Fourth Sunday of Advent

Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk 
22nd December 2013

Dear Friends,

The feast of Christmas shall be before us in but a few days' time. We should have noted well how time is portrayed in the inverse during Advent: we begin with the end of the world, the end of time with the first Sunday, passing to the end of the life of St. John the Baptist, the third Sunday he is in full mission preaching, and with the fourth Sunday we arrive at the beginning of St. John's preaching in preparation of the coming of the Messiah. Sequential order is in reverse to bring us to the celebration of the entrance of the Eternal into time.

In the Incarnation the eternal, unchanging God entered the world of time and vicissitude. Our Lord spoke to us of the importance of the present in the Sermon on the Mount, that we were not to be anxious for the future, nor distracted by the past. Only in the present moment is grace present to us. Let us not pass up this great grace. The Devil plays with despair over the past and anxiety for the future, but God exists unchangingly in the eternal now. Depending on how we respond to the grace of the moment do we either rise or fall by the Sign of Contradiction which is Christ.

This Child entered the world in order to communicate to us His Life. The divine life is only possible to those who listen in the present moment. God exists in the eternal present and only "now", in our present moment, can the Voice of God be heard. The reversal of time throughout Advent brought us to the Birth of the Eternally Present in order to teach us this fact. When we listen to the Word of God Incarnate, He becomes for us a source of resurrection and life.

On the First Sunday of Advent we were instructed by St. Paul "to put on Christ". What is the meaning of this if not the transformation by grace? Our personal history is played out over a certain number of years, but much of the time is passed distractedly. We dwell upon the past and we fret over the future, consequently the present is lost in passage.

The Divine Child was born to the world at Christmas to bring peace, but peace is only realizable when the present is joined to the eternal present of God. When these two are joined, the divine immutability of eternity enters, stabilizing our lives. A Carthusian Monk once well wrote on this aspect in relation to Christmas explaining to us that 'Whenever God wants to bring about a beginning of a new life, he prepares a sacred place, a haven of purity and silence, where his action can be welcomed unreservedly, safe from all interruptions. All beginnings are thus undertaken in recollection and silence. We see this in Bethlehem, Jesus came to be born, not amidst the clamour of the city, nor the crowded public place, but in a mysterious cave, a sacred retreat carved in a rock, and hidden therein - a virgin, the most chaste, the most silent, the most humble of all creatures, and it was in the heart of that virgin, where no earthly desires penetrated, that God chose to give Himself to mankind.'

Come, O Come, Emmanuel that we may Adore Thee!