If you were to pick up the bible, and turn to nearly any page of the holy book, you would be able to discover either God making a promise or God fulfilling a promise.
God makes his first promise to mankind immediately after the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden. God makes a promise that the evil unleashed through sin would be undone by the offspring of the Woman—a promise of a savior dating back to the very moment when mankind was in need of one.
To Abraham, our father in faith, God made several promises: God promised to make Abraham’s descendants as countless as the stars, that all the nations of the world would come to be blessed through Abraham and his descendants, that God’s people would come to possess land—the promised land—forever, and that the enemies of God would be cast down through the seed of Abraham. Promises that would come to be fulfilled in Christ and his holy Church to which countless members are a blessing to the world.
After wandering through the desert for 40 years, God promised that all those who search for Him would be able to find him—a promise fulfilled in your life and mine, and all those with the name of Christian who have found God through Christ.
God promised, indeed, that His love would never fail—that no sin is so great that we would lose His love. Here is the promise that sin could be forgiven and the wounds within humanity would be healed.
In the Psalms and prophets and the accumulated wisdom literature of ancient Israel, repeated over and over is the promise that those who allow the Word of God and the wisdom of God to light their way, the will know joy, delight, guidance, comfort and peace.
In the first reading, the first scripture of this first Sunday of the first week of Advent, we hear a powerful promise made the Isaiah the prophet. In fact, one might say, that is the job of the prophet—to dictate God’s promises to the people who need to hear them.
And the promise Isaiah speaks to us is a promise of peace—of a whole world of saints—all the nations of the world, together worshipping the same God, the true God, in great joy in a world without war: They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again
Next Sunday, we’ll hear how this promise of peace will be so all-encompassing that it will even extend to the animals. The wolf will be the guest of the lamb, the calf and the lion will roam the earth side-by-side, instead of one being food for the other. Here is a promise of the experience of God’s peace, and harmony, and joy.
Does that sound like our world today? Well, far from it. But that is because Isaiah’s vision is a promise of what will yet come to pass. It is a vision of a promise yet fulfilled. A promise that will be fulfilled when Christ comes again, his final Advent.
But we believe he will come again, on good authority, his own. “I will come back again and take you to myself” he said at the Last Supper. That promise of the Lord’s return will come to pass, just as his first coming, promised by Isaiah when he foretold that the virgin would give birth to a son, the Lord’s first Advent came to pass.
The Lord tells us to prepare ourselves for his return in the Gospel today: we do not know the day nor the hour of the Lord’s return. Readiness for the Lord’s return. The whole Christian life, in a sense, the whole purpose of our faith, is about cultivating readiness—being awakened to the truth about reality—and conforming our lives to that Truth. Nothing could be more important than that; it is a matter, as the Lord explains, of being taken with him into the eternal city of heaven, or being left behind, outside heaven’s gates, excluded from God’s presence, for ever.
St. Paul on this first advent Sunday, guides us on how to prepare for the Lord’s return by casting off , what he calls “the works of darkness”—ridding our lives of lust, drunkenness, rivalry, and jealousy. “Make no provision for the flesh” Paul tells us. We must seek to turn away from our fallen, sinful tendencies and selfish desires and make “no provision” for them…meaning, we aren’t giving them room in our lives to grow, we are remaining vigilant against putting ourselves in the near occasion of sin, we avert our eyes from what leads to sin. When temptation arises, we don’t feed the fire by giving in, but turning to the Lord for help and putting on the armor of light—truth, prayer, faith.
During Advent, we prepare for Christmas and we prepare for the Lord’s final return, by putting on Christ—imitating his virtues—his own love for the poor, his own devotion to the will of the Father, the truth he teaches, the commands he makes, the prayer he practices and teaches, his enmity toward sin and selfishness.
Throughout this holy season, the beautiful promises of God are reiterated to us anew. The four candles of the Advent wreath stand for four promises: the first candle represents the promise of increased hope, that in a world filled with such chaos, you will have more hope, if you prepare your heart for Jesus to enter it more deeply. The second candle represents the promise of peace—that in a world filled with so much hostility, and frantic, frenetic activity and exhaustion, you will have more peace—spiritual peace; if you prepare your heart for Jesus to enter it more deeply.; the third candle represents God’s promise of increased joy—that in a world with so much sadness and suffering—you will experience greater joy, if you prepare your heart for Jesus to enter it more deeply. And the fourth candle represents greater love—in world where there is loneliness, where God often seems distant, where we fall into sin that makes us feel quite unlovable—you will experience greater love, if you prepare your heart for Jesus to enter it more deeply.
I promise, the Church promises, that if you seek these things—hope, peace, joy, and love, this Advent, you will find them, knock and the door will be opened. I promise. For the glory of God and salvation of souls.
No comments:
Post a Comment