It seems to me that one of the reasons that a lot of people don’t like religion is that we often present our message in tired old sayings and strange, gnostic language. We talk in our liturgies of oblations and consubstantiality. In our cheerful moments rattle off old saws like “God’s in his heaven, all’s right in the world.” In our depressed moments, we comment that everything is headed “to hell in a hand-basket.” As a kid, I confess to wondering who this mysterious lady “Helena Handbasket” was, just as every Christmas I wondered where in the world “Orientar” was on the globe. You know, where the three kings came from…
You have only to look at the news, or scan the internet, to know that while God may indeed be in his heaven, all is not right in the world. The recent terror attack in Paris, the ongoing gun violence that continues to ravage our country, the utter incivility of our civic discourse, the vulgarity of so much of the entertainment that’s placed before us, the crazy excesses of days we call “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” all remind us that all is not right in the world. And after a while, we’re tempted to throw up our hands and ask, in the words of St. Peggy Lee, “if that’s all there is, then let’s keep dancing.”
On this, our Church’s New Year’s Day, we are greeted in the readings with strange contradictions: A warning, an invitation, and a promise. Actually, a big warning: “the day of the Lord is coming;” an invitation “Be vigilant, stay awake to greet him”; a promise “your redemption is at hand.”
The day of the Lord is coming, Luke reminds us, that great and terrifying day when the Son of Man will come to deal out universal justice. Sunday after Sunday we say “he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” Day after day we pray “thy kingdom come”. His coming, we are reminded, will be preceded by cosmic signs and portents, human signs of violence and unrest, of vulgarity and excess. If this sounds like today, it should.
St. Luke and his community expected that day because they saw those signs around them. Two thousand years later, we see the same signs, and await that day with the same uncertainty that they shared. As it was in the beginning, is now, and every more shall be, until the day of the Son of Man. So how do we make sense of that warning, and of that promise? How do we make sense of his coming?
In this Advent season, this season of expectation and comings, we celebrate three comings of Christ. Today in our readings, we are reminded of his coming again at the end of time, when, as St. Paul reminds us, and after trials we cannot imagine, God will be all in all. At Christmas, we will celebrate together his first coming in the poverty and simplicity of the stable at Bethlehem, in vulnerability and solidarity with us. Yet the third coming, his coming today, is most mysterious.
He comes to us, is present to us, here and now. In this Eucharist we share, when we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim his life and death until he comes. We become what we receive. In the sharing of our lives as in the sharing of this meal, we can recognize him, if we open our eyes and hearts.
We find him the same when we stand in solidarity and vulnerability with those we love, with those in need, with those who suffer, and reach our our hands in service. In every just deed we do, in every act of mercy and kindness we perform, in every kindness and mercy we receive, we can recognize his presence moving our hearts, moving our hearts to hope despite all the reasons for hopelessness that surround us. If we fully embrace our human condition, we will embrace him who still bears our wounds on his hands and feet and side, who still reaches out a healing hand to us, who bids us reach out our hands to heal this little corner of the world we have been given.
So let us not fixate in dread the day of the Lord that is to come, nor get stuck in nostalgia for the day of his birth; let us rather, meet him here and now in our love for one another and in our service to our neighbors, in our care for those most in need, in our hope that we can recognize him when he comes to us today in his great and tender mercy.
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever.
Fr. Thomas Lucas, S.J.