Is Jesus of Nazareth merely a moral exemplar and an admirable teacher of noble truths, or is he something more? To find an answer to that question, consider what we read in the Gospel today:
“Jesus said to his disciples: ‘There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on earth nations will be in dismay, perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.’” (Luke 21:25-28)
In these sobering words recorded by Saint Luke, the Savior of the world is describing the end of the world, and he is both preparing his disciples to understand the meaning of these future events and telling us that many or even most people will not understand such things because they do not know him and therefore do not know the Father’s eternal plan of salvation for the entire human race.
And once we grasp this crucial truth, we should feel an ever greater urgency to help others find saving faith in Christ by bearing witness to the Gospel that the Lord Jesus, while truly being a moral exemplar and teacher of noble truths, is also the omnipotent and eternal Word made flesh: the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
But even as we give thought to helping others find faith, we must also be ever mindful of our own conduct, lest we cease to live according to the whole counsel of God, and so Christ goes on:
“Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life, and that day catch you by surprise like a trap. For that day will assault everyone who lives on the face of the earth. Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man.” (Luke 21:34-36)
Be vigilant at all times and pray. Here is a perfect description both of all discipleship and of the beautiful season of Advent: be vigilant at all times and pray. And to these words of the Lord Jesus, we can add the prayer of Saint Paul from today’s second lesson:
“May the Lord make you increase and abound in love … so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 3:12-13)
The Greek word translated here as blameless means to be judged acceptable to God for sacrificial worship. Saint Paul is teaching us that God himself will make it possible for us to be blameless in holiness and therefore be able to worship him in spirit and truth, and that freedom to offer true worship is what alone will enable us to stand erect and raise our heads on the Last Day to face the judge of the living and the dead with love rather than die in chaos and fear.
The first Christians expected Christ to return in glory during their own lifetime, and it took the Church several generations to puzzle out the full truth about the End of Days revealed by Jesus who teaches that no one except God the Father knows when the cosmos will arrive at its Last Day and be destroyed and then be made new. And since we cannot know the hour or day on which the Son of Man will return, we must live every day of our lives as though it is the Last Day.
Many misguided souls read the Scriptures for clues that will allow them to know with certitude when the Savior will return in glory, but that is both futile and contrary to the teaching of Holy Scripture itself.
So a much more fruitful discipline for Christians is to live each day against the horizon of our own death and judgment, and then we come gradually to understand that we should never consent to live in any condition in which we could not bear to die. “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus.”
Notice please that Saint Paul is here expressing a hope that the Lord will do something for us, not that we will do something for him. May the Lord make you increase and abound in love.
This is a work of grace, a gift given to us in and by Christ Jesus. And when we accept that gift and allow our hearts to grow larger, more generous, and more capable of love, then we find that the second hope expressed by Saint Paul can at last be fulfilled in us: that the Lord will establish our hearts blameless in holiness.
Blameless in holiness. Can you imagine what such a life would feel like? What would it be like never having thought or said or done even a single thing of which we felt ashamed or wanted to try to hide or wished that we could undo?
And that, in fact, is the destiny of holiness for which we are made: to think with an undivided mind, to love with an undivided heart, to choose with an undivided will, to live one undivided life in which the public person and the private person are exactly the same person, able to see God even as we are seen by him and yet not be afraid.
But to find that destiny after our fall from grace, we must think with the mind of Christ, love with the heart of Christ, and live the life of grace in Christ so that with Saint Paul we can say: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
But until that transformation is accomplished in us, we live with division. Divided minds and troubled hearts and double lives come from sin and from rebellion against the Father’s eternal plan for our lives. And the condition of feeling torn in two and of being ashamed of our sins and of wanting to hide from God came originally to the human race in the primordial Garden when our first parents decided they had a better plan for human life than did the Creator.
After falling into sin, Adam and Eve did not find the godlike freedom they wanted to claim for themselves; instead, they found only the slavery of sin and shame at their fall from grace. And so they covered their shame and tried in vain to hide from God who asked them: “Who told you that you were naked?”
In reply, Adam performed the first dodge in history: he blamed his wife. And then she blamed the serpent, who deceived them by saying that if they rejected the Word of God they would become little gods, designating what is good and evil according to their own selfish desires rather than the objective moral order. And so the whole sorry tale of our path to the grave began with rebellion against the law and love of God which was then compounded by evasion of responsibility for that crime.
We were created to live forever in the Kingdom of God, but we preferred to build our own little kingdoms instead. From pride came sin, and from sin came death. And that is why we fear the glorious return of Christ the King on the Last Day just as our first parents feared God’s holy presence in the Garden, because like Adam and Eve we know our sins and we are ashamed and we want to hide.
If only we were blameless in holiness! But, friends, we can be! This is the heart of the Gospel! We can be blameless in holiness because the Lord Jesus will accomplish this change in us if we but let him. And so he says: Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have strength to stand before the Son of Man.
This transformation begins in us by grace through faith, hope, and love the very instant we let the Lord Jesus teach us what our sins are and how to live in keeping with the dignity of our Baptism through which we are made by the gift of adoption children of God, members of Christ, and heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven.
In these Advent days, we have the opportunity once again to repent of our sins and believe in the Gospel. In this Advent and all our lives long we can live against the horizon of our own death and judgment so that at the return of the Son of Man on the Last Day we will be filled not with fear but with joy.
But for this to happen, we must stop building our own little kingdoms and surrender our entire lives in the obedience of faith to Christ Pantocrator, the Ruler of all, the Alpha and the Omega, the shepherd King of all creation.
Put most simply: for God’s eternal Kingdom to come in my life, my little kingdom has to go. Therefore, may the Lord make us increase and abound in love so that he may establish our hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the glorious coming of Christ our judge.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!
This is the text of my homily for 1 December 2024, the First Sunday of Advent.
Fr Jay Scott Newman