God-is-with-us

by Sr Jadwiga Swiatecka

4th. Sunday of Advent: Yr. A: In today’s readings, we are reminded three times that He who is to be born is to be called Emmanuel, which means, God-with-us, so perhaps it’s a good idea to remind ourselves how God IS with us and not only, of course, at Christmas.

So, in the first place, God is with us - all, and always, because He is God and there is nowhere where He is not. So he is here with us now wherever that may be, (at the computer perhaps?) and he will continue to be with us wherever it is we may go to from wherever it is we are at the moment: he is with us whether we go to the kitchen, the car, to watch the TV, or wherever we are going, to do whatever it is that we intend to do. I wonder how conscious we are, and indeed perhaps how conscious we can be, that God is thus indeed with us, wherever we are and whatever we do. I guess that if we could really take that in, we would be overwhelmed.

So perhaps it’s as well, and necessary, that God is with us also in special ways and at special times. Primarily, as we believe, He is with us at Mass, when the ordinary bread and wine which we offer become the presence among us of him who walked the roads of Jerusalem and Jericho 2000 years ago. It is a belief which it is not easy for us to encompass, but one which is, nevertheless, central to our faith, as is also his continual presence in the tabernacle – a presence which, perhaps, we are less conscious of today than we used to be.

But, perhaps, and even more difficult, is the truth that God-is-with-us in the people we meet, and indeed, those we live with. We are, after all, all made in the image of God, and most of us have also been baptised, so, like it or not, God-is-with-us in and through them. As we know well enough, Jesus identified himself with the nobodies, with those who have no roofs over their heads, nowhere to sleep at night and nothing to eat by day. Indeed; and it is to our shame that there are many such. But, and it is, I think, an important but, he is with us also in all those whom we encounter in the ordinary circumstances of our ordinary, everyday lives – in the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker – in those we live with, whether as families or communities: God-is-with-us in them, however trying they may at times be (as we, as surely, may be to them). God is never a- somewhere-else-God. And difficult as this may sometimes be, it is also something for which we should be profoundly grateful.