Fr. Russ's Homily - December 6, 2009

Homily for the Second Sunday in Advent.
On the shoreline near the docks of Savannah, Georgia stands a bronze statue called the “waving girl.” The life-size sculpture depicts a young woman waving a scarf in her outstretched hand. She holds a lantern in her other hand. Her face is smiling and eager. Her posture is animated and exuberant. When the transatlantic ships pass the statue they blow a horn of salute. Does anyone know the story of the statue?
In the eighteenth century, Florence Martus was a young girl in Savannah. She fell in love with a sailor who proposed marriage to her, and when his ship left the port he promised to return for her so that they might be married. Florence, in return, promised that she would be waiting for him by the docks, so that hers would be the first face he saw upon is return.
Florence Martus kept her promise. She found out when every ship was expected, and she was there by the dock waving a scarf by day, or lantern by night. She did not know which boat brought her beloved, so she welcomed them all. Her enthusiastic waving became the lighthouse of hope and warmth to thousands of sailors who sailed into Savannah harbor. For many it was their first welcome back home to Savannah, and for others it was a reminder of a home far away for which they longed to return.
Florence Martus waved to every ship entering Savannah for fifty years, until she died at the age of 65. Her lover never returned. But she became the beloved “waving girl” to the sailors of Savannah, who erected the statue in her honor after her death. Perhaps they loved her for the pathos of her story, her undying hope. Maybe they erected the statue because they missed her welcome. Even a bronzed wave is better than no wave at all.
I do not know how Florence Martus died, but I do know how she stayed alive-she was sustained by hope. This is a very important truth. Hope sustains life.
Children know this truth instinctively. An eight-year old girl dresses up in her mother’s makeup and clothes. Walk beside her as she wobbles down the sidewalk wearing high heels. “How old are you little girl?” you as. “I’m 25,” she answers. What did she say? I have hope.
A twelve-year-old boy backs up to his father’s chest, stands as tall as he can stand, and feels with his hand the level of his head against the measuring stick of his father’s height. “I’m up to the next button!” he announces proudly. What did he say? I have hope.
Hope pulls us forward. Without hope we fall backwards into despair. A rabbi who survived the Holocaust said despair is the greatest sin, for it assumes that God cannot do again what He used to do. And what is the antidote for despair? Hope. It is the hope of graduation that urges the college student to stay in school. It is the hope of the child to be born that encourages the pregnant woman during labor. It is the hope of the “empty nest” freedom that keeps the weary parents from collapse during the endless series of bringing children to school, soccer practices, pediatrician visits, and homework. As Erma Bombeck said, “Every child threatens to run away from home. Sometimes it is the only thing that keeps a mother going.” We live by hope.
We live in the present, but hope infuses the present with dimension of direction into the future. When the doctor emerges through the door labeled “surgery” with the news “I think we got it all” the family sighs with relief. They have been given a future again. What did the doctor say? She said, I have hope. Often I have heard someone say in such grim times, “As long as there is life, there is hope” As true as this is, I think the more profound truth is, “As long as there is hope, there is life.” Something else is very important about hope.
Hope often must survive on a meager diet. People of hope must look for small signs, not large ones. Isaiah points to a mere shoot, a tender and fragile sliver of new growth from a fallen stump. We might have preferred a full-grown tree! But hope learns to live on small encouragement. The great doors of history turn on small hinges. Our very lives are changed more by events that seem insignificant than by so-called great moment. For example, that first date that introduced you to your spouse. The passing comment from a professor that caused you to consider a new course of study in school. See? The great moments of our lives emerge from very small seeds. Hope knows this about life. Hope knows that Christmas is a story of how God chose to come to a small town in a small country in a small baby to change the world. As most of us learned many Christmases back, good things come in small packages.
Last April, Newsweek carried an extraordinary story of hope. In the corridors of power in Washington, they are known as the “Jersey girls”-four women who lost their husbands in the 9/11 attacks and demanded to know why.
Earlier this year, these four women stared down a reluctant Congress and recalcitrant White House to form the independent 9/11 Commission to investigate the terror attacks and recommend reform and new approaches on how our nation confronts terrorism. Few Americans know the names of Kristen Breitweiser, Patty Casazza, Lorie Van Auken and Mindy Kleinberg, but Governor Thomas Kean, who co-chaired the commission points out, “I doubt very much if we would be in existence without them.”
The story of how they moved a seemingly immovable bureaucracy is a tale of political education and a sisterhood born of grief. Two years ago, the bill to create an independent panel to investigate 9/11 was languishing in Congress. The White House opposed such a commission. The widows were told, “If you want to go anywhere, you have to make it happen.”
So they went to Washington. They cried, they pleaded, they cajoled. They staged a rally in Washington; the staked out lawmakers, they befriended reporters. Once the commission began its work, they researched issues for the committee and helped prepare questions for witnesses. They lobbied for a bigger budget- and won. They pressured government officials-including the President, Vice-President, and National Security Advisors-to testify. When Congress balked at granting the panel an extension, they confronted the Speaker of the House and the Speaker backed down. The final report of the commission is the result of their tenacity and dedication.
But the “jersey girls” are not congratulating themselves. “There are no victories here,” they say. “A victory implies that this is a game. And this is not a game. We simply wanted to know why our husbands were killed. Why they went to work and didn’t come back.”
These four women are “prophets” in the true sense of the word. A prophet is “one who proclaims.” In their courageous fight for truth and reform, in their demand for accountability, they proclaim the justice and peace of God, and give us some hope to live with a safer future. All of us have many opportunities in our everyday lives to be prophets of God’s justice, mercy, peace, and hope, on the Jordan Rivers of our time and place; in our commitment to the moral and ethical principles that are of God. And we can be no less prophets than John the Baptist and Isaiah in our homes, businesses, and schools. Let us remember that hope often must survive on a meager diet. But it takes people of hope to move honestly and consistently, and to look for small signs, which, in the long run, make a big difference.