Change and instability pervade reality at every level of life. Everything from the life and death cycles of nature to the unpredictability of politics, economy and world affairs is mutable. Such mutable realities are often characterised by the imprint of geographical, social and generational trauma, both historically, and as presently unfolding before us.

Our readings today take us back on a journey to such historical imprints and, at the same time, they invite to us make a journey into the heart of our inmost being. This invitation is a way to prepare ourselves to journey into new season of Advent while being sensitive to the injustices around us.

Isaiah, who writes in a time of exilic desolation, envisions and then proclaims a time when God’s people will one day be free from captivity and free to return to a restored Jerusalem, to the beating heart of Judah, and to the very presence of God in the Temple. ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we might walk in his paths.’ Isaiah foresees a time when the repressive dark blanket of injustice will be lifted from God’s people and they will once again be able to ‘walk in the light of the Lord’.

Saint Paul, in his letter to the Gentile and Jewish Christians in Rome, echoes this sentiment some eight hundred years later while writing in a completely different period of history. Similarly, though, he writes at a time when the weight of injustice falls upon those earliest Christian communities who are suffering under Roman persecution. Saint Paul urges the Christians to awaken to a new reality which incarnates a new paradigm of living, even in times of persecution. He implores the Christians to embrace their newfound faith wholeheartedly by urging them to ‘cast off the works of darkness and to put on the armour of light’.

In a similar way, Jesus asks his disciples and ourselves to stay awake. We are to be alert to the uncertainty all around us and to the injustices which continue to oppress and dehumanise social groups. Chapter 24 of Matthew’s Gospel captures the essence of the conversation Jesus has about the imminent persecution that would befall both the first disciples and the Christians of his own time.

Moreover, in today’s Gospel passage, we have a glimpse into that part of the conversation where Jesus reminds his disciples about life before the flood in the Genesis account. That life, as he describes it, seems wonderful and joyous. Suddenly though, all things are changed and life goes from a state of flourishing to a state of alert and survival. We can recall, with the use of our own imaginations, how the ark became that place of refuge and safety in a time when the waters raged and consumed the earth.

As we stand at the beginning of our descent into the richness of Advent, there is a golden thread which runs through all of our readings, however faint it may appear. The retelling of historical traumatic biblical narratives in all three readings may obscure the golden thread somewhat, but it’s there if we look and listen with the ears of our hearts.

The golden thread is the invitation to go within ourselves: to ‘go up to the mountain of the Lord,’ as Isaiah asks God’s people; to go into the ark of our hearts that Jesus alludes to; to awaken to the awareness of Jesus in our being, of which Saint Paul writes. There in the heart we await the eternal birth of the Word of God who is being born in us eternally, as well as in history. All of our readings ask us to begin a new journey inwardly and to saturate ourselves in the divine source of love which fosters a compassionate heart.

Despite the mutability and injustices of our world, the heart is the place where stability and stillness remain untouched, and where compassion arises. The heart is the place which births the virtues of wisdom, courage, faith, hope and love. It is a place where justice happens, and where the prophetic voice emanates with a clear sense of direction, grounded in the love of God and the love for others. May your Advent be a time of prayerful and compassionate solidarity with those who carry the wounds of injustice, with those who live under the blanket of oppression, and with those who remind us that the Kingdom of God is still in the midst of a painful birthing.