Morning Connection:

Today is Tuesday, December 10, 2013.

Good Morning.

A thought for the day:
The glory of God will be revealed for all to see.

The Church’s 1st reading:
Isaiah chapter 40 verses 1-11

Comfort, give comfort to my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her
that her service is at an end,
her guilt is expiated;
Indeed, she has received from the hand of the LORD
double for all her sins.

A voice cries out:
In the desert prepare the way of the LORD!
Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!
Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill shall be made low;
The rugged land shall be made a plain,
the rough country, a broad valley.
Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together;
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

A voice says, “Cry out!”
I answer, “What shall I cry out?”
“All flesh is grass,
and all their glory like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower wilts,
when the breath of the LORD blows upon it.
So then, the people is the grass.
Though the grass withers and the flower wilts,
the word of our God stands forever.”

Go up onto a high mountain,
Zion, herald of glad tidings;
Cry out at the top of your voice,
Jerusalem, herald of good news!
Fear not to cry out
and say to the cities of Judah:
Here is your God!
Here comes with power
the Lord GOD,
who rules by his strong arm;
Here is his reward with him,
his recompense before him.
Like a shepherd he feeds his flock;
in his arms he gathers the lambs,
Carrying them in his bosom,
and leading the ewes with care.

* * *
"Comfort! Give comfort to my people, says your God." How wonderful those words sound to us. How many times we feel the need for comfort. How often we need an assuring and tender word to ease the hurt we feel. Every year about this time we hear those wonderful prophetic words sung in Handel's Messiah, or read in our churches.

They were written for a people for whom things had gone terribly wrong.

We all remember that time when hostages were being held somewhere in Lebanon. Some of them had been there for several years. Occasional pictures would be sent out by their captors to let the world know they were still alive and to keep the hurt festering. How our hearts ached for those men and for their families who longed to have them home again. We remember the feeling. How we and they needed the comfort that could only come by their release and return.

Comfort, in an old and largely obsolete definition, means "to make one strong". That certainly has more meaning here than the ease and relaxation that we might better describe as "comfy."

To be strong to bear one's burdens doesn't sound like much of a miracle. Comfort doesn't mean the situation will become easy. The alcoholic will still have to take it one day at a time. Living the rest of our lives without a loved one who has died will not be easy. Coping with a disability, bearing pain, loving someone who is hard to love are all difficult to do. They require strength often beyond our limits. But there is reassurance - tender reassurance.

Here we are in the season of Advent preparing for Christmas. We can just decorate the exterior and cover up what is underneath, or we can make some substantive changes that will smooth the way for the God-presence to come into our lives in a special way this year. We can take a venture of faith and discover the inner strength that is true comfort in the midst of whatever distress or turmoil we may find ourselves. And we may find to our surprise that the God who chose to become known in the Child of Bethlehem will choose to be born anew in our hearts and minds.

God bless,
Father Pat



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