November 30, 2025
Dear Friends,
Institutional Christianity including Catholicism tends to misuse apocalyptic language which can result in intimidation with shame, fear, and anxiety in our hearts and minds. The Gospel passage for this First Sunday of Advent is loaded with apocalyptic language which has often been misused to cast doubt on the solidity and depth of our relationship with Christ.
Apocalyptic language properly understood, seduces us to “look” twice at what we think we already “see.”
So, I want to offer you a poem by C.P. Cavafy (1863-1933) the very honest, brave, and mostly unknown, Greek poet who incidentally spent his adolescence in Liverpool, England. He only published 154 poems in his entire lifetime and was only introduced to the reading world in 1923, 10 years before he died, by his friend, fellow writer E.M. Forster. I believe, the aforementioned poem, says exactly the same thing that Matthew has Jesus say in this week’s Gospel text but in less threatening, more moderate and non-intimidating language, the Cavafy poem, Ithaka:
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
You’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
If you spend half as much time pondering this poem this week as you do fretting about the weather (use Google or a dictionary to look up words you do not understand), you will learn something important about yourself and become more aware than ever of the invitation of God to enter into the fulness of human life through Jesus Christ which is the whole reason for Christmas.
Keep on Adventing,
Father Niblick