That precious human doubt that transforms us into lights of the living God
Homiletics of the Fathers of The Island of Patmos
THAT PRECIOUS HUMAN DOUBT THAT TRANSFORMS US INTO LIGHTS OF THE LIVING GOD
Doubt assails John the Baptist during his imprisonment, when he has to experience the solitude of the night of the soul and of faith he begins to have doubts and to think that the announcement made about Jesus is not entirely true…
Author:
Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci, o.p.
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Dear Readers and friends of The Island of Patmos,
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In our life it can happen that we see things so beautiful that we don't believe they are real. Perhaps we have forgotten how to be surprised. Children are true masters of this. Therefore, when something joyful and beautiful happens, we easily ask ourselves: «… it really happened? Or maybe it's all just a dream?». In that moment we are all a little’ like the philosopher Descartes who writes in a famous passage of the Metaphysical Meditations:
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«Thinking about it more carefully, so clearly I realize that it is never possible to distinguish waking from dreams with certain criteria, to be astonished; and it is precisely this amazement that almost brings me back to believe that I am dreaming even now".
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But then here is Jesus who comes to give us a nice wake-up call, inviting us on this Advent journey to dispel doubts because what is happening is not a dream. God takes human nature, he becomes a man, to be close to all of us. It's all true. So what is unthinkable and what seems like an unattainable dream is actually reality.
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This doubt after all, at a certain point John the Baptist also had it. In Gospel of this Third Sunday of Advent let's read:
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"During that time, Giovanni, who was in prison, having heard of the works of Christ, through his disciples he sent word to him: «Are you the one who must come or we must wait for someone else?».
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Doubt assails John the Baptist during his incarceration, when he has to experience the solitude of the night of the soul and of faith he begins to have doubts and to think that the announcement made about Jesus is not entirely true. In the hour of abandonment it is easy to think that everything is too good to be true, exactly like it happens to us too. Not because we were all actually incarcerated, but because we may have spent periods of isolation, of loneliness, of abandonment. We felt alone and thought that Jesus had not really come for us too, that he wasn't really there at that moment, in our suffering. This Advent let us try to remember these moments to reread them in the light of Christmas: Jesus was there in that existential night.
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Jesus in the Gospel in fact he reassures the Baptist that he is truly the Son of God, he who, by being born, came to illuminate the darkness of the world and of man and make it shine. To make us shine like him on Christmas night is the light of the world. And let the light of our lives shine.
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May Advent also be the journey of understanding and rereading with the gaze of that faith which in the light of the Bethlehem cave transforms us all into little lights of the Lord. We can all become witnesses to the message that that little child is the son of God, who is true God and true man.
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God guide us and accompany us in this season of Advent, because with his grace and his gifts, let us become in the Lord his Christmas Gift for the suffering world.
Amen.
Santa Maria Novella in Florence, 11 December 2022
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