary daily grinding and living in the promise of advent. I guess part of waiting is rediscovering ourselves by examining the luxuries we yearn for. What have been your luxuries nowadays? Things that were once ordinarily available and accessible but have become valuable over time, having been lost and missed along the way? Meanings and ways of living that have roused your deepest desire and, if you wish, your holy longing? Chances you are willing to wait for with much rejoicing or people you long to come home to? Or even some unexpected questions that can determine new life directions? Perhaps, some mending and healing which some have been waiting for too long?
As we enter and grow in the space of waiting, preparing for the Lord’s day, can we include in the ambit of our luxuries the suffering, marginalized, and those whose luxury right now comes in the form of justice and restorative care? May we rediscover our holy longing as a people for our country in this opportune time of waiting—slowing down, pausing and praying, and surrendering ourselves to silent moments in the midst of our busy-ness—in order to be restored and make self-sacrificing decisions for the common good, whose meaning has become nothing short of a luxury nowadays.
Fr. Patrick Nogoy, SJ is currently assigned in Miarayon, Bukidnon, a community of indigenous Filipinos located in the Municipality of Talakag, Bukidnon. If you wish to be our mission partner, you may visit our FB page here. You may also make a donation online through the JesuitAid page here.