Monday of the Fourth Week of Advent

Lectionary: 199


Lo, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me; And suddenly there will come to the temple the LORD whom you seek, And the messenger of the covenant whom you desire. Yes, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.



Shortly before I moved to Louisiana in 1988 I attended a workshop in Minneapolis. It was sponsored by the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis and featured a well-known priest. He lived in Washington DC and lobbied the Senate and House about the Catholic Church's position on various topics.

On that occasion he spoke of the impending crisis of nuclear war. The United States and the Soviet Union were armed to the teeth and prepared to annihilate one another and the entire planet at a moment's notice. It was obvious to many people that the Communist Empire was crumbling under its own absurd ideals. There were no true believers any more; only the criminals remained to feather their own nests and oppress the peoples of eastern Europe and Asia. 

In the US there was a movement to unilaterally disarm our nuclear weapons. It struggled against a culture with a huge investment in, and a passionate love of, weapons of every sort.

As I drove home that afternoon I wept aloud. I had lived under the nuclear threat all my life. Even as a child we practiced bomb drills, hiding under our desks -- as if that would save us from anything. My folks talked about developing a fallout shelter in the basement of our house. On that pleasant spring day I believed we would never see the twenty-first century. I knew the United States would never allow itself to become a second-rate power so long as we had nuclear weapons. I supposed the Soviets had the same attitude. 


Then, suddenly, it was over. The Soviet Union collapsed. The bloc split apart, each nation going its own way. There was no World War III. True, there were wars in south-eastern Europe, the long delayed end of World War II but the world was spared a universal conflagration. 




Lake MSF
12/14/13

I did not think that history is capable of sudden, peaceful transformations. I had not heeded the prophecies from Medjugorge predicting a sign the whole world might see. I was proven wrong, thank God. 

And suddenly there will come to the temple
the LORD whom you seek,
And the messenger of the covenant whom you desire.
Yes, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.