Advent II Christ

“Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight”

School buses are pretty dismal things, aren’t they? Fifty-odd children herded into a confined space, some tired, some hyperactive, and made to try and behave themselves for as long as it takes to get them to their destination, be it home, or a school trip – in fact, almost anywhere more interesting than the bus itself. When I think back to my daily journey to and from school, I wonder how the drivers managed to avoid throttling every single one of us, or finding a precipice (not an easy thing to do in Oxfordshire) and taking all of us horrible little creatures to the bottom of it. And, of course, there were the occasions when the thing wouldn’t start, or people were late, or we got lost or stuck or otherwise delayed. And then the chorus would begin from the back seats, where the really monstrous children would sit (I always try to sit at the back of buses now, to make up for lost time) of “why are we waiting”, sung, I seem to recall, to the tune of O Come All Ye Faithful. In another sense, “why are we waiting?” is a legitimate question to ask in Advent, the Church’s season of watching and waiting.

Well, as our readings tell us, we’re waiting for the coming of Christ. We’re following the signs promised by the prophets. We’re waiting with Our Blessed Lady as the child grows in her womb; and we’re praying that, as He lives in her, he may come and live in us. We’re waiting for the birth of the infant in Bethlehem, and praying for the simple sincerity shown by shepherds in adoring Him, the Lord of Time and Eternity, heaven and earth in little space. But we’re also waiting for his second coming in glory to judge the living and the dead. Today’s readings invite us to prepare for that second coming, and so we hear, in the words of Isaiah, that the day will come when the root of Jesse shall stand as an ensign, as a signal to the peoples. And we hear too the words of John the Baptist, quoting Isaiah, saying “prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight”.

Now, it’s very easy to prepare for something if we know when it’s going to happen, and it’s fine to wait if we know why we’re waiting. But we simply do not know when Christ is coming again. If we knew when it was going to be, we would not long for it as eagerly as we do. As Our Lord Himself said to His disciples: “about that hour no one knows, neither the angels nor the Son. It is not for you to know times or moments”. If we knew when it was going to be, we might be tempted into thinking that the Lord of Time and Eternity was Himself ruled by time. The prophets of Israel spoke their words not knowing the day or the hour of the coming of the Messiah, hoping that they would see it, but aware of the possibility that they might not. They called the children of Israel to faith, to penitence, to repentance, to be ever-prepared, to watch and pray. And we know thow difficult that can be: even when Christ Himself was on earth, there were those even among the ones closest to Him who could not watch one brief hour, in Gethsemane.

The victory over sin and evil is being won in us even now, by God’s grace and through the Sacraments, especially through the Mass and through Confession. But it will not finally be over until Christ comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead. He will judge me, and He will judge you, and He will judge all of us, and we shall answer for ourselves ‘at the dreadful day of judgement when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed’. As the Dies Irae, the sequence for use at Requiems, puts it, “Lo! the book, exactly worded, wherein all hath been recorded: thence shall judgment be awarded”. Judgement isn’t a light matter, and it certainly isn’t something to be ignored or sidelined. Judgement is not the province of doom-mongers, of whom we see fewer and fewer these days: the grey men with their raincoats and sandwich-boards, announcing “repent, for the end of the world is nigh”. It’s preached consistently by the Prophets and by Our Saviour, and we’re very wrong if we imagine it won’t happen to us. An exhibition of Ancient Egyptian artefacts at the British Museum which is on at the moment shows their view of judgement: to pass the ultimate test the dead person had to survive having their heart weighed by the jackal-headed god Anubis. If they were found wanting the offending organ was fed to the Destroyer, a kind of cross between a jackal, a hyena and a wild boar. Certainly not a creature one would want to encounter while walking the dog. But various magic spells and incantations could be used, it was thought, to get round this inconvenience. The heart could be bribed with sorcery not to tell its secrets. No such option is open to us.Judgement is, simply, the other side of the coin which has justice written on it. If we believe in divine justice, we have to believe in divine judgement. And, by the same token, we have to watch, pray, and prepare ourselves to meet it. The baby in the manger who is sweet and light and lovely, to whom we sing carols, doesn’t remain a baby, and our faith is not frozen in the stable, or on the cross, or even at the Resurrection. These are signs, and they point the way to what is to come. And, in doing so, they bid us watch and pray for that coming.

But how are we to watch, and how are we to pray? Preparing the way of the Lord calls us out of where we are. It calls us to leave our comforts behind us – and even the things dearest to us. As we hear later on in Matthew’s Gospel, in Chapter 19, Jesus says to someone “’Follow me.’ But he said, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’ Another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.’ Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’” The Kingdom of God is not proclaimed by being passive: all of these commands – wait, watch, pray, prepare the way – are active, they are things we must do, and not things we can simply allow to happen around us.

In coming to the Sacraments, we actually do something active. At Advent, the Church’s New Year, we can make holy resolutions. We can try to fit a weekday mass into our timetables, making time to come and meet the Lord in his house and on his altar more often than we do. As a priest-friend of mine often remarked, Christ hung on the cross for three hours for us – the least we can do is grant him half an hour of our time. Or, if we can’t get to Mass, we can resolve to say our prayers every day, on waking and on going to bed. We can take up some spiritual reading, or examine our consciences, or pray the Rosary, or do any one of the myriad things Christ offers us through His Church.We have a command to-day in the Gospel to prepare the way of the Lord and to make his paths straight. Our response should be not, “must I?” but “how must I?”. Why are we waiting? Because Christ has told us to.