Advent I (C)
28 November 2021
Jer 33: 14-16
1 Th 3: 12 – 4:2
Lk 21: 25-28.34.36
In the first reading of the first Mass of the new liturgical year, we hear the message which the prophet Jeremiah proclaims in the name of the Lord. Jeremiah lived at the beginning of the 6th century before Christ. His words, though, are as fresh and new as on the day he first pronounced them in the streets of Jerusalem. Today, as in the days of old, God is speaking to us through him.
“The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfil the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” This is God’s voice. What He has promised, He will do; He is about to do. Here is the voice of someone fully reliable. His words are trustworthy. Moreover, they are efficacious. What God says, He does. What He promises happens. It happens in its time, at the right time, at God’s hour – which is not always ours.
We could say that Advent is about us adjusting to God’s timing. God is master of time and history, because He is beyond time. What we perceive as a succession of moments as if on a line, God sees as one reality, one single present moment. Time is His. He fills time with His mystery. Christmas, God coming into the flesh, that is to say into our time, is the summit of time, and the centre of time. In Christ, time is fulfilled, that is to say, filled with God, saturated with eternity. However, we remain in time: while experiencing something of the fulfilment, we are still expecting what is promised. We are already on the side of fulfilment, by our faith and our baptism. But all is not fulfilled in us yet. That is why we are still in Advent, on the side of expectation. We expect the fulfilment in us, in the Church and in the whole creation, of what has been already fulfilled in Christ.
“In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” To our surprise, God does not solve all our problems in the wink of an eye. His salvation is not a magic trick. It is a process. It unfolds in time. A branch springs up for David. We have under the eyes of our souls the image of the Jesse tree. There are, according to St Matthew, twenty eight generations from Jesse, the father of King David, to Jesus, his remote descendant. A branch takes time to grow. Generations follow one another slowly.
A new branch in a tree brings with itself new possibilities. This one will bring justice and righteousness. This king will be good and just. Who does not dream of justice? Who does not sense that justice and righteousness mean peace and prosperity? “Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will dwell securely”. Isn’t that what all desire? Do not we, too, dream of the city whose name will be: “The LORD is our righteousness”?
This righteous king and this city of righteousness, we have them – and, at the same time, we are still longing for them. We have them, because Christ is the king who accomplishes all righteousness when He is baptised in the waters of death for our sake and when he rises up on the third day for our justification. Christ brings into the world the paradoxical righteousness of the Cross on which, out of love, our Lord and King makes Himself our servant and redeemer.
We have, too, the city of the righteousness of the Lord. It is already begun in the Church. I am not saying that the Church as we experience her is a perfect model of righteousness. Alas, not! She is made of sinners; sinfulness and injustice are certainly present in her. However, when we consider the perfect sacrifice of justice continually offered on the altars; when we see sinners reconciled with God and given for free the righteousness of Christ; when we contemplate God’s righteousness in the saints and when we notice that even our hearts are being slowly converted and become able to give more goodness, more kindness, more justice and more mercy, we begin to see the Church as a city of righteousness. She appears to our eyes as a place where a continual process of justification is taking place. God’s righteousness is being bestowed on God’s people by the gift of the Holy Spirit through the graces which build up our Christian lives.
Advent reminds us that we Christian always are on the threshold between the present time and the future. Already, in the present time, Christ is king. His righteousness leads each of our lives, and indeed the whole of human history, towards their accomplishment in the kingdom of the Father. At the same time, we are still expecting a future of fullness: fullness of grace, of justice, of peace in the restored creation which the Spirit will permeate through and through.
Now already, all belongs to the Spirit. For the Kingdom of God is within us, at the very place where the Spirit dwells in us. Christ reigns through His Spirit in the Church and in the world. The fruit of Christ’s Cross and resurrection is this very gift of the Holy Spirit; it is the pledge of the restoration of all things in God through this same Spirit.
The voice of the Father speaking in Jeremiah tells us the good news that the King who is coming at Christmas will renew the face of the earth not by any spectacular exterior changes, but by the interior gift of His Spirit. If we listen to the Father’s voice within our hearts, Christ will be born in us, and His Spirit will make all things new in us. Let us only remember that this will happen in due time, in the time of God and of His grace, just at the right time. Let us be patient! Let us hope! Let us wait for Christ with intense expectation and immense joy!