Incarnation. Security is in the insecurity: Coming, Prayer and turning, amid roaring waves.

(Lk 21:25-28.34-36)

What kind of Coming is it?

And why do we want the Lord to make himself present in our lives?

Are we waiting for a shortcut - an act of power - that will even out the stormy sea?

Indeed, it does not seem in the style of Good News to speak of "the roar of the sea and the billows" or to reiterate: "watch over the weighed down hearts".

But there is a wise way to understand these expressions, which is not the one already placed in the moral paradigm of religious cultures.

In the observant tradition of all peoples, insecurity is perceived as a disadvantage.

According to commonplaces, spiritual masters note progress when a soul with a mixed and disordered existence overcomes its turmoil in favour of order and tranquillity.

But the experience in the Spirit is more intimately restless than overt. Nor is it the same as a generic 'spiritual life' animated by a devout sense that detaches itself from transversal instances, for an ideal of 'consistent calm'.

Thus conditioned by a standardised indoctrination to know how to 'be in society', we wait to piously meet our Lord in dark times, but for Him to restore our fortunes.

We wait for him in times of economic troubles, so that he may give us an advantage with a win; in humiliating events, so that he may make us rise again.

In loneliness, that he may bring the right person together. 

In dangers... wishing that He at least conveys strength to turn the situation around.

And in sickness, we imagine that He restores youthful vigour.

So in babel, that (finally, at least) He communicates relaxation - better, triumph.

In the Gospels Jesus tries to make his own understand where and when to authentically encounter God.

But in the expectation of his 'Promises' - and that he will even manifest himself as 'our-Justice' [First Reading] - we find it difficult to proceed beyond the external.

We also project our ideas into religion - but Faith detaches itself from them. It evaluates with an opposite mentality.

For example, it happens that we fail to meet a friend because we get the time and place of the appointment wrong.

It also happens with God.

The insecurity proclaimed in the Gospels resembles "the roar of the sea and the billows" (v.25)... but it is glad tidings!

Although we tend to give a sense of permanence to what we have experienced and thought we 'were', time and again we experience that our certainties change - just like the waves.

Jesus teaches that true self-doubt paradoxically arises from some self-identification of ours that attempts (comically) to balance the waves of life.

Instead, the essence of each one springs from a living Source, which does what it must every day.

Habits, views, reassuring ways of being with people and dealing with situations, cut off the richness of our precious nuances; much of our very faces.

And births and rejuvenations that belong to us.

The inner impact of the many solicitations of this cosmic [and personal] Core insinuates an inevitable and fertile imbalance, which we risk, however, interpreting negatively; precisely, as annoyance.

In the mind of the man who dodges oscillations, that kind of 'wave' that comes to make us reason about ancient things is immediately identified as an identity danger.

Providence itself - the 'wave' that sees ahead - is perhaps branded with disquiet, even by those who advise us.

In the ideal man as chiselled by normalising moralisms, the swampy 'water' of drives is the one that dirties and drags down. And Heaven would always be clear and clean 'above' the earth.

Instead, it is often the thought, a cultural identification upstream, that produces insecurity and torment.

Prejudice overwhelms us far more than objective reality, which comes in to refresh our souls and make them as light as the cruelly embodied 'sea foam'.

For an evolution towards improvement, Jesus wants a disciple who is permeable to the novelties that shake the old 'status'.

The lack of doubt that the Lord intends to convey does not rhyme with the mechanism of habits.

The certainty he wishes to give us is not the false one - of the lazy immutability of things that are always the same.

The state of defensiveness and 'prevention' may be characteristic of a life spent in self-interested withdrawal, dribbling away the shocks - not a figure of Life in the Spirit.

Today's Gospel wishes believers to be highly critical, and even insecure: it does not say "you must be like this", nor "you are this" - "we have made it, why not you?".

[St Benedict's identity is not that of St Francis, although they are both deeply rooted (like circumstances) in the same Source; original Source, however of gushing water].

We must dive into the 'waves', we must know these 'waves'; for our stationary point is not in the external things or things that we showcase, but in the Scattering of Being.

The Scrutiny of appearances condemns us to the worst of fluctuations, to the least advantageous of insecurities: to believe that by maintaining (e.g.) economic levels or prestige, reaching that goal, climbing the scoreboard, etc., we will avoid frustrations, avoid anguish, finally be without conflict and even be happy.

But in doing so, our soul is not strengthened, nor does it fly to territories as yet unknown; rather, it rests in the enclosure of the most homologising barnyard.

Instead, we are alive, and the youthfulness that conquers the Kingdom comes from the chaos of upheaval.

Missionaries are animated by this one certainty: the best stability is instability: that "roar of the sea and the waves" where no wave resembles another.

In short, based on the Word of God, perhaps even the liturgical colour purple should take on a reinterpretation - much more vital, biting and profound than the one we thought we understood.

To internalise and live the message:

Advent: why do you want the Lord to come and make Himself Present in your life?