The Word invites us to “prepare.” What are we preparing for? How do we prepare? We are preparing the way of the Lord. That means we are preparing for the Lord to come. How are we supposed to prepare for the Lord to come? The Church tells us that there are “three” comings of Christ the Lord. The first coming, in the literal sense of the the words of Isaiah’s prophesy, happened when Jesus Himself came in the flesh. The first coming is the incarnation, where God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, united himself to our human nature in the womb of the Virgin Mary and was born a man like us in all things but sin. The second coming has yet to take place. Christ will come in glory at the end of time, when the world will end, and at that coming He will judge everyone according to what they have done. His judgment will be merciful, but it will be terrible. The third coming – even though we don’t hear about it as the “third coming” in the scriptures – is another kind of coming of Christ that the Church teaches. The third coming of Christ happens all the time, but it is invisible whereas the first and second coming are visible. If we learn how to prepare for the first and second comings of Christ, we are preparing ourselves for His frequent invisible visits to our soul.
Tuesday of the First Week of Advent
Our Advent journey begins with a meditation on a stump. Hopefully you’ve seen a stump before – hopefully, even if it was long ago when you were still little – you took time to study the stump. Maybe you counted the rings that represented the years of life that tree had. Perhaps you tried to pull it out of the ground only to discover how securely the roots hold it in place. I hope that you might have seen at least once – certainly not on every stump – but at least occasionally a small new branch starting from the stump. A stump seems pretty dead, and it certainly won’t ever look like the splendid tree that once grew in its place. The new little branch that occasionally sprouts from a stump, however, is a sign of the amazing power of life that is mysteriously present in the roots.
First Sunday of Advent
As the liturgical year closes and we open the beginning of something new with Advent, the call to conversion becomes more imperative. Yes, there is a sense of dread when we think of the end of the world, the end of time, the second coming of Christ. There is a sense of dread when we look at our lives and how little we’ve done to respond to God’s grace and His call upon our lives. The first reading points out this terrifying realization: with all the freedom you’ve given us Lord, we’ve multiplied our transgressions and used the time you’ve given us for ourselves and haven’t given You a second thought. What’s worse, we don’t even feel remorse anymore! We cannot even shed a tear when we give in to our pride, our anger, our lusts, our focus on worldly pursuits and greed. Our hardness of heart frightens us – who will save us from our awful habit of crime? Our vices outnumber and outweigh our virtues! You have reminded us of our condition, but you have abandoned us to the things we have chosen. You give us no help against temptation because it is what we have truly desired and chosen and you are a just God who respects our freedom.