Like A Thousand Years

Two Comings

Saint Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, preaching in Advent in the fifth century, told his people: "Let us not resist Christ's first coming, so that we may not dread the second." Jesus came once in poverty, humility, and love to save the human race. He was God's total and most precious Gift of Himself to all of us. In one sense, we can say that He comes now once again in word and sacrament in the Church to prepare His Chosen People for His coming at the end of their lives and at the end of the world.

In another sense, however, it is legitimate to see His coming in word and sacrament, God's continuing Gift of Himself to us, not as another specific "coming", but rather as a prolongation in the Catholic Church through time and space of that first coming. This is why Saint Augustine said, "He has come the first time and He will come again to judge the earth when He will find rejoicing those who believed in His first coming." In a reproachful way the great Saint of Hippo said, "What then are Christians to do? They are to use the world but not become its slaves. It means having as though not having."

The Saint said that a Christian "who is without anxiety waits without fear until His Lord comes. Brothers, do we not have to blush for shame? We love Him, yet we fear His coming. Are we really certain that we love Him? Or do we love our sins more? Therefore, let us hate our sins and love Him Who will exact punishment for them. He will come whether we wish it or not. Do not think that because He is not coming just now that He will not come at all. He will come, you know not when, and, provided He finds you prepared, your ignorance of the time of His coming will not be held against you."

By Grace

In a certain mystical way Christ is born again by grace each Christmas in the souls of those who are prepared to welcome Him in a special way at the annual commemoration of His human birth in Bethlehem. Preparing well to welcome Him at Christmas during this season of Advent is the best preparation for preparing ourselves for our final encounter with Him at the end of time. It was about this preparation for His mystical birth in souls by grace at Christmas that Saint Andrew of Crete said, "He is coming Who is everywhere present and pervades all things. He is coming to achieve in you His work of universal salvation. He is coming Who came to call to repentance not the righteous but sinners, coming to recall those who have strayed into sin. Do not be afraid then… Receive Him with outstretched hands… Let us spread the thoughts and desires of our hearts under His feet like garments, so that, entering with whole of His Being, He may draw the whole of our being into Himself and place the whole of His in us."

Cardinal John Henry Newman tells us that Advent is "a season for chastened hearts and religious eyes… for austere resolves and charitable deeds, for remembering what we are and what we shall be. Let us watch for Him in the cold and dreariness which must one day have an end. Attend to His summons we must, at any rate, when He strips us of our body. Let us anticipate by a voluntary act what will one day come on us of necessity. Let us wait for Him solemnly, fearfully, hopefully, patiently, obediently. Let us be resigned to His will, while active in good works. Let us pray Him to remember us when He comes into His kingdom…"

When

Like the first disciples of Jesus (Matthew 24:3; Mark 13:4) curiosity about His final coming always seems to rest deep in the hearts of believers of all ages. But, as Saint Ephraem, the Deacon and Doctor of the Church in the fourth century, said, "He has kept those things hidden (Mark 13:35) so that we may keep watch, each of us thinking that He will come in our own day. If He had revealed the time of His coming, His coming would have lost its savor. It would no longer be an object of yearning for the nations and for the ages. He promised that He would come but did not say when (Mark 13:32), and so all generations await Him eagerly."

Saint Peter tells us, "One day with the Lord is like a thousand years and a thousand years as one day… but the day of the Lord will come like a thief. At that time the heavens will pass away with great violence and the elements will be dissolved with heat and the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up." (2 Peter 3:3-11) Vigilance and patient watching are what our Redeemer expects of His disciples today. These qualities should be intensified in our lives during Advent (Mark 13:21-37; Luke 21: 25-36).

Precursor

Every year in Advent the sacred liturgy sets before us the figure of John the Baptist. As the last and greatest of the Old Testament prophets, he preaches to us first in silence by the example of his camel hair and leather clothing and his diet of locusts and honey. With ferocity he then tells us aloud that "the axe is already laid to the root of the tree" and that "unfruitful trees will be cut down and thrown into the fire" (Luke 3:9). He warns us against complacency and self-righteousness (Luke 3:7-8), while with saintly humility (John 3:30) he carries out, even today, his calling to level the hills, fill in the valleys, and make straight the way of the Lord (Mark 1:2-4). To this task he invites our own participation both for our own spiritual preparation for Christ's coming and in that work also to prepare our entire planet for that great event.

Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI says, "John the Baptist stands before us, challenging and active. He stands as a type of the manly vocation. In harsh terms he demands "metanoia", a radical transformation of attitudes. Those who would be Christians must be transformed over ever again. Our natural disposition indeed finds us always ready to assert ourselves, to pay like with like, to put ourselves at the center. Those who want to find God need, again and again, that inner conversion, that new direction. And this applies also to our total outlook on life. Day by day we encounter the world of visible things. It assaults us through billboards, broadcasts, traffic, and all the activities of daily life, to such an enormous extent that we are tempted to assume there is nothing else but this. Yet the truth is that what is invisible is greater and much more valuable than anything visible. One single soul, in Pascal's beautiful words, is worth more than the entire visible universe. John the Baptist tells us to change our attitude so that God can dwell in us and through us in the world."

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