“Christians used the word ‘advent’ to express their relationship with Jesus Christ: Jesus is the King who entered this poor ‘province’ called ‘earth’ to pay everyone a visit; he makes all those who believe in him participate in his Coming, all who believe in his presence in the liturgical assembly. The essential meaning of the word adventus was: God is here, he has not withdrawn from the world, he has not deserted us. Even if we cannot see and touch him as we can tangible realities, he is here and comes to visit us in many ways.”
– Pope Benedict XVI, Celebration of First Vespers of Advent (November 28, 2009)
She needed deliverance…in the worst way. In 1945, Gerda Weissman Klein was only twenty years old. And she was about to die. Emaciated, lice-infested and weak, Gerda and 120 desperately ill women were abandoned to their fate in a locked bicycle factory rigged with a time bomb. This would be the end. After losing her home, her family and her sense of dignity and after enduring ghettos, slave labor, concentration camps and a Death March that claimed nearly four thousand lives in little over three months, Gerda would die violently in one last brutal insult from fleeing Nazi officials. It was likely her death would go unremembered and unmourned in a ravaged Czechoslovakian wasteland. This would be the end.
Except it wasn’t.
First, came the rain – a torrential downpour. And the bomb never went off. But it was what happened the next morning that shocked. Gerda recalled,
“At dawn, there were shouts ‘If anyone is there, get out! The war in Europe is over!’
What do you feel at such a moment? I recall no feeling at all. I don’t know if God, in His providential wisdom, creates an emotional vacuum at such a time. I was not quite able to separate the dream of six years from reality.
Suddenly, I saw a strange car coming down a gentle hill. And it’s with no longer the despised Swastika, but the white star of the American Army. Two men in strange uniforms sat in that vehicle. One jumped out, came running toward me. I looked at that man who granted me freedom, in awe, in disbelief. Of course, I was still a little bit frightened. So I did what I was told we needed to do. I looked at him, and I said in a small and frightened voice, ‘We are Jewish, you know.’
For a long time, though it seems, he didn’t answer me. And finally his own voice betrayed his emotion, as he said, ‘So am I.’
And then, he asked an incredible question. He asked if he could see the other ladies—a form of address obviously unknown to us. I told him that most of the girls were inside, too ill to walk. He asked me to come with him. And by doing so, did something which, at first, I didn’t understand. And when I understood it, I could not believe it. He simply held the door open for me and let me proceed him. And in this symbolic gesture, he restored me to humanity again.
I should like to give you a picture of that moment. I weighed 68 pounds. My hair was white. I was in rags. I had not had a bath in 3 years. I was going to be 21 the following day. And here was this very handsome young American, holding the door open for me. By what miracle could I have predicted that I’ll marry him a year later, and he would bring me home to this beloved country.”
I cannot even begin to imagine the horrors of Gerda’s suffering or the exhausted ecstasy of her liberation. My life’s complaints and sufferings seem endlessly paltry in comparison. But whether it is my mere inconveniences in a rough day at work or Gerda’s incomprehensible horrors in War and the Holocaust, Advent is here to remind us of the inextinguishable hope of the expected, the anticipated, the imminent and glorious appearance of the Christ Child. Of God on Earth.
But we forget. Sweet Jesus, we forget.
Our frustrations drown out his voice of patience. Our shame muffles his tender touch of dignity. Our bullheadedness blinds us to his light of wisdom. We hear of a coming liberation, but then we promptly forget it.
And yet. And yet.
No suffering, no trial, no affliction, great or small, will ever – ever – eclipse the tender words that absolve an adulteress, the touch that heals a paralytic, the gaze that assures the disciple, or the death that paid our debt. Advent is the time to remind us of the strange yet awesome thing that is coming. Advent is the season to prepare for the gloriously inexplicable – God’s greatest miracle. God is coming in search of us, finds us in our sickened form, opens the door and lovingly reminds us of our dignity. Above all, Advent is a time to wait and to hope. As Pope Benedict XVI reminds us,
“God is here, he has not withdrawn from the world, he has not deserted us.”
“Hope marks humanity’s journey but for Christians it is enlivened by a certainty: the Lord is present in the passage of our lives, he accompanies us and will one day also dry our tears. One day, not far off, everything will find its fulfilment in the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom of justice and peace.”
Indeed.
One day. Not far off.
O Come, O Come Emmanuel.
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