Father Patrick Johnson, CSP

Waiting, an inevitable and even necessary aspect of human life, is not something most of us take pleasure in. 

We wait in lines to purchase groceries; to order our lunch; to use the ATM. We wait for stop signs and traffic signals; for our final grades to be posted; for the oven to pre-heat; for the person at some far-away help desk to answer our call.

It’s estimated that in a lifetime of 70 years, the average person spends at least three years waiting! ’Course, when I was living at home I think I spent at least that much time waiting for my sister to get out of our one and only bathroom! (Sorry, Sis.)

But when it comes to Advent, which is often described as a season of waiting, it’s an entirely different kind of waiting. Advent waiting isn’t passive waiting, it’s active anticipation. It’s more like waiting for flowers to grow and bloom; for babies to be born; for a cut to heal; for bread to rise; for friends to arrive; for e-mailed photos of the grandkids to load, for love to deepen. So much more of ourselves is engaged in this kind of waiting.

Advent waiting is like what St. Paul describes when he says in his letter to the Romans: “All creation is groaning in labor pains” as it awaits the full revealing of God.

Throughout the Advent season, passages from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah describe a world lush, rich, and full of the knowledge, the truth, the justice, and the peace of God.

Advent invites us beyond simply passively waiting to receive what’s on our personal (and communal) Christmas wish list. Advent invites us to actively give of ourselves, joining our whole selves to all the rest of humanity, to all of creation – groaning with anticipation for the things on God’s Christmas wish list for us.

Embracing the call of John the Baptist, our Advent posture is one of actively, anxiously, hopefully, trustingly anticipating the promised fuller presence of “God with us.”

Father Patrick Johnson, CSP, is pastor of St. Lawrence Church and Newman Center in Minneapolis, Minn.