Fr. Henry O’Shea OSB.
We have tested and tasted too much…-
Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
But here in the Advent-darkened room
Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea
Of penance will charm back the luxury
Of a child’s soul, we’ll return to
Doom The knowledge we stole but could not use.
Walking on the beach, you sometimes find seashells, gnarled and wrinkled by salt, sand and tide. Turning them over, you discover the smoothest mother-of-pearl, a surface shimmering and beautiful. We can take this as an image of the Church and the saints. Pummelled and polished by the tide of time, by the storms of life, the Church waits for the rising tide of God’s timelessness which will engulf all, before casting up on the shore of eternity, miracles of patience and fortitude which remain hidden today.
The first Christian community experienced the tension between the two comings of the Lord, the tension between his earthly life and ministry and his return at the end of time. Believing this second coming to be imminent, they also believed in the necessity of living blameless lives. But, by the time St Luke was writing to-day’s gospel, his listeners were already aware that this second coming would not take place in the immediate future.
With this realisation came the growing awareness of another dimension. For Luke’s listeners, the Lord’s coming is not for some unknown time in the future, or at least not only for some unknown time in the future. He is already here in the now which is salvation history. At any moment, he may suddenly pass judgement on the inner meaning which we give to our human existence – at every moment, whether we are aware of it or not, he is passing this judgement. In the letters of Saint Paul, there is also present this tension between the already and the not yet.
To-days’s gospel is a favourite text for so-called hellfire preachers, particularly among radical evangelical sects, some even nominally Catholic. They wallow in the apocalyptic signs and disasters, the movements of the sun, moon and stars, the clamour of the oceans, wars and nations in agony. These preachers move on to describe in lurid detail various aspects of human wickedness and sinful behaviour, debauchery and drunkenness featuring prominently in the catalogues of iniquity. The message is ‘repent or burn – in the meantime, this is our bank-account number.’ The effect is frequently to instil in listeners that perfect fear that drives out all love. Again, modern secular entertainment revels in horror, in violence, wars, even star-wars – revels to the point where many become deafened, insensitive, to true evil, to true horror.
Looking at the first two readings this morning, there is no reek of sulphur, no glimmering of the flames of hell. Jeremiah promises the coming of a time of honesty and integrity, of salvation and confidence. But how the honesty and integrity, the salvation and the confidence that come from the knowledge of being saved come about, are indicated in the second reading from St Paul to the Thessalonians.
Firstly, it is the Lord who makes us able to love and increases that love. He does this by loving us even before we are born. This is called grace. This grace makes us in our turn able to respond to this love and to allow our hearts to be strengthened, confirmed in holiness and thus able to love the whole human race. But, if grace comes first, our own efforts have to be added to it. St Paul urges us to make more and more progress in the kind of life we are meant to live. An important aspect of this life is remembering, in not forgetting – in remembering the good things God in Christ has done and is doing for us, remembering his promises, particularly in the great promise which is the Eucharist we celebrate, remembering the future he is calling us to.
Elsewhere in his writings, Saint Paul refers to the Christian communities as the saints. As saved, loved and baptized we may be saints – this is the ’already’, but most of us have a long way to go to make this sanctity a living reality. In most of us, there is much of the ‘not yet’. To-day’s gospel is perfectly right, perfectly realistic, in calling for prayerful watchfulness, in reminding us of the reality and possibility of a coarsening of the heart which makes us forgetful of and eventually incapable of the one thing necessary. Christ has promised to be with us always – and he is. Christ has promised to come in glory at the end of time – and he will. But for many of us that end of time can be to-day, to-morrow, any minute now. For those who recognize its signs, this coming is and will be a liberation, a liberation looked forward to, a liberation lived towards with heads confidently held high.
O, after Christmas we’ll have no need to go searching
For the difference that sets an old phrase burning-
We’ll hear it in the whispered argument …
Wherever life pours ordinary plenty.
Won’t we be rich, my love and I, and…
God we shall not ask for reason’s payment…
Nor analyse God’s breath in common statement.
We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages
Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour-
And Christ comes with a January flower.