NOTE: Throughout the Advent season, we’ll post a reflection on the readings for the upcoming Sunday in Advent just a few days before so individuals and groups can reflect in anticipation or incorporate it into their meetings, homilies, etc. The reflection will be available on our homepage through the weekend and then archived on our Advent 2025 webpage.
The reflection below is written by Cameron Bellm for this year’s Advent reflection booklet, “Entering the night of peace.” The booklet is still available for purchase at this link as an immediate download for your tablet or e-reader for $2.50.
By Cameron Bellm
Isaiah 11:1-10 | Romans 15:4-9 | Matthew 3:1-12
I’m so utterly taken by today’s first reading, this beautiful passage from Isaiah in which we see the wolf and the lamb, the cow and the bear, peacefully coexisting as neighbors, as friends. This vision, in which there is no harm and no ruin, reminds me of the stirring first words Pope Leo XIV spoke upon his election this year. He greeted the millions watching around the world with the peace of Christ, a peace, he said, that was “unarmed and disarming, humble and persevering.” How we needed those words on that day, and how much more we need them now, as wars and violence rage on, human rights abuses carry on unchecked, and the earth is more threatened than ever before.
Our psalm today assures that justice will flourish, that fullness of peace will reign. We could be forgiven, I think, for having to squint to see it.
What today’s readings and Pope Leo’s words call us to, I think, is the engagement of our sacred imagination. We have to boldly envision the world we want to bring into being. We have to speak it into existence, create it with the work of our hands and our own hearts, in communion with God, the author of peace.
Discouragement is a natural occasional stop along the road in the journey of speaking and acting prophetically, and it’s okay to pass through it when we gaze upon all the suffering inflicted by our government and others, the inequality that gilds the spoons of the few and leaves the bowls of many empty. Our broken hearts hum at the same frequency as God’s.
But we are continually invited to partner with God in setting things aright, in making the paths straight, not in some pie-in-the-sky hope that things will improve on their own, but in rolling up our sleeves and being part of the work of putting flesh on hope. We’re the ones who are called to proclaim the kingdom with shelter along the border, with sanctuary for those fleeing deportation without due process. To proclaim it with advocacy for just laws and budgets at the Capitol and on the ballots in our own towns. To proclaim it with calls for peace and ceasefire, for medical and material aid to suffering peoples.
Advent is a beautiful time to remember that the angel Gabriel’s words to Mary are still true, thousands of years later: “Nothing is impossible with God.” Trusting in Divine partnership, we must continue to lift our hands and lift our voices, speaking the same words of peace again and again, until they become part of the very fabric of our reality, ceaselessly calling us to treat the earth and one another as sacred and beloved.
>> For more Advent resources and reflections, click here.