Tired of Waiting

My family’s tabletop nativity set is a hodgepodge of figurines. Some were gifts to my parents for their wedding, others are from both of my grandmothers’ sets, the angel is an ornament that has sentimental value. I have always loved that these pieces don’t match. They are made of different materials and their sizing is very different. When I was getting into art as a kid, I liked being the one to stage them so that “perspective was right.”

My family, like many others, set up the nativity scene at the beginning of Advent. We left the Baby Jesus figurine wrapped in his tissue paper behind the manger so that he could be unwrapped and gently placed on the hay on Christmas morning. Even now, with my sister and I grown up, this is still the first thing that we do before we open our presents. Jesus’ hay in our nativity set was made from little strips of paper. These strips of paper were inscribed with the good deeds of my sister and I throughout Advent. “Baby Jesus needs something nice to lay on.” Some of the best and sweetest of these little scraps of paper have survived and are mixed in with the craft store hay my mom now puts down. I have a distinct memory of a middle school Christmas Eve where we heard a “Hmmm, Baby Jesus doesn’t have a lot of hay this year.”

This Advent is hitting a little differently than recent ones. I’m trying to pray through the season, trying to “participate not anticipate,” trying to remember that our faith and this movement requires a long game, but I’m tired. I’m trying to do the Advent things – reading and reflecting on Scripture, savoring the graces of each week, doing all the Christmas prep with my family and friends – and still, I’m tired. I’ve been having a lot of conversations with people who do church activism work and with Catholic educators and we are all TIRED.

We are laying down all this hay, putting in all the work, doing all the preparations, and the Church isn’t reciprocating.

I’m tired of waiting on the patriarchy to get their act together and realize that their liberation is tied to the liberation of all people. We are tired of being the ones to prepare, like Martha, but still waiting on our invitation to the table that we have built, washed, and set. It doesn’t seem like the Church is doing their part to lay down the hay.

The recent comments from Pope Francis have made this Advent a bit more desolate too. What am I waiting for this season? What am I Hoping for? How am I celebrating Joy? How can I live in Peace this season when it seems like the Church will split apart before we see the ordination of women and the sacramental inclusion of all believers? The themes of Advent have always seemed a little trite to me – Hope, Peace, Joy, Love. But I think it is their absence in regards to women’s ordination, that they seem all the more prevalent this season.

At WOC, we are not discouraged by these comments, because like Regina suggested in her recent blog, they aren’t new. We are looking at the same argument, and though this is exhausting, at least we know what the fight is. We are going to keep stretching to push for the full ordination of women and the renewed ecclesiology that will come with that.

In a homily on the first letter of John, St. Augustine used the metaphor of stretching a wineskin to explain how desire in our prayer prepares us for what is coming. He said,

“The entire life of a Christian is an exercise in holy desire. You do not see what you long for, but the very act of desiring prepares you, so that when God comes you may see and be utterly satisfied. – Suppose you are going to fill some holder or container, and you know you will be given a large amount. Then you set about stretching your sack or wineskin or whatever it is. Why? Because you know the quantity you will have to put in it, and your eyes tell you there is not enough room. By stretching it, therefore, you increase the capacity of the sack, and this is how God deals with us. Simply by making us wait, God increases our desire, which in turn enlarges the capacity of our soul, making it able to receive what is to be given to us.”

I use this reflection of Augustine here not because I think there is some sort of divine command making us wait for full participation in the Church, but because I think that God is stretching the Church’s wineskins so that when women’s ordination is a reality the Church is ready for us. The Church is being stretched and pulled in the responses of Synod, the Church is being stretched and pulled as people walk away from traditional parish life and from choosing Catholic education. The Church is being stretched and pulled as it excludes LGBTQ+ believers from participating fully in the sacramental life of the Church.

There is still hope, this Advent. The waiting for a renewed church and a renewed priesthood, like all of our foremothers did, reminds us that we can’t give up the fight, even when the waiting and the hoping feels tiring and exhausting and the joy feels far away.