24 December

Readings: 2 Samuel 7:1-5, 8-12, 14, 16; Psalm 89; Luke 1:67-79

Children, while enjoying Handel's Messiah, can also ask questions that draw attention to some amusing expressions in the great Christmas oratorio. 'All we like sheep', for example, begins a section about all human beings going astray just like sheep but for one child it provoked the understandable question, 'why do they all like sheep'? And 'what is the government doing on his shoulders' is another reasonable question raised by a different child, also listening carefully to the words.

In one community in which I lived there was a regular absolution on Christmas Eve from faults against the rule and for unfulfilled penances. The prayers used reminded the superior, and all of us, that he was responsible also 'for the government of the souls' of those in his charge. The readings of the Mass for Christmas Eve are about government, the kind of government exercised by God for the sake of the people.

Like all of us, perhaps a bit more than normal, King David is keen on self-government. He is keen to the extent of wanting to include God among those for whom he exercises responsibility. He will build a house for God. But through the prophet God points out to David that the government (and so the responsibility, the care) is in the opposite direction. It is God who has created David in the first place. It is God who will build a house for David. It is not so much that David will find a place for God in his world (how much that would add to David's power!) as it is that God will find a place for David in His creation (how much that adds to David's salvation!). God creates and governs all He has created. But God also allows human beings to share in His government of creation. With the birth of His Son he allows human beings to share in extraordinary new ways in God's own government of creation. 'Let what you have said be done to me'. We become participants in God's providence, not just passive recipients of it but agents of its progress in human history.

The responsibilities of government are always to ensure peace, security and prosperity for the people governed. These are the things promised in the Benedictus of Zechariah, the great canticle or prayer with which the Baptist's father hails his birth. Words are given to him again, the one who had been struck dumb by this new visitation of His people by God. The silence of the old dispensation is brought to an end and Zechariah, symbolising that old dispensation, finds words again to welcome the birth of the Word.

The constitution on which God's government of the people was established is the covenant he made with them. This founding document made first with Moses and then renewed through judges and prophets, made again with the House of David, will now, by God's mercy, be once again remembered and renewed. It is now about the tender mercy of God, God's kindness as saviour and redeemer, the grace of forgiveness and the knowledge of God that comes with being forgiven. A new covenant means a new basis for the government, a new treaty or agreement, a new relationship.

Like human governments, the care of God for His people is about peace, security and prosperity.  These things are promised and guaranteed by the new covenant established now. And just as the peace Jesus brings is a peace that the world cannot give, so too he offers a security and prosperity the world cannot give. The seal of the new covenant is the blood of the Son poured out for the salvation of the world. The terms of the covenant are set by the tender mercy of our God. The terms of the covenant mean an end to rivalry between God and humanity, and a shared responsibility for the unfolding of God's purposes across history.

Through this day and on into the night we watch for the coming of the Son. Through Him God will give light to those in darkness, those who dwell in the shadow of death. He will free us from fear and save us from the hands of our enemies so that we might serve him in holiness and righteousness. He will guide our feet into the way of peace.

23 December

Readings: Malachi 3:1-4, 23-24; Psalm 25; Luke 1:57-66

'The Lord you are seeking will suddenly come to his temple': it catches two aspects of spiritual experience and of the life of faith. On the one hand is the aspect of waiting, sometimes for a long time, for something to shift or change or emerge into the light, waiting for some insight or realisation, waiting, we might even say, for some revelation. On the other hand is the sense that when such things finally do happen, no matter how long they have been sought and no matter how deeply they have been desired, they happen 'quickly'. A bit like a death long expected, the moment in which the reality comes about always has a suddenness to it.

A story is told of a convent where a sister died at the age of 105: one of the sisters transmitted the news saying that her death was 'completely unexpected'. The truth in that comment catches this double sense, of something long expected nevertheless being marked, when it does come about, by an aspect of surprise, of suddenness. If we are tempted to be philosophical we might say that what we are talking about is a substantial or even a metaphysical change. Reality is not the same afterwards as it was before. That is true of anything that happens, of course, but here we are talking about radical changes that register with us: the world is a different place and we are aware of it. Even if we have been preparing and waiting, the reality, when it comes, is beyond anything for which we were prepared, beyond anything for which we waited. The world feels different afterwards.

So with the fulfillment of God's promises to Israel. They are fulfilled because God is faithful but they are fulfilled in ways beyond any expectation because it is God who is acting here. The prophet Malachi, the last voice of the Christian Old Testament, tells us that the Lord's messenger will purify the people and refine them. He will prepare a worthy priesthood to offer worthy sacrifices. His coming will be preceded by that of Elijah, a prophet sent to prepare his way, and to do it by turning the hearts of fathers to their children and of children to their fathers.

All this is fulfilled in the birth of John the Baptist, the one who is Elijah and the messenger of the Lord. It is fulfilled in the birth of Jesus Christ, the one who is the Messiah, the Lord come to visit His people. Within the domestic scene in the hill country of Judea, where the parents of John the Baptist argue with their kinsfolk about what name this child should have, we see this metaphysical or substantial change taking place. The world will never be the same again, not just in the ordinary sense in which this is true of any change. The world will never be the same again in a radical sense. The foundations of the world are shifted with these two births. Humanity is established in a new relationship with God as a result of these two births. What, then, will these children be? And we know something of the answer to that question

To adapt the haunting phrase from the first reading, the heart of the Father which is eternally turned to His Only Son is now turned also towards us, revealed in the love of the One who is coming. And that love is revealed so that our hearts might be turned towards Him. The refiner's fire and the fuller's alkali, purifying and cleansing, come to us in the form of love, they work on us in the way love does, they call to us in the way love does, they cleanse and strengthen us in the way love does.

It is what we have always wanted. It is what we have desired and looked for: light, and life, and love. Let us be open to the surprising ways in which these promises are to be fulfilled in our lives. No matter how long we have lived and prayed and waited there is always, still, this moment when the Lord we have been seeking will come to us, His temple, and will come suddenly.

Advent Week 4 Sunday (Year C)

Readings: Micah 5:1-4a; Psalm 80; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-45

Catholicism is a physical at least as much as it is a spiritual religion. It is about things that happened, and things that happen, in and through particular human bodies, in particular places such as Bethlehem or Rome, and at particular times such as the days of King Herod of Judea or December 2024. Our faith is about the Word becoming flesh. It is centred on one born of a woman, born under the Jewish law, to save us not through the promise of future incarnations of our ‘spirits’, but through the offering of his body once and for all.

The ministry of Jesus is to poor human bodies. He opens eyes so that they see, ears so that they hear, and he loosens tongues so that they speak. The visitation of Elizabeth by Mary is about bodies: pregnant bodies, an infant kicking in the womb, sounds reaching ears, and mouths speaking. Elizabeth hears and believes and proclaims. Our attention is drawn to her hearing and her speaking. ‘When the sound of your greeting reached my ears’ – why doesn’t she just say ‘when I heard you’? ‘She proclaimed with a loud voice’ – why doesn’t it just say ‘she said’?

These elaborate expressions draw our attention to her hearing and speaking, and show that it is a hearing and a proclamation of the gospel. Faith is established in Elizabeth through physical events: her meeting with Mary, their conversation, John the Baptist leaping in her womb, with the Spirit working through these things.

Elizabeth then praises Mary. Her canticle, Luke 1:42-45, has not received anything like the same attention as the other canticles in the first chapter of Luke’s gospel, except that some of it has become part of our ‘Hail Mary’. Later in the gospel another woman shouts out words of praise for Mary, saying to Jesus ‘blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts you sucked’. To which Jesus replies, echoing the words of Elizabeth, ‘blessed rather those who hear the Word of God and keep it’. He does not say ‘please be a little bit less explicit in front of the children’: he says happy are those who hear and who practise the gospel. 

How is the Word to be not only received and believed, but also practised? It can only be in the life we have here, and now, in the relationships and experiences and commitments that are ours here, and now. We do not need to look for a future incarnation of ourselves where we might do a better job of living a human life: we do it here, and we do it now, or we do not do it at all.

So in the second reading from Hebrews we are told that Jesus, on coming into the world, is given a body. This is so that he can do the Father’s will as it is written in the roll of the book, so that the word can become flesh in other words. The Word of God does not return empty, it achieves its fulfillment, but can do that only by becoming embodied. This is why our faith is physical and it is why Mary (who gave Jesus his body) stands at the centre of our faith. No longer need we take animals and plants to represent our sacrifice: it is done in the body of Jesus Christ offered once, and for all, and continues in the offering of ourselves, our bodies, in union with Him.

Ours then is a physical religion. At its heart is the woman who said ‘let what you have said be done to me’, and the man who says ‘behold I have come to do your will in the body you have prepared for me’. The relationship with God is established and sustained not by holocausts and sin-offerings but in the body of Jesus and his will, by a loving human being. He has done the Father's will, kept it, and brought it to its fulfillment. Those who believe belong to Him because they too hear, and keep, His word, they receive, and do, His will.

21 December

Readings: Song of Songs 2:8-14 (or Zephaniah 3:14-18); Luke 1:39-45

Mary is the third woman in the Bible to be told she is 'blessed among women'. Jael, who killed Sisera by hammering a tent peg through his temple, is addressed in this way (Judges 5:24). So too is Judith, who killed Holofernes and cut off his head (Judith 13:18). It is all very gory and bloody, the company Mary keeps. 

These women are champions of Israel, great heroines of the people, larger than life figures from Israel's heroic age. There are many echoes of that heroic age - the time of the judges and the kings - in the infancy narratives of the gospels. Jesus is, after all, 'Joshua', and Mary's song of praise is anticipated by Hannah, the mother of Samuel.

But Mary is a contrast to the rugged and violent women of that age just as she is a contrast to the other women mentioned in Matthew's genealogy, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. On the one hand this coincidence warns us against becoming too prudish and effete, as if we do not all belong to families and nations of flesh and blood. On the other hand the contrast between Jael and Judith, and Mary, reminds us of the journey we need to take from the Old Testament content of the stories, titles and expectations echoed in the infancy narratives, to the kind of Messiah Jesus actually turned out to be.

We can put it like this: if law was given through Moses, and power and might are seen in David, Samson, Judith and Gideon, grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ - a new kind of law, a new kind of power, a new way of being and living. We glimpse it in these last days of Advent, as we wait to see His face and to hear His voice.

20 December

Readings: Isaiah 7:10-14; Psalm 24; Luke 1:26-38

What is the difference between the question Zechariah asks and the question Mary asks? He says 'how can I know this, for I am an old man and my wife is advanced in years' (Lk 1:18). She says 'how shall this be, since I have no husband' (Lk 1:34). It can be difficult enough to see why he is criticized (and, it seems, punished) while Mary is praised. We might feel a bit sorry for him, an old man understandably confused by a strange encounter.

The angel Gabriel tells us that Zechariah did not believe while Elizabeth tells us that Mary believed. While the words of Zechariah and those of Mary are very similar, they express a radically different attitude. In Mary, by contrast with him, we find a receptivity that makes the birth of the Word possible.

The one to whom Mary gives birth is the Holy One, the Son of God. The sign given to Ahaz, of which Isaiah speaks, was the birth of Hezekiah, a good and righteous king, faithful in his service of the Lord, in this way a contrast to his father, Ahaz. Mary also gives birth to a good and righteous king, Him whom the liturgy describes as the 'fountain of all holiness' (Eucharistic Prayer II) and the source of 'all life, all holiness' (Eucharistic Prayer III).

So God visits His people and reveals His glory anew. Notice also that Zechariah is in the Temple while Mary is at home in Nazareth. This new visitation and revelation does not happen in what seems like the obvious place, the Temple, the place of the presence of God's glory. It happens where there is a receptive heart. We need to beware of any proprietorial attitude towards God and His glory. Perhaps this is the crucial lesson to be learned from Zechariah's mistake: how do we leave space for God to do a new thing, God who, precisely because he is ever-faithful, is ever-creative? The Word can only come to birth where there is a believing heart. That is the space in which God can do a new thing.

19 December

Readings: Judges 13:2-7, 24-25; Psalm 71; Luke 1:5-25

Every child is a gift from God. It is one of the reasons why the Church has such a strong teaching about sexual behaviour. Our regard for the dignity of the human being is seen in how we receive and value children. They are among the most vulnerable people and how we treat the vulnerable is how we treat humanity as a whole.

In some situations this great truth - that every child is a gift from God - is more clearly seen. We read about two such situations at Mass today. The accounts are so close that some might be tempted to say that the second one is simply a retelling of the first. But there is no reason why God's gift of a child to elderly parents should not come about in ways that are very alike.

The parents of Samson receive him after a visit from an angel of the Lord. The child's arrival is a surprise, more obviously grace than is the fruit of other, more normal, pregnancies. But perhaps the arrival of such children is also to remind us of how extraordinary a blessing any pregnancy is: new life, a new human being, soon to be with us, 'trailing clouds of glory', as Wordsworth put it.

John the Baptist's conception is equally remarkable ('I am an old man and my wife is advanced in years'). Like Samson, John will be specially dedicated to God, a man with a mission on behalf of the people. The long hair is not so important as the fact that in each of these children of grace the Spirit of the Lord will be vibrantly present, powerfully active. God is at work among His people. Zechariah's mystification and subsequent silence is not all that strange as a response to a heavenly visitor and his initial incredulity is placed at the service of what God reveals through the birth of John the Baptist.

These remarkable pregnancies are recalled now, in the closing days of Advent, to set the scene for the most extraordinary conception and birth, that of Jesus, conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. Every child is a gift from God. This is true more than ever of the child whose birth we celebrate at Christmas, the only Son of the Father, the first-born of all creation, the first-born from the dead.

Today's 'O' antiphon speaks of kings falling silent before the root or stock of Jesse, the king of the House of David who is to come. Zechariah falls silent. We read in the Book of Wisdom that it was 'while gentle silence enveloped all things, and night in its swift course was now half gone' that the 'all-powerful word leaped from heaven, from the royal throne, into the midst of the land that was doomed' (Wisdom 18:).

In these final days of Advent let us try to find some moments of silence in which to give thanks for the child of God each one of us is; for the children we have known and know, each one a gift of God; and for the Child, the only-begotten of the Father, filled with the Spirit of truth and love, whose birth establishes our dignity, restores our hope, and enlightens all our darknesses.

18 December

Readings: Jeremiah 23:5-8; Psalm 71; Matthew 1:18-24

A younger brother went to speak to an older brother. 'Abba Charles', he said, 'how am I to draw together the strings of my life? I am involved in many things and it seems as if my service of the Lord and of his people requires me to be, like Martha, busy about many things. Inside also my life usually feels fragmented, incomplete, unfinished. How am I to pull everything together, to see what pattern my life is making?'

The older brother replied, 'Brother Vito, it is not your job to pull together the strings of your life. That is God's job and God will show you some day the pattern your life is making. For now you must do what you are required to do, seek the Lord's will in each situation and circumstance, respond to the needs of the people who come to you for help. It is not your job to worry about what it all amounts to, what the overall pattern is.'

The incident comes to mind on hearing the name Jeremiah gives to God in today's first reading: 'The Lord-our-integrity'. Other translations are 'The Lord our justice' or 'The Lord is our righteousness'. The first translation chimes best with the story of Abba Charles and Brother Vito. We are not to look within ourselves for the ultimate integrity, justification, or righteousness of our lives. That is something God is shaping. We are, as St Paul says, God's work of art (Ephesians 2:10). Our job is to seek what is true and to do what is good, to serve justice and to show kindness, in each of the moments of each day. In another text Paul warns the Corinthians not to pass premature judgement (1 Corinthians 4:5) but rather to leave judgement to the Lord. Leave the justification of your life to God in whom we find our integrity.

The incident of Abba Charles and Brother Vito also comes to mind because today for the first time this Advent we meet another of its most important personalities, Joseph, the husband of Mary and the human father of Jesus. Joseph is described as a man of honour, a righteous man, a just man. He seems to be naturally good and trustworthy. But part of that goodness is to be open to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit, to the guidance of God in the circumstances of his life. Like his namesake in the Book of Genesis, this Joseph is a dreamer. He trusts what is revealed to him by the angel of the Lord coming to him in his dreams.

Sleep, perchance dreaming, is a well known route for revelation, insight, deeper understanding. We talk about sleeping on things before coming to decisions about them. The psalmist puts it more beautifully, saying that the Lord pours gifts on His beloved while they slumber (Psalm 127). Joseph is open to receiving fresh light on what is happening. He is ready to trust the wider and deeper integrity of the Lord whose angel visits him. He is a man of spiritual maturity, ready therefore to enter into paradox and mystery. We can say that for Joseph too his integrity, his righteousness, is not just the natural goodness of his character but the work God is doing in him and through him. The pattern of his life, its meaning in the plan of God, is revealed not because Joseph himself sees it but because he is ready to allow the Lord to lead him into it.

Joseph waking up and taking Mary to his home echoes the moment when Adam wakes up and recognises Eve as 'bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh'. The moment of the new creation has come and its progenitors, under God, are a humble woman and a good man of Palestine. Each of them trusts in the God of surprises. God is ever creative and ever free, leading his servants into greater integrity, righteousness and justice, sometimes along unexpected roads. For Mary and Joseph it meant the surprising and extraordinary integrity given them as the parents of Jesus, the Messiah.

17 December

Readings: Genesis 49:2, 8-10; Psalm 72; Matthew 1:1-17

 The past five years have seen the arrival in my extended family of four grand-nieces and two grand-nephews, daughters and sons to their parents, grand-daughters and grand-sons to their grand-parents, nieces  and nephews to their aunts and uncles, cousins to each other. These births have, obviously, brought great joy across the family, the fact that they are establishing a new generation making that joy more profound, the excitement more intense.

The first child to be born was for a short time the 'only child' of her generation and so a very powerful little person. She created, single-handedly, a whole new set of relationships which would not exist without her. She was the first in the third generation of my parents' offspring. She made her father to be a father and her mother to be a mother. She made her grandparents to be grandparents. She created uncles and aunts who were not uncles and aunts before. She created grand-uncles and grand-aunts who were not that before. In time and in space, we can say, the arrival of this little girl transformed many things.

So is it with the arrival of any child: there is now a new world. Babies come, the English poet William Wordsworth says, 'trailing clouds of glory', coming as they do 'from God, who is our home' and so 'Heaven lies about us in our infancy'. That's Wordsworth, a bit Platonist in the way he expresses things. But there is no doubt that the joy surrounding the arrival of the newborn child has about it such a purity and perfection, such an uncomplicated brightness, that speaking of the child coming from God is understandable. We do, after all, speak of the child as 'a gift of God' and he or she makes strongly present for us something of the divine goodness and power.

There is now another branch in our family tree and it is growing strongly. The genealogy is one level deeper than it was before. These children, newly arrived, take their place in that genealogy, begin a new generation, and at that we are all grateful and amazed. The extended family network is also made much more complex by their arrival. And for that too we are all grateful and amazed.

What about the child whose birth we celebrate at Christmas, Jesus, the son of Mary and Joseph, and the Son of God? Like any human child he establishes new things in the family and among the people to which he belongs. A new level is established in the genealogy of his family and a new network of relationships is set up. In the case of Jesus we believe that what is established by his birth has significance for all of us. He comes trailing clouds of glory in a unique way because he is the uncreated Son of God existing from all eternity. He really does come from the bosom of the Father and is therefore the Child who can reveal the Father to us. Heaven lies about him not just in his infancy but all through his life, even - wonder of wonders - in his death because in his case the Father raised him from death into the new life of the eternal kingdom, an even more remarkable birth, the one we celebrate at Easter.

So Jesus adds another branch to the family tree of Israel and another level to the genealogy of God's people, whether we trace it back to Abraham, as the Gospel of Matthew does, or to Adam, as the Gospel of Luke does. And a new network of relationships is established by the birth of Jesus. On an ordinary level he makes Mary to be a mother and Joseph a father. But on the level of grace his birth establishes the network of relationships that we call 'the Church'. Because he is the Son of the Eternal Father, the Father of all, and is born as our brother, human beings can now see they are all brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of this common Father. Because he is the Son in the 'family' of the Blessed Trinity, human beings can now realise that thy have been grafted onto a new family tree. It is not just the tree of Israel, the tree of Jacob and of Jesse, onto which the pagans are now grafted. That is also true. But, more deeply, it is the tree of God's own life onto which all human beings, Gentiles as well as Jews, can now be grafted.

Because of His birth we have a new dignity since the Son of God has become our brother. Because of His birth we belong to a new family whose reach includes all human beings without exception. Because of his birth the family tree is extended universally in space and eternally in time. It means that our stories - my story, your story, the story of my new grand-nephew - cannot be told without tracing our beginnings back to God the Creator and charting our future destiny forward to the life of friendship with God which is the life of the Blessed Trinity promised to us for all eternity.

By the simple fact of his birth yesterday we are all grateful and amazed at the arrival of another new member of the extended family. We are preparing to be grateful and amazed again at the birth of Jesus, at what this Child has achieved by his birth and by his life, by his passion, death and resurrection: a radically new level of life for the human family, a radically new depth to the human story.

Advent, Part Two

We enter the second and final part of the season of Advent, the week leading up to Christmas. The liturgy changes significantly and is now focused completely on the Messiah, on the prophecies about him in the Old Testament, and on the accounts of his conception and birth in the New Testament.

From tomorrow, 17 December, until 23 December, the Church sings the seven great O Antiphons, ancient chants that address the coming Messiah as Wisdom, Mighty One, Root of Jesse, Key of David, Rising Sun, King of the Nations, and God With Us. These antiphons are used at Evening Prayer over the next week, a crescendo of expectation and prayer that culminates in the great joy of Christmas.

What follows here was written by Fr Columba Ryan OP (1916-2009) and published by him in the newsletter of St Dominic's, London, in Advent 1997. I have edited it slightly and added a few phrases.

On 17th to 23rd December certain very ancient Antiphons are used in both the Roman Catholic and Anglican liturgies. Nobody knows who wrote them, but they were already in use in the 8th century. So they have been on the lips of Christians for at least twelve hundred years. They have been adapted to form the verses of the popular Advent hymn 'O come, O come Emmanuel'.

An 'antiphon' simply meant something sung alternately between two choirs, and in our Western liturgy, the word often referred to the sentences that were repeated before the Psalms and Canticle to bring out the spirit of the season. These Greater Antiphons, also known as the O Antiphons, come before and after the Magnificat canticle at Evening Prayer. They describe the one we are expecting and bring out the longing with which we should be filled in the last days of Advent.

Let us take them one by one.

17 December O Wisdom [Sapientia], you come from the mouth of the Most High. You fill the universe and hold all things together in a strong yet gentle manner. O come to teach us the way of Truth.

Each antiphon begins by calling on the expected Messiah under an Old Testament title - in this antiphon the mysterious Wisdom personified in the Book of Wisdom chapters 6-9. Each antiphon then develops that title, in this case using Wisdom 8:1, 'Wisdom deploys her strength from one end of the earth to the other ordering all things for good'. And each antiphon ends with an invitation, increasingly urgent as the week goes on, to come and fulfil the promise of that particular Messianic title, here 'O come to teach us the way of truth'.

 18 December O Adonai and leader of Israel, you apppeared to Moses in a burning bush and gave him the Law on Sinai. O come and save us with your mighty power.

'Adonai', a curious word coined in the Hebrew Bible, is a kind of rhyming slang to avoid having to utter the unspeakable name of God.  This invocation comes from Exodus 6:13 where God spoke to Moses ordering him to lead the people out of Egypt, having appeared to him in the burning bush (Exodus 3), and later  given him the law on Mount Sinai (Exodus 19). The invitation is already more urgent: 'Come, save us with your mighty power'.

19 December O root of Jesse [Radix Jesse], you stand as signal for all the nations; kings fall silent before you whom the peoples acclaim.  O come to deliver us, and do not delay.

This Messianic title comes from Isaiah 11:10. The root, or stock, of Jesse is David, the son of Jesse. and the abashed silence of enemy kings is referred to there as well as in Isaiah 47:4.  The antiphon ends with the appeal, 'come deliver us and do not delay'. 

20 December O key of David [Clavis David] and sceptre of Israel, what you open no one can close again; what you close no one can open.  O come to lead the captive from prison; free those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

Key of David and Sceptre of Israel are from Apocalypse 3:7, 'the faithful one has the key of David so that when he opens nobody can close', etc. echoing Isaiah 22:22. Now the invitation to come is, as in the next antiphon also, from those who despairingly sit in darkness.

21 December O Rising Sun [Oriens], you are the splendour of light and the sun of justice.  O come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

The rising sun is another Messianic title, this one from Zechariah 6:12 (in older translations) and once again the invitation refers to darkness and light: come and enlighten us.

22 December O King [Rex] whom all the peoples desire, you are the cornerstone which makes all one.  O come and save man whom you made from clay.

The title now is from the prophet Haggai 2:8 (once again in older translations). There is a reference also to the key or corner stone, an image from the Old Testament which was of great importance for the first preaching of the resurrection of Jesus: the stone rejected by the builders has become the key or corner stone. And it is out of death that he has risen and become the king of a race made from clay but raised, by his power, for an eternal kingdom.

23 December O Emmanuel, you are our king and judge, the One whom the peoples await, and their Saviour.  O come and save us, Lord, our God.

This is the best known of the Messianic titles. It comes from a familiar passage, Isaiah 7:14, which promises the birth of a child, the continuation of the house of David, a child to be called Emmanuel which means 'God with us'. The series closes with the great prayer come and save us, Lord, our God, which is what the season of Advent is all about.

In the solemn celebrations of Evening Prayer during these days, these Antiphons are sung to special and ancient musical settings. The great bell of the church was rung as they were sung.

A medieval acrostic from the first letter of each title in Latin, and taken in reverse order, made the dog Latin phrase ERO CRAS, meaning 'tomorrow I shall be there'.

Advent Week 3 Monday

Readings: Numbers 24:2-7, 15-17; Psalm 25; Matthew 21:23-27

One of the most striking things in the Sistine Chapel is the presence of the Sibyls among the Prophets of the Old Testament. At a certain level in the chapel, alternating with the long-bearded figures of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the others, we find the Sibyls of Libya, Delphi, and the rest. These are the pagan prophetesses or visionaries associated with different shrines of the ancient world. It is an expression in architecture and in art of a particular understanding of God's revelation which is in a unique way given to the Hebrews and through them to the world, but which is not without its witnesses also in all cultures and civilisations. The words of the Sibyls are regarded as 'messianic' also, like the poems of Virgil, texts in which are found hints, intimations, and premonitions of the Incarnation of the Word. Such sparks of revelation are to be found wherever human beings enter deeply into the pursuit of wisdom.

Balaam, a prophet of Moab, whose oracles we hear in the first reading today, stands between the pagan prophetesses of the Sistine Chapel and the greatest of the prophets, John the Baptist. He is a 'pagan' who seems nevertheless to be able to speak in the Lord's name. The Baptist is clearly intimately involved in the preaching and work of Jesus. The pagan prophetesses and prophets, even if from a great distance, are also somehow involved in the work of Christ. Balaam served his master Balak, the king of Moab. Threatened by the invading Hebrews, Balak asked Balaam to tell him what he saw regarding this people. Although he is a Moabite, it seems that Balaam believed in the Lord, the God of Israel. At least he has access to God's mind about the destiny of His people.

So we get these beautiful poems with some familiar Advent imagery - 'the king of Jacob shall rise higher, and his royalty shall be exalted' - and what we can only hear now as a prophecy of the One who is to come - 'I see him, though not now; I behold him, though not near: / A star shall advance from Jacob, and a staff shall rise from Israel'. Like all the prophets Balaam says more than he realises. In God's perspective, the prophet does not really know what he is talking about. From our point of view this ancient pagan seer becomes a poet of the Incarnation.

What does it mean for our teaching and our preaching? Clearly there are established and authoritative channels along which the preaching of the gospel takes place, where we expect to find it. But it means that there are many other places where we can pick up hints, premonitions, glimpses of the truth about God and about God's dealings with the world. All of these people - prophets, pagans, priestesses - are children of God and so none of them is excluded from the possibility of being a channel of God's truth for others. It may be buried deep in what they have to say. It may be beyond their own understanding completely. But God can use any of us as instruments for communicating His presence and His wisdom.

John the Baptist is the greatest of the prophets. It does not mean that the least of them, even an enemy of Israel like Balaam, might not also be used by God for the sake of His work in the world.

Advent Week 3 Sunday (Year C)

Readings: Zephaniah 3:14-18; Isaiah 12:2-6; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:10-18

People who have never done it sometimes wonder how it is possible to drive a car in Rome. From the footpath, looking on, it seems like a kind of chaos. Vehicles appear from every angle and move at startling speeds. People change direction without warning and, it seems, without reason. How is it that there are not more accidents? (Sadly, of course, there are many accidents, some of them very serious.) But most of the time it seems as if the angels must be busy intervening, here, there and everywhere, to prevent scratches, scrapes, and worse disasters.

Once one sits behind the wheel, however, and ventures into the thick of it, it becomes clear that there is an elaborate dance underway. The rules of the dancing are not written down anywhere (as far as I know) but a little bit of experience shows that there are conventions in the ways people approach each other and pull back, position each other in relation to other dancers, adjust speed and direction to allow others in or out, weave into the traffic and back out again, find the most economical way of making progress. The rules are in the dancing itself and are seen only by those who participate in it. Understood in this way, and still staying attentive and alert, driving in Rome is one of the most exciting things a person can do. When it is going well it is sweet, joyful, even graceful.

Today is Gaudete Sunday, 'Rejoice Sunday', and there is a lot of joy in the readings. One translation of the text from Zephaniah speaks of the Father dancing. Joy reaches even into the heart of God. In fact the deepest joy originates in the heart of God and it is God who brings it to us, into the midst of His people. We can speak of God dancing with His people: he is Lord of the Dance as we used to sing back in the bad old 1970s. He has come to invite us to the dance, to join hands with Him in the dance of redemption. The dance of which He is the Lord renews the creation and opens up new possibilities of life for His people, even the promise of eternal life.

In any kind of dancing, timing is crucial. The one who dances sweetly, gracefully, beautifully, has their timing exactly right. There is no dissonance, no scratches, scrapes, or unsightly collisions on the dance floor. We believe that God's timing must be exactly right. He has acted 'in the fulness of time' as we are reminded again and again in Advent and through Christmas time. Sin is a matter of bad timing, getting the direction wrong, mistaking the speed, acting where we should not have done, or not acting where we should have done. It is a good out of place as the Christian tradition teaches us (sometimes very seriously out of place, sometimes with deadly consequences: so not a light thing).

John the Baptist has a key role in the unfolding of the dance. He is one of the earlier movements in the dance of redemption and he teaches others how to prepare for it. To get to the joy that is promised people need to practise right living, justice, fairness, and compassion. Joy is the flourishing of peace and justice, their radiance, the sweetness of good living. Joy is, in the first place, God Himself who is simply happy in the eternal love-making that is the Blessed Trinity. And the Father has sent the Son to baptise us in the Spirit and with fire, making us to be dancers, participants and not just bystanders.

Rejoice in the Lord always, Paul says in the reading from Philippians. Joy is not something that can be turned on like a tap, at will, when prescribed. It is the fruit of kindness and prayer. It requires us to enter into the dance and understand it from within. Looking on from the footpath it will seem strange: John the Baptist, a joyful figure? But once we step into the dance, and begin to learn its rules, we see that it makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense because its winding ways lead inevitably to the Lord of the Dance, a mighty Saviour, who rejoices over us with gladness and renews us in His love, a crazy Lord who sings joyfully and dances gracefully on account of the ones He loves.

Advent Week 2 Saturday

Readings: Sirach 48:1-4, 9-11; Psalm 80; Matthew 17:10-13

The script of a play and the score of a symphony are there, ready, given. The enactment of the script or the interpretation of the score require a director or conductor. Jesus is helping the disciples who know the script to see how it is being enacted in him and in the events that have to do with him.

They know (or think they know) how things ought to unfold for they have the revelation given through the prophets. And they are right without understanding very much. They know there is a connection between the coming of the Messiah and a return of Elijah. They know of a connection between Elijah and the Son of Man. They know that Moses and Elijah are the two witnesses who will confirm what is happening on the Day of the Lord. The script will be enacted, the score interpreted, the promise fulfilled because God is the author and God is faithful. But the action, the interpretation, the fulfillment, are according to God's mind and understanding. Just as God is the author of the script and composer of the score, so too the direction and conducting belong to God. The interpretation is God's and we are unlikely to see it beforehand no matter how well we know the texts, for it is the Lord who interprets the texts and not the texts that interpret the Lord.

So John the Baptist is Elijah. He is the precursor, and in a way that already helps them to learn a more difficult lesson: about the kind of Messiah he was to precede, what the Messiahship of Jesus would mean, the suffering. The Baptist is the precursor not only in coming before the Messiah but in modeling the destiny of the Son of Man. The meaning becomes clearer, not so much that Elijah will return as that the mission of Elijah will be repeated. To see the kind of Messiah he was to be they had to see how Elijah had come again and how he had been received. The Baptist unlocks the meaning contained in the prophecies.

And the drama continues, the symphony unfolds, in the lives of believers. We have the script and we know the score: we visit them over and over again throughout the year. But the enactment, and interpretation, and fulfillment, in the life of each one, we do not know these beforehand. It is another who directs and conducts, who guides things. The letter kills: texts are dry as dust in the end, even sacred texts. It is the Spirit that gives life: the fire that destroys and re-creates, the fire that heals and seals.

Advent Week 2 Friday

Readings: Isaiah 48:17-19; Psalm 1; Matthew 11:16-19

The gospel passage gives what seems like an existentialist description of the human condition: always anxious, full of care, finding happiness in nothing that comes its way, finding fault with everything, bored and dissatisfied, the noonday devil in full possession, it seems, of the entire day. Vanity of vanities, we might be tempted to add, quoting the Bible's own existentialist philosopher, all is vanity. We played the pipes, but you were not in the mood for dancing. We lamented, but you refused to join in the mourning. The ascetic you rejected as mad, the one who shared in the ordinary celebrations you dismissed as superficial.

The Baptist, and Jesus, speak from a deeper source, the deepest source, in which human contentment and happiness are really to be found. The law given through Moses is God's guidance for human happiness but the people had not hearkened to it. They failed to appreciate the integrity that comes from observing the law of God and so they lose their appetite for what is truly good. Eventually they do not know what they want, everything they are offered is inadequate and their true good, when it is presented to them, now seems like a foreign imposition, a distasteful oppression.

The happy tree, on the other hand, planted by the water's edge, yields its fruit in due season, its leaves never fade, and its work prospers. The philosophy here is reminiscent of Aristotle's: a happy thing is a thing that does well whatever it is that kind of thing is meant to do. A happy tree is a tree that does well what a tree is meant to do: bear leaves, yield fruit, flourish by the water's side.

A happy human being is a human being who does well what a human being is meant to do. A human being is meant to know what is true, to admire what is beautiful, and to love what is good. So a happy human being, bearing its leaves and yielding its fruit, flourishing by the water's side, will be a human being who is learning what is true, appreciating what is beautiful, and loving what is good.

'Yet wisdom has been proved right by her actions'. This concluding comment of Jesus in today's gospel passage is a summary of what Psalm 1 (and Aristotle!) have to say. When a thing has its integrity, and is flourishing, it grows strong as the kind of thing it is and bears the proper fruit. Observing the law of God, says Isaiah in the first reading, guarantees a contentment as deep as the ocean and a joy as strong as a river. To turn away from that law, to prefer distractions and distortions, is to fragment ourselves. It means subverting, and poisoning, the roots of our own happiness. It means cauterising our capacity for knowing truth, for admiring beauty and for loving what is good. Josef Pieper speaks about this irrational and unnatural character of sin which is deeply paradoxical: how is it that we can deliberately deny the ground of our own existence, the source of our own fulfillment?

Yet this is what we do when we sin and its spiritual consequences are seen in a permanent dissatisfaction: 'we played the pipes and you would not dance, we sang dirges and you would not lament'. You can only be happy if you live in line with what you are meant to be. Integrity and happiness can only be found together. And my integrity I find, not by looking at myself, but by turning to the Lord who is my integrity, my vindication, my redeemer. Sin means turning away from God so the overcoming of sin can only be by turning back towards God, and planting myself once more on the bank of the river of life. The One sent from the Father teaches us the way to authentic human fulfillment. He is Eternal Wisdom, proved right by his actions, and inviting us to share the same light of truth, the same life of love.

Advent Week 2 Thursday

Readings: Isaiah 41:13-20; Psalm 144; Matthew 11:11-15

The public ministry of Jesus begins ‘from the baptism of John’ (Acts 1.22) whose appearance in the wilderness of Judea, preaching and baptising, marks the fulfilment of a number of biblical prophecies.

John the Baptist is ‘a voice crying in the wilderness’. This was a phrase used in Isaiah 40 for the one who announces the return of the people from exile in Babylon. That return meant a fresh beginning, an end to the alienation between God and his people and the establishment of a new covenant between them. The end of the exile was of great importance for the people as a practical sign of God’s continuing care.

For the prophets the forty years Israel spent wandering in the wilderness was the honeymoon of her relationship with God, an idyllic period of young love, innocent and loyal. In returning from exile in Babylon, says Isaiah, the wilderness through which the people pass exults and brings forth flowers, water flows in the dry lands, and the wasteland rejoices and blooms.

So renewal and new beginnings in the relationship between God and his people are associated with the wilderness. The wilderness is the place to look for signs that new things might be about to happen. The first sign that the exile in Babylon was ending was Isaiah’s ‘voice crying in the wilderness’. The first sign that Jesus, the Messiah, was about to begin his mission was the voice of John crying in the wilderness and proclaiming ‘repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand’.

A second strand of Old Testament expectation focused on the prophet Elijah and is also applied by Christians to John the Baptist. The biblical tradition is that Elijah did not die but was swept up to heaven in a fiery chariot. In some Jewish circles there was a belief that before the final visitation of God, Elijah would return to warn the people that this ‘great and terrible day’ was about to dawn.

This prophetic tradition gives voice to a passionate desire for justice, the hope that God will come as judge to set right all that has been distorted by injustice, cruelty, oppression and wickedness. We know how difficult it is for human beings to live together in justice. Whose justice? Whose truth? Is there any redress for all the cruelty and violence that people suffer? To whom can the poor of this earth turn for help, truth and justice if they cannot turn to God?

John the Baptist is the heir to this tradition also. He warns that the time has come for people to get their lives in order. Judgement is under way.

Jesus begins his preaching with the very same message, ‘repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand’. But, in the mouth of Jesus, these words have greater depth and power. John points to the one who is to come but Jesus is that one. John warns people of the imminence of the kingdom but Jesus is its presence. John baptises with water for repentance but Jesus baptises in the Holy Spirit and fire for new life, new creation. What is promised in the words of the Baptist is realised in the words, actions, teaching, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus.

In Jesus the prophecies are fulfilled, as always, in unexpected ways. Who would have thought that God would engage with injustice, oppression and violence by allowing his Son to become the innocent victim of injustice, oppression and violence? Who would have thought that the blossoming of new life in the wilderness of human hearts would be more radical and more demanding than planting vegetation in a desert? Who would have thought that love could be more demanding than justice? Who would have thought that our judge would first be our saviour?

Yet all this is true in the kingdom established by Jesus Christ. John the Baptist stands at the threshold of that kingdom. He is its herald and the first sign of its imminent arrival. He is not only the greatest of the prophets but the greatest of human beings according to Jesus. But the least of those who believe in Jesus have access to something greater. Our hold on it may be weak but even the tiniest flicker of faith gives us purchase on a wonderful reality: the presence of God among us in Jesus Christ, our saviour and our judge.

Advent Week 2 Wednesday

Readings: Isaiah 40:25-31; Psalm 103; Matthew 11:28-30

It is a short gospel reading with a strange invitation: if you are tired and burdened, come and take this yoke on your shoulders, a yoke that is easy and a burden that is light. So what is this new weight which actually makes lighter, this yoke or harness which actually brings freedom?

If you do a Google Images search for 'yoke' you will find that the first set of pictures are of a double yoke, the kind that binds two oxen together as they plough or pull a cart. Only on scrolling down do you begin to see the single yoke for one animal, or perhaps for a person carrying two buckets, that kind of thing.

So there are double yokes and there are single yokes. In the Bible the single yoke is an image of the Law. The Law was spoken of as a yoke laid on the people which was, yes, restricting but which was also the guarantee of the covenant which the Lord had made with them. This yoke gives guidance and direction, keeps the people on the straight path, helps them to live well.

This yoke becomes easy and light when it is carried out of love. If it is understood as a burden imposed from without, and its reasonableness is not understood, then it will be experienced as a heavy weight, a demanding master. But where its purpose is seen, and the life it protects is valued, and the relationship it seals is the centre of our lives, then to carry this yoke is not a burden. 'He ain't heavy, he's my brother' found its way into a popular liturgical song many years ago. Carrying one another's burdens not only fulfills the law of Christ, as Paul says, it is also easy when it is inspired and enabled by our love for one another. Carrying burdens becomes easy and light; we even find rest in doing so because it is an experience of love, and it is in love that human beings delight and find joy.

But perhaps we are to think also of the double yoke, the one that binds animals in pairs as they work together on a common task. If, in inviting us to take his yoke on us, Jesus means a double yoke of this kind, then when we look to the side to see who is in the harness with us, it is Jesus himself since it is his yoke. We are alongside him and partnering him in this work of being obedient to the Law. He is alongside us and partnering us and so, once again, it becomes easy, light, desirable, and joyful.

Take my yoke on you and learn from me, he says. What is it we are to learn? We learn that the heart of all reality is God who is love. We learn that God has set his heart on a people and that he seeks them out. We learn in this yoke of Jesus that God has first loved us, taken on himself the yoke of our sins, so that anything we do in partnership with Him always has the character of a response, an acceptance, an act of gratitude for far greater gifts won through a far more demanding sacrifice than any we might be asked to make.

This double yoke in which we are harnessed with Christ so as to share in His work then clearly anticipates that moment in the passion when Simon of Cyrene stood alongside Jesus and helped him to carry his cross. He is with us always. If we take his yoke on us and learn from him then we are with him always, shaping our lives according to his way, and giving our hearts according to a love that is, in the first place, his.

Today's first reading urges us to carry this reflection to another level. Taking up the yoke of Christ's love not only makes heavy burdens bearable, it fills us with energy for new things. We begin to live from the divine energy which is infiinite and inexhaustible. In another memorable image from Isaiah, young men may grow tired and weary but those who hope in the Lord renew their strength. Even while carrying the yoke of love (prepare for a mixed metaphor!) they put out wings like eagles, they run and do not grow weary, they walk and, still carrying the yoke of love, they never tire. It is the strength of the Holy Spirit that energises the hearts of all who love God and transforms them into chariots of fire, vessels of the Divine Love.

Advent Week 2 Tuesday

Readings: Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 96; Matthew 18:12-14

We are so familiar with this example of the shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep in order to go in search of one stray that we fail to see how irrational it probably is. Of course if the ninety-nine are safe or are being cared for by someone else then it makes sense that the shepherd will try to find a stray. But if that is not the case, and there is the risk of losing even more of them, he will surely cut his losses and take care of the ones remaining. If the stray does then turn up of course it is an extra joy, and will feel like a bonus. But the thought of leaving ninety-nine at risk to go in search of one seems a bit crazy.

And that is the point. Luke brings it out more clearly in his version where he combines it with the story of a woman who lost a coin and searched high and low until finally she found it only to spend at least as much on a party to celebrate its recovery. And the third unbelievable story in that triad in Luke 15 is, of course, the story of the Prodigal Son, received back by his father with love and celebrations.

In modern times people often contrast faith and reason as if they were opposed to each other, which of course they are not. The real contrast generated by the gospels, however, is not so much between faith and reason as it is between love and reason. Saint Catherine of Siena talks about the madness of the Divine Love, how crazily in love with His creatures God is.

The beautiful love song that is today's first reading from the prophet Isaiah sings of this crazy love of God. Now the highway through the wilderness is not for the people returning from Babylon to Jerusalem, it is for the Lord returning to Jerusalem to dwell once more with His people. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, Isaiah says, or, in another translation, speak to the heart of Jerusalem. It is a time for tenderness and a fresh start, for gentle shepherding and warm care, a time to experience once again the everlasting love of God.

The contrast between the lovers is extraordinary, on the one hand a people that is poor flesh, as enduring as the grass, here today and gone tomorrow. On the other hand is the infinite and eternal God, creator of all things, whose word stands forever and whose love is constantly searching to turn the heart of His people back to Him.

'Let creation rejoice' is another cry of the Advent season. Nature always sings for lovers: the hills are radiant and the trees dance, the rain is playful and the sea thunders praise, the meadows rejoice and even the animals know something special is going on. This is the world being transformed by the presence of God's glory, a glory He wants us to see and to share. We do it by turning again towards Him and learning His ways anew, by opening our hearts to the comfort and tenderness of our Good Shepherd.

Advent Week 2 Sunday (Year C)

Readings: Baruch 5:1-9; Psalm 126; Philippians 1:4-6, 8-11; Luke 3:1-6

The public history of the world helps us to pin down another history. The record of great events and important personalities has woven into it another history, the history of the Word of God and of the relationship between the world and God. So it was in the reign of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, Kings of Judah, that the Word of God came to the prophet Isaiah, son of Amoz. In the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah, King of Judah, the Word of God came to Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah, and continued to come to him until the eleventh year of the reign of Zedekiah, King of Judah. In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, the Word of God came to John the Baptist, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness. It might seem that this history of salvation depends on the framework of 'secular' history within which it is found but the reality is the opposite: it is the history of salvation - creation, covenant, promise, redemption, expectation - that sustains the world's history. The events and personalities of the sacred history, even if they made little impact on public history, are the ones of greatest significance for the meaning of this world's history.

So how goes it now, this career of the Word of God in the world, this relationship between the world's people and God the Creator and Redeemer? In some places it will be going very well, in the lives of some individuals and communities who allow its power to touch and correct and transform their lives. For other individuals and communities it is in danger of being forgotten, or at least its power is doubted. The readings today talk about the importance of remembering. In the reading from Baruch, the sons of Israel, gathered to the east (the wilderness, where the Baptist was later to appear) were jubilant because God had remembered them. Of course this is the fundamental remembering on which our hope is established, not that we remember God but that God remembers us.

Paul tells the Philippians that he remembers them each day, their communion in the gospel, their shared life. And he is very tender and emotional in telling them how much he misses them and longs for them 'in the entrails of Jesus Christ' (sometimes translated 'in the bowels of Christ' - it is a reference to compassion, or to what we might call an experience 'in the guts').

And the Baptist preaches a baptism of repentance, a call to remember and to call to mind who you are, where you have come from, what it is you have received, what it is you are called to. How wonderful it is to be remembered, to be thought about, for someone to say 'I have missed you' - in other words you have been in my thoughts even while you have been absent. This is how Paul speaks to his community at Philippi, and this is how we are to understand God in relation to us: remembering us, keeping us in mind - dare we say it? - missing us. As Paul has been personally involved with the Philippians, God is personally involved with his people.

We are in it together with God, his fate in the world is ours and our fate in the world is his. His glory is our glory and our glory is his glory. This is what this communion means. We are tied together, in a communion of shared life, because the Word became flesh. Just as in the time of the prophets and in the time of the Baptist there were great public events and personalities, so in our own time there is the public history, the events and people who count, who make the news. But there is also, deeper down and for the most part hidden, the continuing history of the career of God's Word in the world, of God's presence with his people, of their continuing relationship.

How goes it then with our koinonia, our shared life, shared between us and with God? Advent is a time to think hard about this question.

Advent Week 1 Saturday

Readings: Isaiah 30:19-21, 23-26; Psalm 146; Matthew 9:35-10:1,6-8

The Lord builds up Jerusalem and brings back Israel's exiles, heals the broken-hearted and binds up all their wounds. So today's psalm. The first reading is very similar, speaking of healing and restoration, a new moment of security and plenty. We can imagine Jerusalem, like a city destroyed by warfare, and the Lord moving around in the streets of that city, finding the sick and needy, the starving and the abandoned.

One thing noted in the first reading that is not mentioned in the psalm is that it is the Lord who has inflicted on his people the suffering from which he is now rescuing them! He is, Isaiah says, their teacher, showing the way to the people, and he is their doctor, healing the bruises his blows have left.

It raises questions about the meaning of suffering and why evil things come on people. 'I must have done something really bad to have ended up like this', a sick cousin said to me one time. The proposal from Isaiah today is that we see a pedagogical purpose in suffering, it is not simply a punishment for sin. There are things we must learn, virtues to be acquired, ways of seeing to be corrected, realities to be appreciated. And it seems that often, perhaps always, it is only through suffering that human beings learn and acquire and correct and appreciate.

The gospel reading continues along this line but adds to it in significant ways. Here Jesus is moving around the towns and villages, doing what the first reading and the psalm speak about. He heals and he teaches, is moved with compassion, sees the devastated spiritual landscape in which the people are wandering, harassed and dejected.

One change from what we have seen already is that Jesus delegates the work of healing and teaching to the twelve disciples. They have been with him, being taught and healed themselves, and now they are ready to participate in the gathering of the harvest. He gives them extraordinary powers, to cure illness and cast out demons, to cleanse lepers and even raise the dead. the works which God does among the people are to be undertaken by the people themselves or at least by those called from among them to serve the Lord's work on their behalf.

Another significant change is that the Lord, the Messiah, will take on himself the sufferings of his people, entering into them in a way not seen before. It is more for Lent and Easter than for Advent and Christmas, this point about a new participation of the Lord in the sufferings of his people. It is something yet to be revealed about how the kingdom of heaven, that reign of healing and renewal, is finally established. But it is important to recall it already, as we gaze across the devastated landscape of the world in December 2024.

Today's opening prayer says that the Son comes to free the human race from its ancient enslavement, and to offer us true freedom. May we be ready to receive the gifts he brings, be ready to learn and suffer with him, be ready for the service of each other which he wishes to delegate to us.

Advent Week 1 Friday

Readings: Isaiah 29:17-24; Psalm 26; Matthew 9:27-31

Of course they talked about him all over the countryside. How could it be otherwise? I was blind and now I see: I have to share this extraordinary good news.

Enabling the blind to see is the work of the Messiah most frequently mentioned in the texts that look forward to his coming. The passage from Isaiah 29 which is the first reading today is one such text: the deaf will hear, the blind will see, on the day that is coming, in a very short time. Erring spirits will learn wisdom, it says, another kind of seeing, and murmurers will accept instruction, another kind of hearing.

The most puzzling line in the readings today is the stern warning from Jesus to the blind men now cured, 'take care that no one learns about this'. Various explanations are offered. It seems to contradict what Isaiah promises, that wisdom and instruction will also be offered on that day.

The saying of Jesus is a kind of koan, a religious riddle. Is he saying that broadcasting this about him will not help people to see him accurately? Is it that the political situation advises caution about his mission and identity? Is it that the time is not right for a fuller revelation of who he is? Is it part of the drama of the gospel, as in a novel or a play, to let his identity be revealed slowly?

The scholars offer these possibilities but nobody really knows. So we can take his warning with us and let in simmer in our minds, see what it produces as the day goes on. You and I have come to see when we were blind before. We have emerged from shadow and darkness. But tell no one. Why not? Is it that we must also learn about the light in which Jesus and his works are to be seen, not just any light (hey, I can see!), but the light of the resurrection (my Lord and my God!). And for that we must wait.

Hence the advice about not telling now - healing physical blindness is a sign, but it is not even half the story!

Advent Week 1 Thursday

Readings: Isaiah 26:1-6; Psalm 117; Matthew 7:21,24-27

Where yesterday we were invited to think about weakness and a compassionate Lord ensuring that the people's hunger would be satisfied, today we are presented with images of strength and resistance. Isaiah speaks of a strong city, with gates and walls, ramparts and towers, and a citadel brought down by an everlasting rock. It is an image of sanctuary and security for some, of destruction for others.

In the gospel reading Jesus explains that the basis of the distinction between a house that stands and a citadel that falls is the builder's relationship with the Word of God. Persons who not only listen but who act on the Word that Jesus teaches are building solidly and securely. They are doing the will of the Father and their house (that is, their soul) will withstand rain, floods, gales and whatever else life throws at it.

The person who listens, and perhaps even teaches others (saying 'Lord, Lord') but who does not in practice act on the teaching of Jesus is like a person building a house on sand: in the day of trouble it will not stand.

Isaiah says that the people who are faithful, steadfast, trusting and peaceful can enter the strong city: the gate opens for them. The ones who do not live in those ways, no matter if they listen and even if they repeat back what is required, are not building wisely. They may seem to be secure in their tower but will it stand?

So the message is simple and clear and there is no need to labour it. Advent is a kind of 'Lent lite' in which we are given time to return to the practice of God's Word. And what it asks us to do is equally clear: be faithful, be steadfast, be trusting, be peaceful. Then your house, your soul, will be like a strong city where you will live in security and in confidence. You will be a tower of strength, built not out of pride and ambition but constructed in the power of Christ's love, he who is the cornerstone of everything that endures.