Look, Jesus is coming!
In fairness, the child – a beautiful blonde curly-haired boy – was probably only in his second year. He was clearly the apple of his father’s eye. He had already discovered that even with two short legs he could build up quite a head of steam. His father, wisely, had thought to let him bring a little toy with him, and this kept his attention for lengthy periods – but not totally! Every so often there was a little whelp of excitement as he sought to draw his father’s attention to the position his toy was now in. And again in fairness, his father was doing quite a good job of maintaining a reasonable degree of appropriate silence and respect for the Sacred Mysteries that were being celebrated.
The key moment of Consecration was fast approaching, and one could sense that dad was getting concerned as junior was beginning to get a little restless. The next thing dad embraces junior in a close embrace, and in a stage whisper that could be heard all around the church informs him – “Look, Jesus is coming!” It did the trick! The little boy looked up in awe as Fr. Ephrem raised the host. The little boy was clearly aware that this Jesus was someone very special, and he didn’t want to miss the moment of His arrival. And his attention was captured for all of five seconds, before he resumed whatever he was doing with his toy. (Don’t knock it – there are some Sunday masses and I would be tempted to sacrifice the collection if I thought it would buy me 5 seconds of attentive silence! Don’t worry, it’s a temptation I’ve always managed to resist!)
At last we arrive at the end of the Christmas Season and, unless we were on another planet altogether, our attention has been constantly drawn to the coming of Christ into our world. We have heard in the readings from the Old Testament of the eager expectation of the coming of the Messiah. We have heard the New Testament accounts of Christ’s conception and birth; of the difficulty in finding accommodation; of the angels appearing to the shepherds; of the visit of the Wise Men; of the flight into Egypt to escape the persecution of Herod. And today our attention is drawn to Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist.
At the beginning of a New Year of course we’re in the season of ‘New Year resolutions’. I wonder how many have been made this year? I wonder how many have lasted even this long! Many say that nowadays, despite the huge expansion of information technology, or maybe because of it, our attention spans are getting less and less. I don’t know how true that may be, but one can’t help wondering sometimes if brevity of attention spans is a problem only for children in church, or whether we all could do with some improvement. “Look, Jesus is coming” grabbed the child’s attention for 5 seconds – how long did it grab ours – 5 minutes, hours, days ….. ? Hopefully we haven’t just gone back to playing with our toys, as if nothing had happened! He’s there for us every day – now what could be more attention-grabbing than that? |
