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.

22 December

Readings: 1 Samuel 1:24-28; 1 Sam 2:1,4-8; Luke 1:46-56

I heard of a man who visited his wife every day in the nursing home where she spent her last years. She had dementia and needed constant care. His son asked him about the difficulty of doing this. 'It is not difficult at all', his father said, 'on the contrary, because she is as beautiful today as she was when I first met her'.

The Lord, the God of Israel, is saying this to Israel and to the Church, in the readings we hear these days and in the events they relate. God sees 'us' as beautiful and fruitful, even when we ourselves fear otherwise. This long love story between God and His people means that the ragged and aged lovers that we are, are found to be beautiful, are seen in our lowliness and poverty and need, are still awaited and are not just waiting.

We rarely think of this in Advent, that God too is waiting, for us. In his encyclical letter on the theological virtue of hope, Pope Benedict quotes Saint Josephine Bakhita, a Sudanese slave who became a nun in an Italian convent, a woman of extraordinary spiritual wisdom. 'I am definitively loved', she says, 'and whatever happens to me - I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.' What an extraordinary simple and profound explanation of 'grace': I am awaited by this Love, and so my life is good.

The Magnificat contains the same teaching: all generations will call me blessed (graced), because He who is mighty has done great things for me (for Mary, Elizabeth, Israel, the Church, you, me). There is no need to go looking to see who is meant by the poor and the rich, the hungry and the mighty, the lowly and the proud. It is us, all of us, and each of us, and every aspect of us: wherever our freedom responds to goodness and love we are poor and hungry and lowly, and so become rich; wherever it fails to do so we are rich and mighty and proud, and so become poor.

Hence our joy in these days, and in all the days of our life; not because we love God and wait for Him, but because God loves us and awaits us. 'I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.'

Advent Week 4 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Isaiah 7:10-14; Psalm 24; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-24

If it is to attract attention, a sign should be outstanding, striking, different, dramatic. And yet the sign offered to us at Christmas time is so ordinary: a young woman gives birth to her first child. The child's name might seem like an important clue: Immanuel, God-is-with-us. And yet we too call our children John, beloved-of-God, or Dominic, man-of-God.

It is when the life of Jesus is read with hindsight that the extraordinary nature of this ordinary sign becomes clear to the eyes of all who believe. It was the events at the end of Jesus' earthly career which revealed the mystery hidden, from the beginning, in his person. It was then that the stories about his conception and his birth were gathered. It was then that the way in which he fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies became clear. It was then that the wonder of his birth was recognised.

Saint Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, already expressed the fundamental Christian belief in what was later called the Incarnation. In Jesus Christ, two realities - the uncreated nature of God and the created nature of humankind - were united in a mysterious, unique way. He was a human being, a descendant of King David, a member of the Jewish race. This is what he was 'according to the human nature he took'. He was also, 'in the order of the spirit of holiness', proclaimed Son of God through his resurrection from the dead.

God had been with the people of Israel for centuries: in their joys and sorrows, in their faithfulness and inconsistencies, consoling and challenging them. But the Jews who were the first disciples of Jesus teach us that he was, for them, a unique presence of God among them. He is the fulfillment of the promises of the Old Testament, says Matthew. His conception itself was out of the ordinary, unique. He would save his people from their sins, says Matthew again. Through him we receive grace and we preach in honour of his name, calling people to belong to Jesus Christ, says Paul.

Looking back from the splendour of Easter and Pentecost, the full wonder of God's coming in the birth of Jesus Christ is to be seen. How extraordinary is this ordinary presence of God with us. He is the Lord and his is the earth and its fulness. He is the one who set the earth on the seas and made it firm on the waters. How strange that he should be with us in the helplessness of an infant. How mysterious that he should be present in the vulnerability which accompanied the fragile life of his human parents, Mary and Joseph.

The most extraordinary thing about this presence of God is just how ordinary it is. Here there is no violence to humanity, no assault on our senses, no rejection of what is ordinary, fleshly, profane and human. All flesh, all time, all space, all human living and struggle and toil, all loving and weeping and laughter, is sanctified, blessed, and made radiant by this en-fleshment of God. He has hidden himself at the heart of humanity, making our ordinary lives holy. In the words of a contemporary poet, speaking of the Eucharist, 'we break this ordinary bread as something holy'. Likewise we greet this ordinary person as someone holy. Holy with the holiness of God.

Could it be that God's hidden presence in the ordinary and the poor, in the fragile and the vulnerable, in powerlessness and simplicity, would inevitably escape us were it not for this revelation of God in human flesh which we celebrate at Christmas time?

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 'fount of all holiness' (Eucharistic Prayer II), the one who 'gives life to all things and makes them holy' (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 (though in a very different context) 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 18:14-15).

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

Recent 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 their birth we are all grateful and amazed at the arrival of new members of our 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 Tuesday

Readings: Zephaniah 3:1-2, 9-13; Psalm 33; Matthew 21:28-32

'I must call round sometime.' 'It's great that we've met again, we must keep in touch.' 'It's a shame that we only meet at funerals.' So often promises are made that are not kept. Our intentions often run ahead of our time and energy. And the road to hell, they say, is paved with good intentions. All those things we say we will do but never actually get round to doing ...

Jesus tells of two sons in today's gospel reading. One son agreed to do what his father asked, changed his mind, and failed to do it. The other refused to do what his father asked, changed his mind, and did it. Which of them did the Father's will?

The point is clear enough. Those in whom God's will is first made known, and who agree to live in accordance with its demands, may fail to be true to their word. Others who at first seem to pay no attention to God's will, 'in the end', or 'deep down', may actually fulfil God's will in their lives.

There is, of course, the possibility of a third son, the one who says he will do what his father asks and who actually does it. Jesus himself is, clearly, this kind of son. Although he does not speak of himself in this parable, the whole teaching of the New Testament about the relationship between Jesus and his Father testifies to this unity in his work.

Between Jesus and God the Father a unique and extraordinary unity prevails. United in conviction and in love, with a common purpose and a common mind, there is no competition between them. Each is self-effacing in that the Father is 'all for the Son' and the Son is 'all for the Father'. They find their identity in relation to each other. The success of the Son is the glory of the Father and the Son's work - his food - is to do the Father's will.

The garden of Gethsemane and the hill of Calvary remind us of the human struggle that this unity of Father and Son demanded. There are forces which would prevent the success of love, forces that pull down, tear apart, interfere. 'My God, why have you forsaken me?' and 'Father, into your hands I commend my spirit', are two sides of one mysterious coin. The eternal love of Father and Son is unravelled before our eyes in the human career of Jesus Christ, the Word of the Father made flesh.

The Christian faith calls Jesus 'Son' and it calls him 'Word'. The Son is the image of the Father, draws his life from the Father, learns from the Father. The Word is the expression of the Father, all that is in the Father - his wisdom and intention and plan. These eternal relationships are made known to us through the life and work and teaching and death of Jesus.

The third member is 'the Spirit', in whom the work of Father and Son is brought to completion and in whom we are taken into the network of relationships that is the Blessed Trinity, to become members of the family of God, daughters and sons of the one Father, sisters and brothers to Jesus.

To be true to one's word is a practical and admirable thing in human affairs. The relationship of Jesus and the Father teaches us that God is true to his word. He is faithful to the original purpose of his love. He calls all to share life in Christ, in the love of the Father and in the Spirit of tenderness.

For us to become united in our convictions and in our love, to live with a common purpose and a common mind, is already to 'become like God' and to live, as Jesus did, as a daughter or son of God.

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 A)

Readings: Isaiah 35:1-6,10; Psalm 145(146); James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11

From his prison John the Baptist sends messengers to enquire about Jesus. Doubt has set in. Earlier in Matthew's gospel we are told that John knows exactly who Jesus is, the one coming after him, whom he is not worthy to baptise.

Has he now got cold feet? Jesus' reply can seem cruel, especially if John is going through a time of doubt. Jesus tells him that he is performing all the mighty works foretold of the Messiah. Except one. The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the poor have good news preached to them, and even the dead are raised. So what is left out? 'The Lord sets captives free', as we read in today's psalm. The Messiah will also bring prisoners out of the dungeon (Isaiah 42:7; 49:9; 61:1). Presumably it is the Messianic work in which John has the most immediate personal interest as he languishes in Herod's prison, and it is strange that it is now omitted.

There is a strong tendency, dating from the very earliest days of Christianity, to see John the Baptist and Jesus as opponents rather than as partners in a common task. It is a tendency difficult to resist and it can mislead us significantly. Seeing them as collaborators in a common project helps us to understand what is happening here: they are learning together what the way would involve, what it would mean for each of them. Only a short time later Jesus himself will be in a similar situation (cold feet? a time of doubt?) when he falls to the ground in the garden, his hands weary and his knees trembling. At that point in his story the Baptist is already dead and Jesus has nobody to call on, nobody to ask about the meaning of what is happening, except the Father. And he prays, 'let this cup pass me by'.

We celebrate John the Baptist as the one who prepared the way. Reflecting on his imprisonment and death we see that he prepared the way not just in the sense of introducing Jesus and then disappearing from the scene. He travelled the way before Jesus and in that sense he prepared it. They announce the same message, 'repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand' (Matthew 3:2; 4:17). They meet the same fate, an unjust judgement and a cruel execution. And the arrest of John - all the gospels testify to this - is the signal that the time has come for Jesus to take the lead. A new and final phase of his public ministry begins.

It is all too easy to set John the Baptist and Jesus in opposition to each other. Our minds, which love to 'dualise', do this very quickly. John is about fear and threat, a God to be feared, and Jesus is about mercy and comfort, a God to be loved. Is that not so? No, it is not so. They belong together, for each one's mission is part of one complex moment, the definitive visitation of God for the judgement of this world.

This is the message realised and taught by the Baptist and by Jesus. Salvation comes about not by being removed from human experience - we are not saved from being human - but it comes about rather through human experience - it is God who is, in a term liked by some theologians, 'humanissimus', most human, and He has sent the Son to make us also more human.

What is promised is not a gentle, magical change, some kind of replacement. What is promised is a strengthening of us for what is going on, a refinement in the fire of judgement and love, a new power established where our hearts of stone used to be so that human experience, while remaining human, is radically transformed. Just as courage does not remove fear but enables us to act in spite of fear, so faith, hope and love do not replace human experience but enable us to believe, and to hope, and to love, God from within this human experience, even through death.

We believe in Jesus and not in John. But John is forever the one pointing us in that direction, introducing us to Jesus and to his message. He does it not just with his finger but by his own preaching. He does it not just by his words and his strange way of living but through his passion and death which prefigure the saving passion and death of the One he served.

It may seem like a sombre reflection for Gaudete Sunday. But the joy we are promised is not superficial or shallow. It is a joy born where justice and love have engaged with, and have overcome, the deepest darkness and the strongest evil. It is therefore a joy that is profound and lasting, a joy that is full and complete.

Advent Week 2 Saturday

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

From the description of him given in the first reading it seems that Elijah ought to be immediately recognizable. He comes with fire and departs in fire. His words are a blazing furnace, a torch bringing famine, drought and destruction. Awesome is the word for it, even in the contemporary American use of that term, and we are not surprised that he should depart as he came, in a whirlwind of fire, on his chariot of fiery horses. He comes, we are told, to allay God’s wrath before fury breaks, to put an end to anger, to re-establish the tribes of Jacob, and to turn the hearts of fathers towards their children. It sounds as if he is the wrath and the fury rather than the one who prevents the wrath and the fury from breaking out.

John the Baptist is Elijah, Jesus says, he has come already, and they did not recognize him but did to him whatever they pleased. Rather than fire, blazing furnaces and torches, drought and famine, John came as a strange preacher of repentance, calling for water rather than fire, a baptism in which the people could confess their sins and ask God to cleanse their lives. In some accounts John’s words are fiery, he takes no prisoners, and his steely integrity finally provokes the fury that leads to his martyrdom.

In his reply to the disciples Jesus seems to refer to the passage of Sirach which is today’s first reading. Elijah / John will restore the tribes of Jacob, will restore all things, and see that everything is once more as it should be. This is so that what is to happen next, can happen; so that the one coming next, can come. He is a precursor, then, Elijah / John setting things right somehow before something more radical can happen, allaying the wrath before the fury breaks.

If Elijah is the prophet of fire, drought and famine, he is also the prophet of the still small voice. In his moment of deepest intimacy with God, it is not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire that Elijah is in God’s presence. It is in the still small voice, in the sound of fine silence, that Elijah is in the presence of God. The recognition of the presence of God, the acknowledgement of his prophets and messengers, is not then in dramatic cosmological convulsions, in awesome and terrifying physical events. Perhaps it will be like that at the end of time. But for now recognition of the presence of God is more radical, a matter of converted hearts, changed minds, new ways of thinking, new ways of responding, things opening up, things beginning to move again, sins forgiven, love reborn. Shutting up the heavens may be dramatic and fearful but opening hearts is much more radical, much more creative, much more fruitful for the world’s salvation. Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down: this is the prayer of a later prophet, a prayer fulfilled precisely in the moment in which Jesus will be baptized by John, the Messiah baptized by Elijah.

The strangest thing Elijah will do is turn back the hearts of fathers towards their children. It is a puzzling expression. Are the hearts of fathers not naturally turned towards their children? Does it mean that the order of creation has become so distorted that only divine power can enable fathers to do something which ought to come naturally to them? It is an essential part of the mission of Elijah as the angel Gabriel explains it to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, when he brings him the news of his son’s conception (Luke 1:17): he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. Perhaps it continues this theme of opening rather than shutting, opening to the future and to what is yet to be, to what the young are bringing, opening to new life, fresh and original, rather than relying on old ways, old patterns, old compromises.

We can if we wish entertain ourselves with images of cosmological convulsion, fire and thunder, earthquake and erupting mountains. But the work of the Spirit is otherwise, internal, deep down, radical, hidden for the most part, until it bears fruit in the awesome works of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Advent Week 2 Friday

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

Jesus does not condemn the people for their fickleness. In fact it is not clear whether such fickleness has any moral significance at all. It may be the result of sin, this tendency in human beings to focus on the limitations and weaknesses of situations and of people. But it might also be a consequence of the fact that, as St Augustine says, we are created for God, to enjoy the infinite good, and so any finite good will necessarily leave us unsatisfied. Whatever the reason for it, it is clear that human nature is still as it is described by Jesus in today's gospel. If a John the Baptist shows up we will find him too rigid, too ascetical, too humourless. If a Jesus shows up we will find him too indulgent, too soft, hanging around with prostitutes and other shady people.

So we are, seeing always limitations, weaknesses, arguments against doing things, the imperfections of other people. Pope Francis, in his closing address to the extraordinary synod held in October 2014, gives an intersesting analysis of the discussions that took place. His talk is becoming quite famous, not least for the analysis of various temptations which he gives. They link up with the reality spoken about by Jesus in today's gospel.

Pope Francis identifies six or eight temptations, ways in which we are pulled into partiality, in danger of allowing the limitations and weaknesses of other positions to pull us away into prejudice and exclusivity. So we might be too rigid or we might be too liberal, we might want to come down from the cross and soften the challenge of the gospel so as to be popular with people, or we might want to turn the bread of life into stones, matter that is inedible, that weighs people down, laying on people burdens which we do nothing to help them to carry.

It seems to be about the same kind of issue: partiality, exclusion, feeling obliged to point out other people's limitations, never being fully satisfied with anything.

The solution to which Jesus ponts at the end of the gospel is that we should seek wisdom. Wisdom is broad and deep, as spacious as the mind of God. It means trying to see things as they are seen by God and held in God's mind. Wisdom includes, forgives, seeks to understand, tries to combine rather than to separate. Pope Francis also turns in that direction, talking about the Holy Spirit working through the discussion and dialogue and arguments of the synod. Asking the Holy Spirit to be present in our gatherings and synods and councils means asking God to help us to be open to the views and opinions of others which are as valid as my own, open to the experiences of others which are as valid as my own.

Thomas Aquinas says that this is how the Holy Spirit works in the time of the Church, through what he calls 'colleges', meetings or councils of human beings, discussing and reflecting together in the light of God's Word and in the power of God's Spirit. It is in that fraternity or communion that wisdom is sought and wisdom is to be found. Pope Francis has coined the ugly word 'synodality' but his meaning is cleare. Working together, thinking and talking together, including everybody in spite of their prejudices and limitations - this is how to seek the way ahead, to discern what the Spirit is saying to the Church. Staying close to the source of life, like the tree in today's psalm, and working together in councils and colleges: this is how we seek wisdom, this is how we share together the life which Jesus has already shared with us.

Advent Week 2 Thursday

Readings: Isaiah 41:13-20; Psalm 145; Matthew 11:11-15

Poor John the Baptist. He is 'wheeled out' at this time every year. After a few outings in the liturgy it seems that everything that needs to be said about him has been said. And he is permanently playing second fiddle. We know already that it will be the same next year. And the year after that.

But today's gospel reading warns us that it is not a competition between the Baptist and Jesus as to which of them is greatest, a competition in which we know (because we are 'Christians' rather than 'Baptists') who will come off best. One cannot imagine that either John or Jesus ever thought in that way in relation to each other. It was the sons of Zebedee who engaged in that kind of tedious competitiveness, and were very quickly slapped down for doing it.

Instead we are being taught that there is a radical discontinuity between the way God is present in John the Baptist and the way God is present in Jesus. There is none greater than the Baptist if what you are thinking about is the raising up of prophets to teach and guide the people.  But if you are thinking about what St Paul later calls 'a new creation', which comes with the Incarnation and Redemption achieved by Jesus, then you see clearly that things have shifted radically. We are in a new kind of place and a new kind of time. God has not only visited his people, he has dwelt amongst them, he has pitched his tent among them, the Eternal Word became flesh. He is in our hearts and on our lips, he is in our neighbour and his Spirit dwells in the very air we breathe, his saving work continues in the preaching and sacramental life of the Church.

The Old Testament prophet whose texts we read this week was a prophet of God the Creator and Redeemer. These ideas were refined through the experience of exile, the people losing all the familiar ways in which up to then they were assured of God's presence (the land, the city, the temple). They needed a new kind of comfort and consolation which comes with a new and more sophisticated understanding of God. He is no longer simply a tribal God, no longer simply 'the best god around'. He is the only God, and not just the 'top god'. He is the Creator of all things in heaven and on earth, and not just the Lord of Israel. He is the Redeemer who will call people from east and west, north and south, to the banquet of an eternal and universal kingdom, and not just the champion of one small part of creation (though he cherishes all small parts, the boundaries, the ends, of all times and places).

Second Isaiah, as this prophet is sometimes called, struggles to find the best poetry in which to describe the radical discontinuity, the new reality, the future that is breaking in. In today's reading it is in terms of a dramatic transformation of the desert which becomes a place of water. It becomes not just damp or wet, but filled with streams and fountains, gushing water, unstoppable rivers, a botanical garden supporting the whole array of beautiful trees: cedar, acacia, myrtle, olive, cypress, plane tree and pine.

In such poetry the prophets sensed what came to be realised between John the Baptist and Jesus. God will act in a new way. God will be present in a new way. Creation will be renewed and remade in ways beyond imagination. They knew that they could not describe adequately how it would be, or what it would mean, but they give us some of the most wonderful poetry in the world in their efforts to describe it beforehand. John the Baptist is not the least among these prophets. In fact he is as great as any of them. But the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he is because the last and least of us living in the light of the Incarnate Word dwells already within this new creation.

It is not that human beings have suddenly become more moral or holier than they were before the time of Jesus. It is that God has acted in a new way in Jesus. God has revealed himself in a new way in Jesus. God is present in the world's history in a new way in Jesus Christ. More dramatic than a desert suddenly transformed into a forest of rich vegetation - so is the drama of Christ's coming. We continue to scratch the surface for the most part, but we must continue to preach this because there are people somewhere in the world who are being prepared by the Holy Spirit to live it more fully than we do. Perhaps God can use our words as he used those of the Baptist to prepare the way for the One whose sandals we are not worthy to untie.

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 A)

Readings: Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72; Romans 15:4-9; Matthew 3:1-12

Two images stand in contrast with each other in today's readings. One is the image of the desert and the other is the image of the harvest.

The desert is the place in which John the Baptist appears, a location rich in significance for the people of the covenant. It is the place in which their hearts are tested, to see if they really do love God with all their heart, all their strength and all their might. John the Baptist is a prophet calling them back to this relationship with God as many prophets before him had done.

The portrait of the Baptist is familiar, his message, lifestyle, identity and impact. His message is the call to repentance, shown by submitting to his baptism. His lifestyle is strange, a diet of locusts and wild honey while dressing in camelskin and living in the desert. As for his identity, he is the voice crying in the wilderness, he is the Elijah who was to come before the great and terrible day of the Lord, he is not the light but one who bears witness to the light and points out the Lamb of God when he appears. His impact is significant: Jerusalem, all Judea and the whole region around the Jordan go out to him.

There is fruit to be borne out of this experience of the desert, a moral and spiritual fruit that means the people are truly living according to the covenant the Lord has established with them. There is a harvest to be saved and John the Baptist says that the One coming after him will preside over this harvest. He will winnow, thresh and gather in what is good, and he will burn what is left over and has not borne fruit.

A journey through the desert place is necessary if the harvest is to be achieved. Just as the people of Israel were brought into communion with God through their experience in the desert, so anybody who wishes to live in that communion must be prepared to visit the desert and to do it more than once. It means repenting of our sins, purifying the motives of our actions, seeing once again the ways in which we ought to be bearing fruit. It means being ready to lose everything in order to gain the complete simplicity needed to share the life that is promised.

The Messiah comes in the power of the Holy Spirit, baptising in that same Spirit and with fire. This does not simply mean punishment. It means refinement and purification, it means a deep cleansing and a new creation, it means making strong and capable of endurance hearts and minds that otherwise would be feeble and vacillating. The greatest spiritual teachers tell us that the quality of the harvest depends on the time spent in the desert.

The more we empty our lives of the things that do not really matter in order to make space for the one thing that is necessary, the more we are open to the refining fire of the Holy Spirit and the recreating power of His gifts. We will have courage for the desert, in whichever way it comes to us, and we will bear a rich harvest, loving God ever more deeply and sharing ever more deeply the communion of life and love He wants for us.

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!