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Monday of the Fourth Week of Advent

Readings of the Day 
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The Old Testament's Song of Songs, an option for today's
first reading, makes some uncomfortable and uneasy with its expressive
language. I suggest that this is because of a misunderstood and
distorted culture-driven view of eros- that love between a man and a
woman, a husband and wife, or as imaged in the Song of Songs in
today's reading, the lover and the beloved. Properly
comprehended, eros is that pure and chaste love which, when fulfilled,
matures and flourishes in a divinely-inspired and grace-filled love
known as agape- an unconditional love which desires or wills the good
of the other, and whose fulfillment is found in the sincere gift of
self.

Agape is that love which led Mary, after her Annunciation, to
immediately travel to visit her cousin Elizabeth as read in
today's Gospel from Luke. And agape is that joyously expressed
love by which Elizabeth received her cousin Mary.

During the pandemic, I have been privileged to witness agape in
action. I serve in a residential pastoral setting in which we care for
women and men with intellectual disabilities 24/7, 365 days a year. We
have acknowledged and recognized that "Heroes work here."
This has certainly been true among the staff and, in particular, the
direct support professionals, their managers and health care teams.
When I think of "hero," what comes to mind is that aspect
of the canonization process by which it is decreed, by the
Congregation of the Causes of Saints, that a person, after the
presentation of an intense and voluminous positio, has lived a life of
"heroic virtue" and can now be addressed as
"Venerable." The "heroes" that are our
"partners in mission," in the throes of this pandemic,
manifest daily heroic degrees of the "saintly" virtues of
compassion, patience, perseverance, fortitude, mercy, justice and
agape love. All of this in an environment of caring for some of the
most vulnerable in our society.

With these "partners in mission" as my exemplars, I pray,
through the intercession of Mary and Elizabeth, that I too may reflect
the agape love in caring for and supporting these treasured
"gifts of God."

Fr. Dennis M. Weber, a priest of the Servants of Charity, is the
Director of Ministry and Mission for the Developmental Programs
Division of Catholic Social Services of the Archdiocese of
Philadelphia. He has been blessed and privileged to serve for over 31
years in this mission.




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