Comfort. I don’t know about you, but I could certainly do with a great big serving of comfort right about now. ‘cause I’m really really tired of this pandemic. It’s been almost ten months and people are still dying, and I’m feeling kinda fed up. Fed up with distancing myself from people, especially the people like you, whom I love. I don’t think I’ve been hugged in since last Lent!
I spend all my time backing away from people, being afraid I will get sick and cough and be intubated and die. And worse, that I’ll make you sick and cough and be intubated and die. And I have just about had it. And I think you have too.
Sounds like we are badly in need of some comfort and joy. Which is just what Isaiah promises: “Comfort,” he says…give comfort to my people…speak tenderly to them…” But what is this comfort? How are we comforted? At the end of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah we get a clue: “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you…”
So God comforts us is as a mother comforts her child. And is anyone better at comforting than a mother?
I remember seeing a young couple a while back in Price Chopper with their two year old child, who was clearly as tired as I was, but was not handling it quite so well. In fact he was weeping and moaning and swinging his arms in every direction, just trying to hit something to make those feelings go away. And as he threw his little hissie fit, his father (God bless him) tried first to reason with him (it didn't work) and then to get him to calm down with a soothing voice and a hug (which looked more like a restraining order) the poor guy did everything he could…all to no avail. Until the mother knelt down and spoke in a still, soft, tender voice and smiled at him with her arms open and he ran to her and sobbed softly on her shoulder, comforted and at peace.
Mothers are really good at comforting, and so is God: “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you…”
St Therese of Lisieux understood that, when she wrote of this passage: “Never did words more tender and more melodious come to give joy to my soul. The elevator which must raise me to heaven is your arms, O Jesus! And for this I had no need to grow up, but rather I had to remain little and become little more and more.”
God is waiting to comfort us as his beloved little child. And that’s all we have to be…his little child, if we will just give him a chance. As an oft quoted theologian once wrote: “Are you lonely? Here is a chance to creep into the motherly arms of God and find peace. Are you sorrowful? You may come and put your head upon his breast and weep there and find infinite comfort.”
The close comfort of a child cradled in her mother’s arms. Close, protected and real.
It is the comfort for which the Baptist prepares, making straight the way for Emmanuel, the God who is with us, the God who “did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at but took the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men.” The God who lets go of his infinite power, becoming a weak little baby and a man nailed to a cross, just so he can be close to us and teach us how to love.
And therein is the definition of “comfort and joy,” and why Saint Paul calls God “the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort…”
Indeed, the the word Saint Paul uses for comfort is paraclesis, which means literally calling to be close to. He is the God who who wants to be close to us, to love us like a good shepherd loves his sheep, who (back to Isaiah) “feeds his flock; gathers the lambs in his arms, carrying them in his bosom, and leading the littles ones with care.”
This is the God who is as close to us as the beating of our heart, of which Saint John writes: “…they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying out nor pain anymore…”
This is Jesus, the Emmanuel, God with us, of whom we will pray in a few minutes: “come…to our rescue with the protection of your mercy.”
And he will come, for he has promised and he is a God who keeps his promises. And the comfort he brings is not just for the moment, like most of our troubles. No! His comfort is everlasting, inexhaustible, immutable and indestructible.
And all we need do is to accept it, like a frustrated little kid, stamping his feet and crying. All we need to do is to run into his arms, to tell him what makes us tremble and cry and stamp our feet…and he will sweep us up in his arms and he will give us peace…the peace the world cannot give.
That’s all we have to do. But we spend most of our time clinging to our fears and embracing what Pope Francis calls a spiritual pessimism, refusing to believe how close God wants to be to us in Jesus, how close in Holy Communion, how close in his Word, how close in his sufferings upon the cross, to which he invites us to join all our brokenness and pain…all the fears and the exhaustion of our tired little lives.
But it’s Advent, and to quote Pope Francis again, this is the time to prepare ourselves for the coming of comfort and joy, “the peace of God’s presence…[by opening] our hearts and allowing ourselves to be consoled” and to know his peace.
