Preferring Nothing to Christ

Isaiah 29:17-24
Matthew 9: 27-31

In today’s text from Isaiah we have several images of reversal.

‘In a short time, a very short time,
shall not Lebanon become a fertile land
and fertile land turn into a forest?’

A radical new society is promised where creation is transformed and societal structures reformed. Together these reversals will make communal life possible. In common with the other social justice prophets, Amos and Hosea, Isaiah’s message is that faith in God shows itself in right relationship with everyone and everything around you. It’s the poor and the lowly who stand to gain in Isaiah’s vision. Judah is promised a new start.

‘But the lowly will rejoice in the Lord even more and the poorest exult in the Holy One of Israel…’

We could see Isaiah’s vision as one of ‘levelling up’, although this might have a rather hollow ring in our culture today. In Isaiah’s theology it is an essential part of God’s vision for the world. This vision is echoed in today’s Gospel reading where Jesus restores the sight of two blind men (Matthew 9:27-31). Matthew is showing us that where the kingdom of God breaks through, those who are marginalized are given priority.

We are all co-workers in his vision of the kingdom. It comes to us in small ways, when our path is made smoother by the unexpected kindnesses of others. We carry the life of the kingdom within us. Each day the choice is ours as to whether we take the opportunities to ‘be the change we want to see in the world’.

Can you be open to the Kingdom today?

Is 25:6-10

When I made my Solemn Profession in 2000 our artist, Sr Regina, made me a card with the text;

‘On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will prepare for all peoples a banquet of rich food, a banquet of fine wines, of food rich and juicy, of fine strained wines.’

 I think this was her way of linking my job as kitchen manager with eschatological vision of the kingdom. I’ve always loved this vision of God’s abundance and generosity. There’s no portion control in God’s kingdom.

After giving us an assurance of limitless food provision, the text then moves to an image that is equally powerful. God promises to ‘wipe away the tears from every cheek.’ As a teacher I’ve sat with many a small child breaking their heart over something which has overwhelmed them. Isaiah’s image is human and deeply re-assuring. We need the visions and poetry which acknowledge our human condition.

Grief has swept our world this past year. We have had scenes of anguish of every kind. In so many situations people experienced a powerlessness that paralyses. Probably for many it’s almost impossible to imagine a time when tears will be wiped away. Isaiah’s vision invites us to yield in some way to our present circumstances, while holding fast to God’s promises for the future. This is not a once and for all thing. It’s something we do daily.

How can you hold fast to Isaiah’s promise this Advent?

Isaiah 11:1-10
Luke 10:21-24

When the Church lays before us texts from the Prophet Isaiah during Advent we are invited into several different thought worlds. Firstly, there is the thought world of the text in its original context. Secondly, there is the thought world of the early Christians who heard these texts as anticipating the Birth of Christ. Thirdly, there is the thought world of the Advent liturgy. And, fourthly there is the thought world of the personal circumstances of our lives. All of these thought worlds can intersect.

In today’s text Isaiah gives us a vision of an ideal king. This is in response to the real threat of Assyria, a super power of the day. Isaiah uses the metaphor of a tree to assure the people of new growth and hope for the future.

‘A shoot springs from the stock of Jesse,
a scion thrusts from his roots:
on him the spirit of the Lord rests,
a spirit of wisdom and insight,
a spirit of counsel and power,
a spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.’

The promised king has every virtue prized by the Hebrew people. In mirroring God’s ways of faithfulness and integrity the new King will ensure peace. This is no ordinary peace. Isaiah paints something of a dreamworld where animals seem to change their natures and habits. It’s a vision where all the usual dangers are removed.

We are hardwired to scan for danger. Our cave dwelling ancestors depended on the fight or flight mechanism to avoid the dangers of wild animals. In Isaiah’s poetic vision we have the invitation to imagine a deeper reality for our world and for ourselves. This vision of peace and harmony starts here and now. It starts in our hearts. It doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a daily choosing to do ‘no hurt, no harm’.

How can you live something of Isaiah’s vision today?

Isaiah 4: 2-6

As we begin Advent the Church lays before us a range of images as guides for our journey. We are invited to tune our ears to the voices of the prophets and to hear afresh a call to find in God’s word a personal call to conversion and the promise of salvation.

Isaiah preaches to a people who look in confusion on the brokenness of their physical and spiritual lives. The physical destruction the Temple in Jerusalem touches the very core of all their hope and longing. The God who guaranteed to be with them in the life and worship of the Temple now appears to be absent, the walls which once gave sanctuary are now rubble. Isaiah uses stern warnings and points to the people’s lack of fidelity. At the same time Isaiah sounds a note of hope in words that speak of a reversal of fortunes, where splendour and glory will be fully restored.

At the end of today’s text we are give another image: For, over all, the glory of the Lord will be a canopy and a tent to give shade by day from the heat, refuge and shelter from the storm and the rain. Isaiah speaks directly to Israel’s sense of abandonment in imagery that reassures and promises protection.

As Advent begins are there places in your own life where you can seek refuge? Are there people who have offered you shelter?

Isaiah 2:1-5
Matthew 24:36-44

Each year as we celebrate the liturgical cycle, I am grateful for the opportunity to take stock and refocus my mind and heart. We begin Advent with Isaiah’s prophetic vision of all nations gathering in peace. Isaiah invites us to imagine the peoples of the world being restored to unity. It’s a hopeful vision which sets peace and harmony at the heart of God’s plan. It can be helpful to hold onto this optimism when we come to the Gospel.

Matthew strikes a warning note, urging us to be ready for the Second Coming of Jesus: ‘So, stay awake, because you do not know the day when your master is coming.‘

These words speak to me of being alert and on the watch for the signs of Christ’s coming. Largely we don’t live with a sense of Christ’s Second Coming being imminent, but we can, like Matthew’s community fall into complacency. Advent rouses me to action.

Writing in the Sixth Century, St Benedict begins his Rule with several invitations which all have a sense of urgency. The Roman Empire is crumbling, and St Benedict sets forth a bold and dynamic vision for a life lived in search of God. The Prologue of his Rule is a clarion call to all who long for Christ to be the centre of their lives. There’s no sitting back and letting things unfold for St Benedict. He rouses us to action:

‘Let us get up then, at long last, for the scriptures rouse us when they say: It is high time for us to wake from sleep. (Rom 13) Let us open our eyes to the light that comes from God, and our ears to the voice from heaven that every day calls out this charge: If you hear his voice today, do not harden your hearts. (Ps 95)’

St Benedict’s monks are to be ever on the watch. Such is the power of Scripture that it can rouse a monk from his bed and spur him into action. If he opens his eyes to the divine light of Scripture, he opens himself to the possibility of transformation.

Every other day in Advent when we will begin our communal prayer by singing Ps 95 as the Invitatory Psalm, I will be invited to keep my heart open and ready for Christ’s coming. The message is loud and clear. Christ calls me today.

How is Christ calling you to stay awake and open your heart this Advent?

Priest and Poet, Malcolm Guite, has put together a beautiful poetry anthology for Advent. You can find this on his blog linked below or in his book, Waiting on the Word. There’s poem for each day. The first is Christina Rossetti’s Advent Sunday.

ADVENT SUNDAY

BEHOLD, the Bridegroom cometh: go ye out
With lighted lamps and garlands round about
To meet Him in a rapture with a shout.
It may be at the midnight, black as pitch,
Earth shall cast up her poor, cast up her rich.
It may be at the crowing of the cock
Earth shall upheave her depth, uproot her rock.
For lo, the Bridegroom fetcheth home the Bride:
His Hands are Hands she knows, she knows His Side.
Like pure Rebekah at the appointed place,
Veiled, she unveils her face to meet His Face.
Like great Queen Esther in her triumphing,
She triumphs in the Presence of her King.
His Eyes are as a Dove’s, and she’s Dove-eyed;
He knows His lovely mirror, sister, Bride.
He speaks with Dove-voice of exceeding love,
And she with love-voice of an answering Dove.
Behold, the Bridegroom cometh: go we out
With lamps ablaze and garlands round about
To meet Him in a rapture with a shout.

Christina Rossetti

Advent Sunday:Christina Rossetti

FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT

THE ANNUNCIATION OF THE MESSIAH’S COMING

The liturgy of Advent now turns its full attention to the coming birth of the Lord. The antiphons concentrate on it: for example, the entrance antiphon, “Drop down dew from above, you heavens, and let the clouds rain down the Just One; let the earth be opened and bring forth a Savior” (Isa 45: 8); and the communion antiphon, “Behold, a Virgin shall conceive and bear a son; and his name will be called Emmanuel” (Isa 7: 14). We are making a definite transition, therefore, to the other major theme of the Advent liturgy: expectation of the incarnation of the Word.

Adrien Nocent OSB, The Liturgical Year

Advent IV
Pour forth, we beseech you, O Lord,
your grace into our hearts,
that we, to whom the incarnation of Christ your Son
was made known by the message of an angel,
may, by his passion and cross,
be brought to the glory of his resurrection.

The collect for the fourth Sunday of Advent is found in some sixty manuscript sources from the eighth century onwards and was popularized in the Angelus. 

This collect prepares us for the gospel of the day and is comprehensive in setting out the whole mystery of salvation – from the moment of the annunciation, through the incarnation, to the passion and cross, and finally to the resurrection.  In this great arc of God’s action in Christ, we are brought to glory.  The petition of this collect, that God’s grace is poured forth into our hearts, opens us up to the realization of what is going on, of what God is achieving in us as we journey through the liturgical celebrations of these mysteries.  It is a grace that is, characteristically, poured out as “gift for you: a full measure, pressed down shaken together, and running over . . .”  This is a good example of the sort of oblique scriptural allusion which abounds in the phrases of these old Roman collects.

These prayers of Advent set out the liturgical-theological store.  The collects of the Roman liturgy represent an astonishing treasure house of new and old – the publicly spoken and awe-inspired proclamation across the generations of what God has done for us in Christ.  These prayers maybe deserve more attention and more care than they often receive.

Adrian Porter SJ

THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT

THE MESSIANIC AGE
This Sunday is marked by a note of joy. The joy has two causes: the proximate coming of the Lord in the Incarnation and his return at the end of time.

The readings emphasise the presence amongst us of the Messianic Age and the Kingdom. The theme of the reversal of the world’s ways is seen in the First Reading from Isaiah and the Gospel text from Matthew. It is the mission of each one of us to prepare the way for the Lord and to proclaim the Good News. Fulfilment of the this mission requires conversion. If one really is to be the instrument of Christ, one must be divested of self. The Church and her members have an obligation not to stand between humanity and the light but rather to bear witness to the light.

(Based on Adrien Nocent OSB, The Liturgical Year)

Advent III
O God, who see how your people
faithfully await the feast of the Lord’s nativity,
enable us, we pray,
to attain the joys of so great a salvation
and to celebrate them always
with solemn worship and glad rejoicing.

The collect of the third Sunday is the only Advent collect to use the “qui” construction which is the standard way of composing a collect-type prayer: God is called upon (“O God . . .”) and then some characteristic or action identified (using the qui clause, “who . . .”) which makes it clear that an aspect of God’s being or action (“who see how your people faithfully await . . .”) can assist us in the specific thing we pray for (“the joys of salvation” and “celebration” and “glad rejoicing”).  This is followed by the fixed Trinitarian formula (as Christian believers in the God who is Three in One we pray to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit) and the people make the prayer their own by acclaiming “Amen”.

This collect was sourced for the new missal from the sixth century Ravenna Scroll. It presents us with the powerful image of God seeing his people, expectantly and constantly, keeping them in view, as they await the feast of the Lord’s nativity.  God waits on us.  We wait on the coming of the Lord on the feast day.  This state of affairs, we pray, will lead us to the joys of salvation and the jubilation of the liturgical celebration.

The themes of joy (gaudia) and jubilation (laetitia) echo the introit of this Gaudete Sunday (“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.” and is presumably one of the reasons the compilers of the revised missal recovered this ancient collect and returned it to use in the liturgy.

Adrian Porter SJ

PREPARE THE WAY

The gospels chosen for the Second Sunday of Advent all have as their theme the preparation of the way of the Lord. John’s urgent warning has echoed throughout the world ever since he spoke it, and as it reaches us today it has a twofold reference: prepare for the Lord’s coming at Christmas, but prepare also for his return on the last day.

John uses uncompromising words to emphasize the need of conversion and of purifying baptism: ‘His is winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire’. The image is harsh, its meaning inescapable; it is difficult simply to ignore John’s warning and close one’s ears. Preparing the way for the Lord requires a constant effort at conversion: ‘Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.’

Adrien Nocent, OSB

Advent II
Almighty and merciful God,
may no earthly undertaking hinder those
who set out in haste to meet your Son,
but may our learning of heavenly wisdom
gain us admittance to his company.

Again, there is the idea of setting out in haste to meet the coming Christ, as we did the previous Sunday. And we pray that nothing, no earthly preoccupations (opera terreni), hinder our hurrying, so that (introducing a new idea here) we may be schooled (eruditio) in heavenly ways of thinking (sapientiae caelestis).  This echoes the epistle for Advent II C: “never stop improving your knowledge and deepening your perception so that you can always recognize what is best.”

This opposition of earthly concerns and heavenly ways is a common theme of collects but here the language is much more direct and memorable – the hindrance of earthly undertakings and the learning of heavenly wisdom.  This is precisely the sort of thing that can begin to inform a homily or introduction to the Mass.  The effect of this better choice of heavenly things is that it obtains for us admission into the company of Jesus.  As we learn heavenly wisdom from the Master, we become his disciples.  Christ becomes our way, our truth and our life rather than earthly preoccupations.

Fr Adrian Porter, SJ

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT
WATCH AND PRAY
The words ‘vigilant waiting’ capture the mood of the First Sunday of Advent. This expectation is hopeful and is seen in the entrance Antiphon: ‘To you, I lift up my soul, O my God. In you, I have trusted; let me not be put to shame.’
Foremost in the Church’s mind is the expectation of the last day and the judgement it will bring. The faithful must advance courageously to meet the Lord; they are called to enter into the kingdom at the day of judgement.

Advent I
Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God,
the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ
with righteous deeds at his coming,
so that, gathered at his right hand,
they may be worthy to possess the heavenly Kingdom.

We pray for the “resolve” to meet the coming Christ with good deeds and thereby to merit possession of the heavenly kingdom.  This resolve comes not from ourselves but from Christ.   If we are truly God’s faithful people, then our good deeds should naturally be part of who we are as we run forth to meet Christ at his coming.  Our meriting the heavenly kingdom is, as St Paul teaches, “not having righteousness of my own . . . but that which is through faith in Christ . . .”[23]  The collect employs a vivid allusion to the gospel of the sheep and the goats[24] as we are “gathered at his right hand” with the sheep.

The phrase “at his coming” reflects the Advent focus on Christ’s first coming at his incarnation, celebrated in the Christmas feast, and his second coming at the end of time.  A particular change in the way prayers are translated in the 2010 English missal is to revert to referring to God’s people (the congregation here gathered in the liturgical assembly) as “they” rather than “we”.  This can still feel strange to those brought up on the 1971 translation but, as well as rendering the Latin more accurately, it makes us ask the question “Do I want to be part of this ‘they’?”  It no longer makes the easy, and perhaps presumptuous assumption, that I am one of the runners forth with righteous deeds – the prayer genuinely becomes a petition-prayer, begging this Advent grace for myself.

Adrian Porter sj