If you view Advent as a time of
purification, of evacuating the self to make room for Christ in you at
Christmas, it will appear as a little Lent. It would be likening Advent to the
state of desert, which is precisely the meaning of Lent as desert experience.
Benedict XVI explained that the German word for Lent is “Season of Fasting,” of
overcoming the self in order to stand fast against the natural tendency to
dissipation.
Advent
has a different and bigger meaning. It is salvation history itself writ small.
Its proper understanding demands refocusing the meaning of “God-with-us.”
Indeed, God has become man in Jesus Christ and is with us, and continues to be
with us. He has not gone off to heaven
leaving us alone in what can seem to be a desert. Recall that the apostles
returned from Olivet – the mount of the Ascension – rejoicing. He continued to
be with them invisibly in much the same way that He was with the two disciples
– unrecognized - on the road to Emmaus.
In an early sermon
(1964), Benedict explained that because of the discrepancy between Christ’s
announcement that “the time is
accomplished: the kingdom of God has arrived,”[1]
and the apparent failure of said arrival, “Christian
theology… turned the kingdom of God into a kingdom of heaven that is beyond
this mortal life; the well-being of men became a salvation of souls, which
again comes to pass beyond this life, after death.”[2]
In a word, the expectation of the kingdom of God taking place on this earth was
put aside and vaulted out of reach into the beyond of space and time. Heaven is
“up there” and beyond the “now.” The presence of Christ on earth is put on hold
and stored. It now made sense that He would not be recognized since He was not
here now.
Even
when physically present, He also seemed not to be recognized by John the
Baptist. From jail, John sent out messengers asking Christ if He was really the
Messiah or “shall we look for another?”[3]
Christ responds: “Go and tell John what
it is that you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame
walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor
have good news preached to them.”[4]
Of course, John identified Christ at the Baptism when He heard the voice of the
Father and saw the Dove; yet he himself testified twice “And I did not know Him” (Jn. 1, 31, 33). Puzzling! He sees, hears,
gives testimony with a burning triumphalism that He, the Messiah,“ will clean out his threshing floor”
and “the chaff he will burn up with
unquenchable fire” (Lk. 3, 17). And so, John knows, but doesn’t know.
And so
it is with Advent. Benedict describes it with a kind of short hand: “already,”
“not yet.”[5]
That is, Christ is present already but not fully so yet. What does this mean?
First
consider the remarks of St. Josemaria Escriva concerning the locution he
received during Mass on August 7, 1931: “At
the moment of elevating the Sacred Host, without losing proper recollection,
without being distracted… there came to my mind, with extraordinary force and
clarity, the phrase of Scripture ‘et si
exaltatus fuero a terra, Omnia/omnes traham ad me ipsum” [And I , if I am
lifted up from the earth, will draw all things/men to myself] (Jn. 12, 32).
Ordinarily, in the face of the supernatural, I am afraid. Afterward comes the ne timeas [do not be afraid], it is I.
And I understood that it would be the men and women of God who would lift the
Cross with the doctrines of Christ over the pinnacle of all human activity… And
I saw Christ our Lord triumph, drawing all things to himself.
“Despite feeling empty of virtue and knowledge (humility is
truth…, without beating around the bush), I wanted to write books of fire that
would run through the world like a living flame, filling mean with their light
and warmth, converting poor hearts into read-hot coals, to offer them to Jesus
as rubies of his royal crown” [see ftn. #6 below]
Coverdale
continues, “Reflecting years later on
this experience, Escriva said that he understood our Lord to be saying those
words to him ‘not in the sense in which the Scripture says them. I say it to you in the sense that you are
to raise me up in all human activities, in the sense that all over the world
there should be Christians with a personal and most free dedication, that
they be other Christs”[6]
(emphasis mine).
Recently,
to my astonishment because of its identity with this locution of Escriva, I discovered Chapter VII of Vatican II’s “Lumen Gentium”
#48 to read: “Christ, having been lifted up from the earth has drawn all men to
Himself. Rising from the dead He
sent His life-giving Spirit upon His disciples and through Him has established
His Body which is the Church as the universal sacrament of salvation. Sitting
at the right hand of the Father [this is not a place but the locus of supreme power], He is continually active in the
world that He might lead men to the Church and through it join them to Himself
and that He might make them partakers of His glorious life by nourishing them
with His own Body and Blood. Therefore the
promised restoration which we are awaiting has already begun in Christ, is
carried forward in the mission of the Holy Spirit and through Him continues in
the Church…” (emphasis mine).
And the next paragraph begins with “Already
the final age of the world is with us (cf. a Cor. 10, 11) and the renewal of
the world is irrevocably under way;’ it is even now anticipated in a certain
real way, for the Church on earth is endowed already with a sanctity that is
real though imperfect.” This “sanctity…
real though imperfect” is explained in the next paragraph with “we
are truly called and indeed are children of God (cf. 1 Jn. 3, 1) though we have not yet appeared with
Christ in glory (cf. Col. 3, 4) in which we will be like to God, for we will
see him as he is (cf. 1 Jn. 3, 2). This
ultimately means that to see God as He is, we must be like God since only
God knows God.[7]
That is, since there is only one one Son of God, to be children of God we must all become other Christs.
It
means that Christ is present in the world here and now insofar as you and I have
become “other Christs.” It does not refer to an objectified institution - an
“It” - such as Christendom. It refers
to the transformation of “I’s” into the “I Am” of the burning bush[8]
- subjects into the Subject - Jesus
Christ as face and name of God. St. Paul speaks about a growth of Christ in the world by a transformation of persons into Christ.
It is not simply a following of Christ or an imitation of Christ. John Paul II
quotes St. Augustine saying to the baptized: “Let us rejoice and give thanks for we have become not only Christians,
but Christ (…) Marvel and rejoice: we have become Christ!”[9]
Christ becomes progressively present in the world by the transformation of
Christians – and others - into Christ.
Emphasis
should be put on the words “in the world” since this most personal and intimate
encounter with Christ can take place in the exercise of ordinary work and
family life. Did not Vatican II emphasize that the laity seek the kingdom of
God – which is the Person of Christ Himself[10]
- by engaging in temporal affairs.[11]
And did not John Paul II emphasize that this becoming Christ by working in the
world is the meaning of “secularity” as the “characteristic” of the laity?[12]
And is
not the whole point of the Year of Faith the recovery of the enthusiasm for
having the Lord with us? Doesn’t Benedict XVI see the present state of affairs
– without and within the Church - as a practical atheism that is like the
chosen people in the desert? At one point in his “Eschatology,” Ratzinger
quipped “However did we arrive at that
tedious and tedium-laden Christianity which we moderns observe and, indeed,
know from our own experience?”[13]
The task before us is similar to the People of God who had traversed the
desert with Moses and was on the point of taking the Promised Land. At the
negative report of the scouts who had been sent to reconnoiter it, the people,
turned back on themselves and counting only on their own strength, grumbled
against the Lord and against Moses. Caleb and Joshua alone trusted in the Lord
with faith: “The country which we went
through and explored is a fine, rich land. If the Lord is pleased with us, he
will bring us in and give us that land, a land flowing with milk and honey. But
do not rebel against the Lord! You need not be afraid of the people of that
land… Their defense has left them, but the Lord is with us. Therefore, do not
be afraid of them.”[14]
“It
is Advent… The first thing we have to accept is, ever and again, this reality
of an enduring Advent. If we do that, we shall begin to realize that the
borderline between ‘before Christ’ and ‘after Christ’ does not run through
historical time, in an outward sense, and cannot be drawn on any map; it runs
through our own hearts. Insofar as we are living on a basis of selfishness, of
egoism, then even today we are ‘before Christ.’ But in this time of Advent, let
us ask the Lord to grant that we may live less and less ‘before Christ,’ and
certainly not ‘after Christ,’ but truly with Christ and in Christ; with
him who is indeed Christ yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13, 8). Amen.”[15]
[1] J.
Ratzinger, “What It Means to Be a Christian,” Ignatius (2006)28.
[2] Ibid
[3]
Lk. 7, 19.
[4]Ibid.
[5] J.
Ratzinger, “Dogma and Preaching,” Franciscan Herald Press (1985) 71-77.
[6] J.
Coverdale, “Uncommon Faith,” Scepter (2002) 89-90.
[7]
“No one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except
the Son, and him to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Mt. 11, 27).
[8]
Exodus 3, 14.
[9]
John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor #21.
[10] “The
kingdom of God is not a concept, a doctrine or a program subject to free
interpretation, but it is before all else a
person with the face and name of Jesus of Nazareth, the image of the
invisible God;” John Paul II, “Redemptoris Missio” #18.
[11]
“By reason of their special vocation it belongs to the laity to seek the
kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to
God’s will. They live in the world, that is, they are engaged in each and every
work and business of the earth and in the ordinary circumstances of social and
family life which, as it were, constitute their very existence. There they are
called by God that , being led by the spirit to the Gospel, they may contribute
to the sanctification of the world, as from within like leaven, by fulfilling
their own particular duties;” LG #31.
[12]
John Paul II “Christifideles Laici” #15.
[13]
J. Ratzinger, “Eschatology,” CUA (1988) 8.
[14]
Numbers 14. 8-9.
[15]
J. Ratzinger, “What It Means To be a Christian,” op. cit. 40.
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