by Joseph Nangle, OFM
Pax Christi USA 2023 Teacher of Peace
The priest recounted his journey of conversion from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. He told of suffering a crisis of vocation as a young Episcopalian clergyman and felt the need to take a leave of absence from the ministry. His personal financial situation was such that he was able to take what was formerly called “The Grand Tour” – an extended journey through Europe that was a normal part of privileged English gentlemen’s education.
He said that on one leg of the trip he found himself in the cathedral of Reme near Rome, Italy. As he went down into the crypt of the church and immediately came face to face with a larger than life statue of a very pregnant young woman. His immediate reaction was irritation: “Those Roman Catholics would stick something like this in your face.” Nevertheless, he asked a passerby whom the statue represent and of course was told that it depicted Mary the mother of Jesus.
He began to think about that and came to realize that for nine months in human history, the only evidence of God’s Incarnation was a young pregnant Jewish girl. That proved to be the gateway for him eventually to embrace Roman Catholicism, to which he brought an enduring devotion to Miriam of Nazareth.
This is a truly Advent story. Mary was chosen to be the channel for our Savior’s humanity and she stands as an exemplar of the principal attitudes of this holy season: waiting and hoping. As the former Episcopalian priest observed, Mary was the sole icon of this ever-so-human beginning of salvation history and spent her pregnancy “in joyful hope for the coming of Savior.”
We imitate Mary in these days of preparation for celebrating the Lord’s birth. Her message, mostly unspoken in the Gospel infancy narrative, is “wait.” The Spanish language uses the same word for waiting and hoping (esperar). We wait also not only for the remembrance of Jesus’ birth. Beautiful as that memory is and the way Catholics celebrate it, we also hope for the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise to come again in glory to complete the work of God’s reign – the “already and not yet” which we celebrated a week ago on the Feast of Christ the King.
There are many Advent-like prayers which grace these weeks in our Catholic liturgical celebrations:
- “We wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”
- “When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death Lord Jesus until you come again.”
- “Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.”
- “He will come again to judge the living and the dead.”
- “We proclaim your death, O Lord, and profess your resurrection until you come again.”
A crucial corollary to these Advent themes is silence. Again, Mary exemplifies this attitude. After the angel’s visit and the announcement that she, a virgin, would conceive and bear a son, and after her visit to her cousin Elizabeth, we hear nothing about those nine months of pregnancy. Later on Luke’s Gospel will declare that “she kept all these things in her heart.”
The Advent practice of deliberate silence even for a few minutes each day is vitally important, not only as a temporary discipline in this quiet liturgical season, but in a world of constant noise. Silence in today’s culture highlights awareness of incessant talking, surrounded by frenetic music and a lost art of listening.
But our silence has to be accompanied by what Pope Francis said referring to the Gospel for the first Sunday of Advent: “Wakefulness, attention, vigilance… Jesus warns us: There is a danger of not realizing His coming and being unprepared for His visit. I have recalled on other occasions what Saint Augustine said: ‘I fear… that the Lord will pass by and I will not recognize Him.’”
Joe Nangle OFM is a Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace and the 2023 Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace. As a member of the Assisi Community in Washington, D.C., he is dedicated to simple living and social change. Joe also serves as the Pastoral Associate for the Latino community at Our Lady Queen of Peace, Arlington, Virginia.