God always Comes When Least Expected

The beginning of a new liturgical year is an excellent time to reflect on the ebb and flow of time and how the Church marks the changing year. Sections of the months are divided into seasons. For instance, we are entering the Advent Season, four weeks before Christmas, which brings joy and wonder by remembering the moment when the Word of God took on human flesh. In late winter and early spring, the season of Lent prepares disciples for another joyous time when the whole Church recalls the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus on Easter.   

Lent, as all know, is a time of penance and renewal, offering up daily human desires to highlight how far we may have strayed from union with Christ. Christmas and Easter are joyful times, recalling God’s entrance into our world and saving it by his selfless offering of himself on the cross and his glorious resurrection.

But how should we categorize the season of Advent? Is it penitential, or is it joyous? The answer to the question is both.  The readings and the Prayers for Advent reflect a need for the disciple to change his day-to-day activities in preparation for the coming of Christ. It sounds penitential; the time should be used for changing and preparing ourselves for a more intimate visit of Jesus in our hearts at Christmas. But Advent is not all penitential. The pink third candle of the Advent wreath marks Gaudete Sunday, a word taken from the Latin meaning “rejoice.” 

For most Catholics, the season of Advent is hard to navigate. We are told the coming of Jesus into the world has a dual meaning:  One in the remembrance of his Incarnation and his second coming when the world will end. The Gospel this week tells us to be watchful and alert, for we do not know the time nor the hour of his second coming. The faithful then are left to keep his first coming as a man and his second coming as the King of the Universe in tension throughout Advent, a tough thing to do. It is so difficult that most people fall into the camp of remembering his birth in Nazareth and ignoring the end-of-the-world theme. 

We should include the Incarnation and the second coming in our preparation because they are pivotal to the faith. In the first case, the ancient prophet Isaiah put humanity’s hopelessness into words: “Why do you let us wander, O Lord, from your ways, and harden our hearts so that we fear you not?  Return for the sake of your servants, the tribes of your heritage. Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down.”  Little could Isaiah have known that God heard his prayer when he sent from heaven his only begotten Son, born a woman, to save us.

In the case of the second coming, we know that Christ will come again, sitting on his glorious throne with the angels and all nations assembled before him. And he will separate one from the other, the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’” But the time of his second coming is unknown as it was when he first appeared on the earth. Therefore, Jesus tells us to be awake and alert, for the time of his second coming is only known by God.

The challenge of keeping his first coming and second coming in tension, especially when the culture is oblivious to the latter during the weeks before Christmas, is something we all need help with. One of the greatest gifts of Catholicism is her rich and varied tradition coupled with the scripture. Holy men and women with profound insights teach their successors how to live holy lives. One such teacher is the convert from Protestantism, Cardinal John Henry Newman. Read carefully how he integrates the first coming of Christ with his second.

“This then is to watch: to be detached from what is present and live in what is unseen; to live in the thought of Christ when he came once, and as he will come again; to desire his second coming from our affectionate and grateful remembrance of the first.”

Newman goes on to describe the characteristics of a disciple who is watchful: “those who are sensitive, eager, apprehensive in mind, who are awake, alive, quick-sighted, zealous in honoring him, who look for him in all that happens, and who would not be surprised, who would not be over agitated or overwhelmed if they found that he was coming at once.”  

They are inspiring words to start Advent this year by intentionally including the second coming of Jesus in our preparation.