From today's responsorial psalm:
"O God, with your judgment endow the king, and with your justice, the king’s son;
he shall govern your people with justice and your afflicted ones with judgment.
Justice shall flourish in his time, and fullness of peace for ever.
Justice shall flower in his days, and profound peace, till the moon be no more.
May he rule from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.
For he shall rescue the poor when he cries out, and the afflicted when he has no one to help him.
He shall have pity for the lowly and the poor; the lives of the poor he shall save.
May his name be blessed forever; as long as the sun his name shall remain.
In him shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed; all the nations shall proclaim his happiness."
"[Y]ou will be able to say that [your students] are your hope, your joy, and your crown of glory before our Lord Jesus Christ." (De La Salle, Med. 207.3)
One of the most important reasons that we do not immediately skip over the season of Advent to go to Christmas is Advent's message of hope, or, as Pope Francis has described it, the journey toward "the horizon of hope." In our academic calendar, these next two weeks can be a season of hope for the poor ones that we have to instruct. This is as it should be: the scriptures remind us that hope is centered around them. "Justice shall flourish", "he shall rescue the poor", "the lives of the poor he shall save". De La Salle wrote that our students are our hope. If they do not see hope in their lives, how then can we see it in ours? As much as possible, how can we teach that what could easily be seen as stress and an increased load of end of the semester work and finals is a time of hope, and not days of reckoning and judgment? There is so much more to come: Christmas, second semester, more learning about cool ideas, Lent, more learning about ourselves, Easter, graduation!
"So let us enter Advent in hope, even hope against hope. Let us see visions of love and peace and justice. Let us affirm with humility, with joy, with faith, with courage: Jesus Christ—the life of the world." (Daniel Berrigan, SJ, "Advent Credo") Let this hope, the hope of Jesus, live in our hearts!