“Just wait until your father gets home!”
That was the phrase I occasionally heard at home when my brother or I were continuously behaving the opposite of what my mom told us. And it was like a magic phrase. As soon as those words were spoken, we would stop doing whatever my mom had told us to stop doing already so many times.
Depending on the tone of voice my mom used, we knew how serious she was and how annoyed she was.
I’m not sure we were making a huge mess, but enough to test my mom’s patience after we hadn’t listened to her for quite a while (haha). I certainly don’t think we had bad intentions, but maybe we weren’t exactly perfectly well-behaved either.
During visits to Zacatecas, where the vast majority of our cousins lived, hearing that threatening-sounding phrase was more common. Not necessarily because our cousins were more mischievous, but because I heard that same phrase from several of my aunts, each referring to their own children.
And you, did you ever hear that phrase in your childhood? Were you ever told that phrase?
What did you feel back then when you heard it?
As I mentioned, the way I heard that phrase when we were being mischievous at home implied that my dad was going to come and restore order, or perhaps administer a punishment. In the case of some of my cousins, their dad’s did punish them when they arrived. That’s precisely why the phrase was so effective in changing the behavior of mischievous children.
In scripture, there is a psalm that says that the Lord, the King of glory, is coming.
For us as children, when we were misbehaving, it wasn’t pleasant to hear that my dad was coming home, because my mom was going to tell him that we weren’t listening to her.
What feelings arise in you when you hear that the King of glory is coming? Fear, indifference, hope? Or…?
If the Spirit leads you, share with Jesus the carpenter what you discover upon learning that the King of Glory is coming. And perhaps you will realize what your inner attitude toward God is.
Marisol
P.S.: We can hear about the coming of the King of Glory in the readings for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year/Cycle A.
