It's the first Sunday of Advent, and we're getting ready to celebrate the birth of Christ at Christmas and preparing to meet Him on the Last Day, the second Advent. Here's a prayer, the governing collect of the season:
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, now and ever. Amen.
The armour of light. The Apostle teaches us (Rom. 13:11-14) that this is nothing less than Christ Himself. Austin Farrer illuminates:
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.
If you're a bit slow on the uptake, like me, you might want to read the above several times. In the meanwhile, Paris burns.
God bless,
LSP
