Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972), a Polish-born American rabbi, described the Hebrew prophets as those who know and communicate the heart of God to the people of God. “Their intense sensitivity to right and wrong is due to their intense sensitivity to God’s concern for right and wrong. They feel fiercely because they hear deeply,” Heschel writes. “Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony.” (The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence, 11-12) (1959)

Heschel gifted the world with profound and influential writings in religion and spirituality, but perhaps more significantly, he walked the path of a prophet. He was active in the civil rights movement, marching from Selma to Montgomery, and the peace movement, speaking out against the Vietnam War. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Rabbi Heschel is a person who is relevant at all times, always standing with prophetic insights.”

Each Sunday during the Season of Advent, we hear from the Hebrew prophet Isaiah, a deeply contemplative person of God who had the courage to recognize and name the silent agony of the people and the land. Isaiah spoke to a people who experienced domination by a foreign power, internal corruption, economic hardship and displacement. The people lived in or near a desert and their major city, Jerusalem, was under siege.

Isaiah spoke words of warning to his people, but he also saw more and called the people to more. He saw that the darkness would not ultimately win, that death would not have the final word, and that God was bringing about something new. This is why we walk with Isaiah during Advent. Amid the darkness, Advent is a season of imagination and anticipation and even joy. Today we celebrate Gaudete Sunday, a day for “rejoicing” (gaudete in Latin).

What is God’s dream for the people that we hear from Isaiah in Advent?

Nations “shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” and not train for war again (Isaiah 2:4).

In this time of peace, “the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb” (Isaiah 11:6a).

And today we hear: We may live in a desert but it will bloom with abundant flowers (35:2). We may feel weak and afraid, but God is coming to save us, so “be strong, fear not!” (35:3-4). Our mourning will turn into joy (35:10).

The transformation that God brings about is total and integral. We know it is personal and communal, but it is also ecological. Isaiah announces: The desert and the parched land will bloom with abundant flowers and rejoice with joyful song.

Let us take a moment to imagine this ecological transformation.

The rainforests will expand, not burn. The world will breathe again. The rivers and oceans will be clean. Life will flourish. Humans will use renewable energy. The storms will calm. Jesus, like Isaiah, invoked various elements of God’s creation in order to help us to understand God’s coming reign. In the Parable of the Sower, for example, Jesus refers to farmers, seeds, birds, the sun, thorns, rocky ground and rich soil. If we prepare ourselves to receive, understand and live God’s Word, then the seed can produce fruit one hundredfold (Matthew 13:1-23). Jesus also likened the kindom of God to a mustard seed, the smallest of seeds that can nevertheless grow into a large tree, providing a home to birds (Matthew 13:31-32). The kindom, Jesus taught us, is characterized by this abundance.

In today’s reading from the Letter of James, the author encourages the followers of Jesus to imitate the patience of the farmer, the one who lives close to the land, who “waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains” (5:7). Here the author makes a direct reference to the agricultural season that would be familiar to those living in ancient Palestine. Disciples of Jesus must patiently persevere in doing good as we wait for “the coming of the Lord,” the fulfillment of God’s kindom of peace and justice. Scripture is a powerful teacher that God’s creation can help us to understand and undergo conversion for God’s kindom.

St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), a Basque priest and the founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), wrote a retreat guide called The Spiritual Exercises that offers contemplations and meditations to help strengthen people’s spiritual lives and social commitments.

Two particular exercises can help us to see more clearly and deeply.

In the Contemplation on the Incarnation, Ignatius invites us to “see the various persons on the face of the earth, so diverse in dress and behavior: some white and others black, some in peace and others at war, some weeping and others laughing, some healthy and others sick, some being born and others dying, and so forth.” For you, what concrete faces appear? Listen to what they are saying. See what they are doing.

Next, Ignatius invites us to see the Divine Trinity, and to notice their gaze upon the world. Let’s take a moment to ask God: What is your dream, your hope, for this reality? What is your dream for this vast and beautiful world: its people and all of creation? 

In the final exercise of The Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius invites us to “consider how God dwells in creatures; in the elements, giving them existence; in the plants, giving them life; in the animals, giving them sensation; in human beings, giving them intelligence; and finally, how in this way God dwells also in myself, giving me existence, life, sensation and intelligence; and even further, making me God’s temple, since I am created in the image and likeness of the Divine Majesty.” Can we also see God at work in all these ways, in us, and in every aspect of God’s creation? Take a moment to consider this mystery.

The prophetic working document of the Amazon Synod, which REPAM helped develop before the global meeting of bishops took place in Rome in September 2019, acknowledges the risk that many people and groups have taken in defense of human rights and land. The document cites a report that “in Brazil alone, 1,119 indigenous people were murdered between 2003 and 2017 for defending their territory.” 

One of the martyrs that the document names is Sr. Dorothy Stang (1931-2005), a native of Dayton, Ohio, and a member of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. In 1966, Sr. Dorothy went to Brazil to accompany and support people who farmed in the Amazonian region. Over the decades, according to her community’s website, “loggers, ranchers, land speculators, and agribusiness became the dominant forces in the region, victimizing the poorer farmers and destroying the rainforest.”

Even after she was named to a “death list” for her defense of indigenous land and human rights, Sr. Dorothy remained with the community and continued her advocacy. On February 12, 2005, as two hired gunmen approached her in a rural area of Pará, Brazil, Sr. Dorothy began to recite the Beatitudes. The men fired six shots and killed her.

Following the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), global meetings called “Synods of Bishops” convened every few years and focused on various topics of importance for the church. The most recent completed synod, rather than focusing on an entire continent or a topic like Scripture or Eucharist, focused for the first time on a distinct ecological territory, the Amazon region, which includes nine different countries and about 34 million inhabitants, including three million indigenous people from 390 ethnic groups.

In the two years leading up to synod, a lay-led Catholic organization, the Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network, known as REPAM, coordinated and conducted a substantial process of consultation directly involving about 87,000 people from the Amazon, including 300 listening sessions in each of the nine countries in the Amazonian territory.

About 22,000 people were directly involved in the territorial assemblies and smaller dialogue groups, and another 65,000 people participated in parish groups. This massive undertaking of listening and discernment followed the see-judge-act method.

In a prophetic way, the grassroots process led by REPAM helped bring to the institutional center of the church the rich diversity of cultures and gifts in the region, as well as the urgent concerns of ecological and cultural devastation, of human trafficking, the impact of climate change and extractive activities on indigenous communities, and also the practical ministerial challenges of the church in the Amazon.

The song “Beautiful Things,” by Gungor, offers a powerful reflection on God’s creation, humanity, and the possibility of change and rebirth. The song asks, “All this earth / Could all that is lost ever be found? / Could a garden come out from this ground, at all?” while reaffirming that God makes beautiful things “out of the dust” and “out of us.” In fact, “All around, / Hope is springing up from this old ground / Out of chaos life is being found, in you.” God does make beautiful things. There is hope.