Saturday of the Second Week of Advent, 2018

We are told in today’s reading from the Book of Sirach that Elijah, the prophet, came into the world, burning like a wild fire of passion and zeal. “How awesome are you, Elijah, in your wondrous deeds! Whose glory is equal to yours? You were taken aloft in a whirlwind of fire!”

I suspect that most of us think of Advent more as a time of quiet listening, a time to wait expectantly for the coming of the Word made flesh. Today’s reading from Sirach, though, is not calling us to contemplative silence. We are being invited to embrace a different metaphor: FIRE. We are told that God took Elijah up into a whirlwind of fire.

Something important happened in the heavens on that day. Elijah and the Jewish people clearly witnessed that God’s Spirit was doing something new, fanning into flame a powerful fire of love that is spreading across the earth.

Remember the candle that we were given the day of our baptism? Well, that Baptism candle is enlightened by the same fiery Spirit that took Elijah up into heavens. Most of us have been to a few baptisms and have witnessed the moment when the parents or godparents are invited to light a small candle from the larger Easter Candle. But do we really understand that at that moment we, too, become a FIRE of God’s love, a love that we are sent to share with the world?

Every newly baptized person is filled with the LIGHT of CHRIST and is sent out like a flame of love to set the world on fire, witnessing to the radically new world that Christ has come to inaugurate.

This is not theater, folks. No, this is the fire of our baptismal commitment, our mission. It doesn’t matter if it’s Pope Francis heading to the Amazon to speak about the care of creation or the organist at church who plays Church hymns at the local nursing home every Saturday morning. We have been anointed to spread the Light of God’s love in the world.

So, find that baptismal candle that very likely might be hidden in some dark corner of your heart. Advent is a good time to reach down and pull that baptismal candle out so that we can set the world on fire with God’s love, ready to welcome Emmanuel when he draws near to our world today.