stand erect and raise your heads
because your redemption is at hand.
When things in this world get crazy don't look down. Don't even look at the things themselves. Instead, look up! Redemption is at hand. What does it mean to look up? It means to fix our eyes on Jesus and our minds on the things above. We need to trust in God's promises.
The days are coming, says the LORD,
when I will fulfill the promise
I made to the house of Israel and Judah.
God's promises are not like human promises. Even if we are fairly sure someone will keep a promise it is of little help to us until they do so. God's promises can change and transform our lives even now. His promises are so certain that we can taste their reality even before they fully come.
In this sense, Advent is promise practice. God has begun the fulfillment of his promise to the world by sending his only Son Jesus to die for our sins and to rise again. His promise is fulfilled more and more at the coming of Jesus in the Eucharist. And it will finally be fulfilled at the end of time. From the past we learn that God is faithful. Yet it is more than that. We are invited even now to taste the reality of things to come, of the heavenly banquet.
When we live based on his promises we are not distracted by too little care, as in carousing and drunkenness, or too much care, such as anxiety. The day won't catch us like a trap because we live waiting for it. We even taste it at each Mass. And it is there that we receive the strength to stand before the Son of Man. It is there that our "hearts are strengthened to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones."
So when these signs begin to happen, when things seem to go from bad to worse, let us raise our heads and lift our souls, staking everything on God's promises to us.
To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.
Good and upright is the LORD;
thus he shows sinners the way.
He guides the humble to justice,
and teaches the humble his way.
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