1st Sunday of Advent
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
with the mountains quaking before you,
while you wrought awesome deeds we could not hope for,
such as they had not heard of from of old.
For how many centuries were the people of Israel waiting for the Lord to come and rescue them, his chosen people: “Return for the sake of your servants, the tribes of your heritage”! And then, when he did in fact come, most of the people of Israel were not ready, they did not recognize him, though he was their bridegroom and eternal lover. They were not ready and so they missed his coming, and some so firmly rejected him that they conspired for his death. How tragic was that blindness.
You see, they were looking for a glorious worldly power, a Messiah utterly unlike the true Messiah, Jesus Christ. They wanted to have a Messiah whose coming would shake the mountains and would be accompanied by the great deeds of the past when God split the red sea and tumbled the walls of Jericho. They wanted a political Messiah who would make Israel a great political power. They were not ready for a Messiah who would be born in a stable, grow up in obscurity and nothing of the royal trappings that would make his mission clear for all. In short, they were not ready, and they missed their invitation to the banquet of life. In this, they were not all that different from many Christians today who want the Church to focus her “saving” energies on the secular and political agendas and problems in our world today and to relegate her spiritual mission to the background. They too desire a worldly Messiah.
However, Psalm 80, which we pray on this 1st Sunday of Advent, has quite another vision of what it means for God to come and “save” us: “give us new life, and we will call upon your name.” (Psalm 80:19) But what exactly is this “new life” that the Psalmist speaks of here, and how can it change our present “life”? Surely it must be fundamentally understood to be the “new Life” that Christ spoke of as Eternal Life. It is quite simply the Life of grace of the New Covenant which transforms the baptized sinner into a new creation as a child of God. And this “new Life” gives this new creature a divine power that will transform his or her human life, if only it is allowed to work its wonders in the human heart. Just as faithful Jews once longed for a spiritual Messiah who would bring about a spiritual renewal of Israel, so faithful Christians now long for this Messiah to return and bring his mission to completion in them and then in the renewal of creation itself.
The readings on this First Sunday of Advent are most interesting for those seeking to understand this “new life’ longed for in the Old Testament by the faithful and now taking place in the Church. In the first reading from Isaiah, we get a rather shocking view of un-regenerated human nature and the kind of life that’s dominant in this condition. “Behold, you are angry, and we are sinful; all of us have become like unclean people, all our good deeds are like polluted rags … and our guilt carries us away like the wind.”
That text might even remind us of certain writings of Martin Luther who seems to have an Old Testament view of the New Testament and the new creature, at least on the level of human nature itself. In his vision, the baptized remain quite the same sinners whose good deeds remain, in themselves, “polluted rags” even under the new dispensation. So for Luther, what is “new” in the New Covenant is reduced to God now choosing not to look at their sins but at Christ’s sacrifice, and not to condemn their sins simply because of their faith in Christ. It is a profoundly un-Catholic view of the “new life” in Christ in that it leaves the external world and man’s daily life mired in sin, while the only effect of God’s grace is faith itself hidden in the human heart.
Now, contrast that vision of the new man with these texts from St. Paul in today’s second reading. “He will keep you firm to the end, irreproachable on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And “I give thanks to my God always on your account for the grace of God bestowed on you in Christ Jesus, that in him you were enriched in every way.” To be “irreproachable” and to be “enriched in every way” in the light of everything else Paul says about the moral life of the Christian, indicates that there is truly a radical transformation brought about in the human person’s whole being by “the Grace of God,” and this transformation is not only internal and invisible, which it is obviously, but also truly external in the baptized person’s nature and conduct of daily life.
This is the profoundly Catholic view that we find all throughout the Gospels and the writings of St. Paul. That is, the grace of Christ in the mystery of redemption is profoundly transforming when man cooperates with this grace in this saving mystery. The lives of the saints are proof positive that where God’s grace is not only accepted but put into action, man’s whole being and life are transformed and wonderfully elevated. Most of us never reach those same heights of sanctity simply because of our own failure to cooperate with the manifold graces that God gives to each and every one of us. We prefer to blame our personal failures on weak human nature, that this is just the way we are built, rather than to admit that we have failed because we have not fully submitted to Christ and to the power of his redemption.
St. Paul assures us, in fact, that we are “not lacking in any spiritual gift as [we] wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And for St. Paul, the spiritual is not divorced from the physical, bodily side of human nature. Spiritual gifts are given not only to transform man internally, but they also enable us to be transformed in our external life as well. While they do not bring the body to its full perfection in this life, which happens only in the resurrection, nonetheless these gifts do enable the baptized person to begin to live a heavenly way of life already in this world. The actions of the truly virtuous man, acting under the impulse of God’s grace, are not “polluted rags” but truly virtuous, good and meritorious actions which give glory to God Who makes them possible.
Of course, because our “flesh” – Paul’s designation for our fallen human nature – is never totally transformed here on earth, we will always remain subject to temptations and to the possibility of sin. Even the great saints remained in this condition till death, and, like us, most were never free from at least the venial sins that are so difficult to conquer in this world. But still, there is real hope for us, because there always remains the possibility of redemption and forgiveness, for the Grace of God is never lacking. And we truly believe that with God’s grace, we can, as St Paul says again, be kept “firm to the end, irreproachable on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Nonetheless, we all are always in need of this gentle reminder from the Gospel, “Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come.’” That Paul assures us that God’s grace will keep us firm to the end if we cooperate does not mean that we must become presumptuous. We know that we often in fact do fail to cooperate, and for that reason we need to take seriously this warning to stay alert and be watchful. The struggle is never over until we cross the line between time and eternity. Now, being watchful and staying alert is not really a matter of looking externally for signs of the Lord’s arrival to be our judge and reward us one way or the other. After all, in this regard we cannot really read the signs of the times all that accurately. No, what it means is that we must stay alert internally regarding our spiritual condition, that we remain conscious of our great need for God’s grace, and that we do not allow sin to take hold of us once again.
Those who faithfully participate in the divine mysteries, at least at Sunday Mass, and who keep themselves open to the Word of God, are much more likely to be alert and watchful than those who don’t. Those who go to confession on a regular basis and keep their conscience sharp and honest are much more likely to remain alert and watchful than those who don’t. None of this is a matter of high mysticism but simply the common sense of the ordinary Catholic’s daily life. Perhaps that is what Christ meant when he said “blessed are you Father for revealing these things to the merest children.” But of course even children have to pay attention if they are really to understand these things.