Second Sunday of Advent - C3

Year C
Philippians 1:3-11

Here is a look at verses 6 and 9-11:

6- I am confident of this,
9- And this is my prayer

6- that the one who began a good work in you
9- that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight

6- will bring it to completion
10a- to help you determine what is best,
11a- having produced the harvest of righteousness

6 by the day of Jesus Christ.
10b- so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless,
11b- that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

Now we can proceed to play with the interrelationship between confidence and prayer. Prayer here is not supplication, but an envisioning or imagining of realized behavior.

What is to be realized is the connection between a generalized good work and the particulars of an insightful love (different than a feeling love). This application of knowledge keeps us from idealism and dogmatism.

When we connect love and insight we are able to do more than have a resolution to do gooder, we are able to not only determine, but complete or harvest the fruit of said resolution.

Those who connect Jesus Christ with a revelation of G*D will affirm this pattern will be done "by" tomorrow, is being done "in" what we know to be today, and has already been done or "come through" to now.

So, confident ones, pray that love be connected with knowledge and insight. This is an energy needful in our lives and the lives of many.

= = = = = = =

It is a joyful and right thing
always and everywhere
to hold love mutually
I pray for you knowing you pray for me
I am confident for you knowing you are confident for me
in self's imprisonment, in G*D's freedom
in G*D's employment, in self's abandon
together, here and there,
love is harvested