GRACE THROUGH TIME 3

RIPENESS IS ALL

‘Rejoice’, our liturgies begin this week, for it is Gaudete Sunday. We can add Paul’s wonderful exhortation, ‘rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice’ (Philippians 4:4). Are we to rejoice already, then? Or is our timing just a little bit off, like impatient children who want to anticipate the joy that is not yet here but very soon will be?

There are many activities where timing is crucial. In sport, successful moves and shots require perfect timing. Telling a joke can fail to achieve its desired effect if the timing is not exactly right. It is crucial in teaching, friendship, and music. The great dancers are expert in their judgments about timing. Much of the grace in beautiful dancing is in the dancer’s use of time, moving serenely, waiting, containing their energy until the moment is right, moving quickly when that moment arrives. There is then grace, and beauty, and power in the dance.

The people listening to John the Baptist were impatient for the promised kairos, the moment when the Messiah would come. They were in expectation, Luke tells us. The Baptist teaches them that it is not he, but that very soon, in what Paul calls ‘the fullness of time’ (Galatians 4:4), one will come who will baptize them in the Holy Spirit and in fire.

What makes it to be ‘the fullness of time’? For Thomas Aquinas the coming of the Messiah was at a time when humanity had grown to adulthood in its relationship with God. In fact it is this coming that finally brings humanity to that maturity. God’s people were no longer children and no longer adolescents in their relationship with God. They had been around for a while, and had undergone many things, all the time guided and educated by the law and the prophets. So they were being made ready to receive the Word when he came to his own place.

If the coming of the Word was to be appreciated, God’s people had to learn particularly about sin, Aquinas continues, and about the need for grace. In fact it is the appearing of this grace that finally enables us to understand sin.  It is not so much that we value grace because we know what sin is, as that we understand sin only if we appreciate what grace is.

And, as in graceful dancing, the unfolding of revelation and salvation must be according to a proper order (Aquinas again). The coming of the Holy Spirit follows on the glorification of Jesus who is not only baptized in water by John but also in the Holy Spirit and fire. The grace of the Messianic kingdom becomes available when that kingdom has been established through the passion, death and glorification of Jesus.

The prophet Zephaniah gives us a wonderful image of God dancing with shouts of joy over us (Zephaniah 3:17). We can presume that God’s timing (like his joy) is perfect, and that this dance of redemption has unfolded, and is unfolding, as it ought. We are invited to participate in the dance – this is something grace makes possible – and, through our love and our prayer, to move towards the one who is coming towards us. In this dance more than any other there is grace, and beauty, and power.

This reflection was first published in The Tablet, 12 December 2019, p.15