
WE HAVE COME the Season of Advent. The great themes are all here: the incarnation, darkness and light, the second coming, and judgment among other things. The Collect for the First Sunday of Advent points to these themes:
"Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and for ever. Amen."Those who celebrate Advent only casually may be surprised to see that the Second Coming of Our Lord is mingled with his First Advent in this prayer. This intermixing happens all throughout Advent: many of the readings are darkly lit from the minor prophets. The Gospels at Mass focus on Christ's end-time predictions. In this cold December it is quite a fearful thing to see the sweetness of a baby juxtaposed against the awe and majesty of the Christ splitting the firmament. Advent has both and wonderfully so.
CHARLES WESLEY WROTE in that great hymn of this season:
"Every eye shall now behold him,Robed in dreadful majesty is a wonderful line for all of us who are tempted to think that Jesus is only light, love, happiness, periwinkles and teddy bears. The proper celebration of Advent stands diametrically opposed to this kind of pandering to our sentimentality. As you well know: yes, we wait for him (as a baby) by the creche with the empty manger. But, we also must remember to watch the Eastern sky; waiting for his dreadful majesty to be revealed.
robed in dreadful majesty;
those who set at nought and sold him,
pierced, and nailed him to the tree,
deeply wailing, shall the true Messiah see."
WHAT I AM trying to say is that it is a shame to have one without the other. Deceitful above all things, the human heart prefers one and ignores the other. To only have the Christ child is to know only the sweet aspects of God (as we have come to define it). I think we are most tempted to do this at Christmas time, when presents are given, we pray for peace on earth, goodwill towards men and lovely carols are sung by beautiful choirs. In our cursory celebration of Advent, we've sanitized Christmas. Perhaps, we think that this Christ child is nothing more than our nephew, who generally brings delight to all, but never needs changing or throws a fit. What terrible blasphemy. To understand Christ, the Christ child needs the Second Coming.
IT IS A shame to have one without the other! We, too, know (perhaps first hand) those who follow only the Second Coming Christ. Their focus is solely on the future and on the major (and obscure) prophetic scriptures. These are the avid readers of the Left Behind novels and followers of various other prophetic ministries. They are constantly divining the signs in the sky, deeply believing that the the course of world events is spiraling wildly out of control that the Second Coming has to be here soon. The only problem is that this tempts us to shape our faith away from our day-to-day lives, to focus on the outward signs than on the heart (where the problem really lies). In other words, they lose the tree of the heart in the forest of the world's ills. What terrible blasphemy. To understand Christ, the Second Coming needs a First.
WE NEED both Christ-the-baby and Christ-the-returning-conqueror. Perhaps, if we need both, then they need be (at least to us) one in the same. Imagine how it would change our perspective if when we saw the great judgment seat of Christ, we see not an angry man seated there, but a laughing child? When the roll is called up wonder and the eastern sky is split in twine, we see not the ripped pectorals of an angry man, but a child gently bouncing on his Mother's legs? This is all speculation, of course.
HOW WOULD IT change us to think of this Child as taking on the signs of the Second Coming? What if it is that Baby in our arms who came not to bring peace, but the sword? This sword in the child's hands cutting straight through to our hearts. What if the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes was actually mounting the white horse to subdue all the peoples of the earth? That this child of light and grace and peace brings also with him death and destruction? Would this change how we address this little baby boy?
I THINK THAT is exactly what TS Eliot was getting at in his poem, "The Journey of the Magi" which was written shortly after his conversion. He gives voice to those three Kings who return home wondering at what they found:
All this was a long time ago, I remember,This is what the proper celebration of Advent (including both Advents) looks like:birth and death. That birth so marvelous that the heavens had to drop down as the earth brings forth a savior. Just as miraculous, a new birth inside the soul where the heart begins to see God in Reality by trusting in him. A marvelous miracle, these births also bring forth death [sic]: to the old ways of thinking, to our old clutched gods and to the old dispensations. The sword of this Child's innocence cuts our hearts open before him, causing death to those things which do not please him and birthing those things that do. During this Advent season, he brings to us both birth and death.
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
THEREFORE, STAND FIRM in your faith with one eye on the empty crib and one on the empty, Eastern sky. Even here while standing by the manger, he is robed in dreadful majesty, greeted by the deep wails of our hearts. For behold, this Christ child comes like a thief in the night to steal all that we know, all that we cherish and all that we hold dear. And it is marvelous in our sight. Even so, Lord, Come!



