Friends with Rabbits

Msgr. Michael Foster
Second Sunday of Advent
December 7, 2024

When I was four or five, I remember being outside on our big ranch yard with my older sister Lexie when a rabbit, a fuzzy cottontail, came strolling into the yard. I wanted so badly to make friends with the rabbit, but as soon as I moved a little toward it, it would scamper off a few feet, staying carefully out of my reach. My sister suggested that I sit very quietly and not move and maybe the rabbit would come closer. But after sitting quietly for what seemed to be an eternity — probably three minutes or so — I lost patience and tried to catch the rabbit. And, of course, it simply scampered away and out of sight. 

I couldn’t understand why the rabbit didn’t want to become friends, and when I asked my sister about this, she really didn’t have an answer that satisfied me. She said things like, “I was too big,” or “You make too much noise.” I asked my mom about it too, and she didn’t have any more of an answer than my sister did. 

It was probably many years later, in the seminary, that a satisfying answer was finally given to me. The reason the rabbit was afraid of me was because there was something wrong with me. Something broken in me. Something broken in all of us. The animal kingdom in this world knows it. They sense it. They are afraid. 

What happened? We learn in Genesis that there was a primordial peace in the Garden of Eden. A harmony that existed in all creation prior to the fall of Adam and Eve. Remember how God brought all the animals to Adam, and Adam gave them their names, just as parents give names to their children. There was peace in that garden — unity among Adam and Eve and all the animals and all of creation. 

Then came original sin, the fall of Adam and Eve, and the death of Abel at the hands of his brother Cain, and sin began to spread like wildfire through the world among the sons and daughters of our first parents. And man’s relationship with God was broken. As was man with his neighbor, and man with the animals, and of course man with himself. 

Then comes along the prophet Isaiah, from whom we heard from today, with a vision of the world of the Messiah. He spoke of how the seven gifts of this Messiah would be poured out upon all of mankind, and a new world, a new kingdom, a new garden, would be established by him and his followers. When this kingdom is perfectly established, says Isaiah, miracles start to happen. The wolf becomes a guest of the lamb; the calf and the young lion browse together; the cow and the bear shall become neighbors and friends; and the baby shall play at the cobra’s den. And little boys can finally make friends with rabbits. As Isaiah said, in this new kingdom there’ll be no ruin, nothing terrible, nothing broken on his holy mountain. 

Perhaps a simple take away from all this is to find a direction in this scripture for our Advent discipline, our prayer and our Advent activity. If Christmas is about celebrating the birth of the Messiah, the king of peace, then we should be about becoming better instruments of his peace. We know that our poor world suffers greatly from a lack of peace. We can’t necessarily solve the huge global problems we see all about us, but we can labor against the fundamental causes which underlie them.  

What are those causes? Lord Hugh Beresford, in the Royal Navy, led his men in a beautiful prayer as they sailed into battle at the very beginning of World War II. He prayed this way: “God, our loving Father, as we go into battle for a noble cause, help us to keep in mind the real causes of war: dishonesty, greed, selfishness, and a lack of love. Drive these away and out of this ship, so that she may be a pattern of the new world for which we are fighting.”

My dear people, we can make these words our own though this entire season of holy Advent.