Advent

 

Welcome to Advent, a joyful time of year, shot through with the anticipation of celebrating Christ's birth at Christmas. But as we reflect on that, the first Advent, we're drawn to the second when Christ will come again in glorious majesty to judge the "quick and the dead" and the world by fire.

The second coming, a vindication of our faith, and with it the promise of evil's utter defeat. A source of hope, for sure, evil is utterly defeated and the faithful vindicated, but also trepidation. How will we measure up before the perfection of God when He returns?

Austin Farrer offers this:

ADVENT brings Christmas, judgement runs out into mercy.  For the God who saves us and the God who judges us is one God.  We are not, even, condemned by his severity and redeemed by his compassion; what judges us is what redeems us, the love of God.  What is it that will break our hearts on judgement day?  Is it not the vision, suddenly unrolled, of how he has loved the friends we have neglected, of how he has loved us, and we have not loved him in return; how, when we came (as now) before his altar, he gave us himself, and we gave him half—penitences, or resolutions too weak to commit our wills?  But while love thus judges us by being what it is, the same love redeems us by effecting what it does.  Love shares flesh and blood with us in this present world, that the eyes which look us through at last may find in us a better substance than our vanity.

ADVENT brings Christmas, judgement runs out into mercy.  For the God who saves us and the God who judges us is one God. Yes indeed.

God bless,

LSP

Good Friday

I wish I could say that Good Friday, and the Triduum in general, somehow become easier as the years go by. But the reverse is true; as our consciences become increasingly alive to the weight of wickedness, so too do we realize our part in the crucifixion. Fortunately Easter is just over the horizon.

As always, Austin Farrer speaks well to this:

EVERYTHING that is true of Christ's body is true of us in some manner. He gives us his body that we may become his body. Christ's body died on the cross, he also rose. The resurrection is ours, but the death also is ours. Many men, at the last challenge, have consented to be martyrs, and set their bodies aside. But Christ's passion was no more than the last expression of what he had done all his life. He had set his body aside whenever its demands conflicted with man's need or God's will, and so he had rehearsed his death continually; not morbidly, but with joy and self-forgetfulness. We have many opportunities so to rehearse our death, and how steadily we reject them! Our bed, our chair retains us when we should get up and pray; fleshly delights of act and imagination, some by no means innocent, hold us from following better inspirations. Our own pleasure comes before our neighbour's, vanity before sympathy. How will it be when rehearsals are over, and we have to act our part, to put our bodies finally off, that we may possess God? If Christ offers us up with his own death in this sacrament, it is that we may die a voluntary and daily death, and merit a daily resurrection.

How will it be when rehearsals are over? 

Pray for mercy.

LSP