Advent 2C (Luke 3:1-6)

On this second Sunday of Advent, we reflect on Robert Hayden’s poem, Those Winter Sundays. You can hear Malcomb Guite read it on https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2022/12/05/those-winter-sundays-by-robert-hayden-8/. 

Before reading the poem silently and reciting it aloud, it’s helpful to consider Robert Hayden’s background. In his introduction to the poem, Malcolm Guite writes: "Robert Hayden (1913-80) was raised in an impoverished household in an African-American district, where his father earned a pittance as a manual laborer. His childhood was difficult, marked by the tension of a failing marriage and the suppressed anger that often accompanies oppression. Hayden refers to this when he writes of ‘fearing the chronic angers of that house.’ This is no cozy, nostalgic romanticizing of poverty, as seen in Hovis television adverts. It is precisely because of this honesty that we can trust the depth and reality of the hidden, practical love to which this poem bears witness, in spite of everything." (Waiting on the Word, pp. 22-23)

Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

St. John the Baptist is called to prepare the way for the presence of God within. This is the same message that Jesus of Nazareth both teaches and embodies. While St. John and Jesus share this message, St. John’s role is one of preparation, much like the father in Hayden’s poem. It is the work of “love’s austere and lonely offices.” Jesus then takes up this same work of “love’s austere and lonely offices,” with hands cracked and pierced on the cross. 

We can think about people in our lives who had driven out the cold and thank them, as we take up the mantle of love’s austere and lonely offices, daring to face the chronic angers of the world.