Switch off the noise of sin

It is that time of the year again when we are bombarded by images of forced jollity and superfluous commercialism. That time of the year which in our secular age is termed X-mas.

Those of us to whom it is still Christmas, the birthday of the Saviour, will be straining for correct perspectives to recall the light of heaven visiting the earthly shores. And so Advent becomes a time to recreate silence, to prepare for the Silent Night. That is why I find myself reading Let God’s Light Shine Forth: The Spiritual Vision of Pope Benedict XVI, edited by Robert Moynihan.

Speaking of things poisoning man, Pope Benedict says: The capacity to love, that is, the capacity to wait in patience for what is not under one’s own control and to let oneself receive this as a gift, is suffocated by the speedy fulfilments in which I am dependent on no one, but in which I am never obliged to emerge from my own self, and thus never find the path into my own self. What is Advent if not time to cultivate the capacity to love?

At Christmas God, in utter vulnerability, surrenders in the silence of self-giving love. We give him our answer, of course, just before Easter, when we crucify him. When we say we want human reliant autonomy. When we say God must bend to our wills or leave us alone. When, too steeped in self-assertive ways, what the Holy Father calls speedy fulfilments, we scream; We want Barabbas, the hardened criminal to the responsibilities of opening up our capacity to love.

We’re always making plans without consulting the will of God. Divine principles shun short-cuts, demand a life-long commitment. We are too busy for the demands of love that require we die to our own will. We find them too encumbering and prefer instant gratification. We change our language to accommodate our preferences, to nullify the weight of sin. We call lies another point of view. After all there’s no Truth but many truths, and so we’re free to be inventive even about truth.

This is the death of God that Nietzsche talked about: the disappearance of representative structure to build meaningful relations between each other. And we wonder why our relationships do not last. This loss of language to its connection with reality is a danger Socrates warned about in his battles with the Sophists.

We cheapen self-knowledge know yourself to fashionable vulgarity of consumerist culture where getting to know your inner self means anything from narcissist navel gazing to deluded pop psychology. Self-denial is seen as perversion. Principles are shunned as being stiff. Humility is putting yourself down; while assertiveness is being positive. Everything must be relative to be cool. Truth offends so it must be sacrificed.

And you wonder why our sentences start and like confetti are sprinkled with the word like. Everything must, like, be so, so, since the only acceptable dogma is, like, that of the hierarchy-defying nonconformists sovereign individual. Like, you know what I mean?

The richer we become materially the more we seem to be discontent. Why? The answer is in that haunting line of the Psalm: Thou givest them their hearts desires and send leanness withal into their souls.

Rediscovering capacity to love, that is living a life of Advent, of prayerful watchfulness, is not an easy thing to do. You have to wait with the humble patience of shepherds for the star to appear from the East and lead to Bethlehem. To find it means outsmarting the Herods (and, in a way, the Harrods) of this world, and fleeing to Egypt, trusting that God pilots the journey of your life.

Advent is silent refuge of hope, of waiting for Christmas, for God’s communication to put a limit to the noise of sin. For dawn coming switched in gold and the eternal silence to take breath for the world to grown bright.