12/2/2015 – Wednesday of the 1st week of Advent – Isaiah 25:6-10a

      In April 1992, I came into the Catholic Church as a candidate after completing the RCIA program at St Norbert Catholic Church in Orange, California.  Several months later, I was on my way up to Winnipeg, Canada to serve a 2-year term as a lay missionary.  Right before Christmas, I went to the Siloam soup kitchen for the very first time in a rough inner city area far away from the fashionable department stores, cafes, and restaurants.  I remember the old dilapidated store-front building crammed with more than 200 people – addicts, prostitutes, street people, those on the furthest margins of this prosperous Canadian city.   After a Gospel reading and a short sermon, after singing Amazing Grace with all their hearts and souls, I helped the workers at the soup kitchen serve the holiday meal – soup made from whatever they could get their hands on, and discarded bread, rolls, and cake from the local grocery stores.  It was a bleak scene, but it provided a warm meal and full stomachs to those who were struggling to make it from one day to the next.  We live in a society where some have so many, where my brother teaches in a middle class suburb of Chicago, where he sees trash can full of uneaten fruit and chicken sandwiches thrown away by the children who thumb their noses at such food.  Then we have others in society who are grateful to be able to eat watery soup made from the cast off food from the middle class.  Isaiah preached to a people in exile with the promise of a great feast. Isaiah’s vision of a great banquet gave the people of Ancient Israel hope in the midst of their desperate lives.  Our Advent journey gives us hope as well, the hope of a child who will be born – the hope of a savior.  May this promise of hope help us pass God’s mercy on to others.  May this hope us our journey when things seem bleak and tough.