Come, Lord Jesus, Come!

On this first Sunday of Advent, I awoke obsessively worrying about my conversation last week with my former supervisor; and worrying about getting a job.

The whole prospect ... like the whole prospect for anything in this life these days ... seems so bleak. For I was thinking about Mom during this whole terrible rumination ...

And I thought, O Lord, I know this life is your gift ... but what a horrible, horrible gift ... so horrible and so excruciatingly painful ... and without Mom ... how in the world do people do this? How do they manage? How do they get along? How can I get along?

And ... why? Why? Why should I get along? In a world as horrible as this? Why?

Then I remembered something CS Lewis said once: that about life there is almost nothing one can say, either good or bad, that is not in some sense true.

Glorious and miserable. Beautiful and ugly. Full of delights and full of torture.

It's all true. All. That and so much more.

I went to Mom's grave and stood in my shirt sleeves ... it's unseasonably warm this morning ... and said, for the first time in my life, an Advent OOR over her grave. Then the Office for the Dead MP ... and it looks like the Office for the Dead during Advent is the same as the Office during Ordinary Time.

I wept and gave Momma a coo on her grave marker and left thinking Of Course ... this is the way it is and always has been and always will be ... until You, O Lord, Come. For this Advent Season is really a celebration of the Advent that is Life. A Life full of Holy Saturdays of Waiting and Longing is surely as well a Life full of Advent Longing ... for You to Come, O Come, Emmanuel.

The Office reminds me that in a way all pain and suffering in this world is a form of the Pangs of Longing for YOU to Come, O Lord. To Come and rescue us. To bring Justice and Mercy.

Justice ... O Lord come ... set things right ... the universe seems revealed to me as a horribly wrong, wrong place with Momma dead and gone. Nothing is right without her. O Come. I know tthat this sense that all is wrong is at least to this extent true and accurate: nothing really is right without You here. So Come, O Come, Emmanuel. Come with Justice and Righteousness and restore what lays in ruins, restore me, O Lord, who lays in ruins. Come O Lord and Make All Things Right. Including me, O Lord. Slay me, O Lord, if that is Thy Will, but Make All Things Right. For nothing seems right without my Momma here. But then nothing is right wihtout You here anyway.

So Come O Come Emmanuel
Come, Lord Jesus, Come
Maranatha, Lord Jesus, Come

And O Lord bring justice

And please o please o please ... take good care of my Momma.

I love you Lord Jesus.

Charles Delacroix
First Sunday in Advent