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The Catholic Telegraph
November 30, 2001Advent has to do with futures. The gospel readings for each week are concerned with looking forward. This Sunday’s is about looking forward to the final coming of Christ at the end of time. On the second and third Sundays of Advent the gospels speak of John the Baptist and how he directed the attention of the people of his time to the Messiah whose ministry was to begin shortly. The gospel of the fourth Sunday has to do with the events that provided the immediate preparation for the birth of Jesus. Throughout these four weeks, the gospel readings are concerned with futures, remote or immediate.
The Old Testament readings for these weeks are about the future, too. They all consist of prophetic passages about the future Messiah and the Messianic age.
The Advent apostolic readings, our live letters, are commentaries on various aspects of what we hear in the gospels and the readings from the Hebrew Scriptures.
For this first Sunday our live letter is from Paul’s letter to the Romans. (We’ll be hearing quite a bit from Romans during this first year of the Lectionary cycle.)
This Sunday’s reading comes from the last main part of Romans, the section dealing with behavior. Paul has been telling the Romans how they ought to relate to one another and to the demands of civil society. He tells them that they have to keep loving those around them.
Our reading explains why. (In the full text of Romans, our first verse begins: "And do this because ...") We are to love and reverence those around us because we know what time it is. It’s time to wake up. It may seem that we are in a time of darkness, but full daylight is almost here. The universal fulfillment of salvation is nearly upon us. Paul goes on to describe what this awakening involves. It involves getting rid of the attitudes and practices that constitute moral darkness: selfish things like overindulgence in food and drink and sexual misbehavior; contentiousness that undermines our relationships with other people. All this has to be repudiated, taken off like dirty clothes. In their place we are to "put on the Lord Jesus Christ," who serves as armor fit to be worn in the realms of light. If we do that, we won’t need to worry about satisfying the needs of our weak human nature, vulnerable to sin ("the desires of the flesh").
This passage is filled with contrasts: wakefulness and sleep, night and day, darkness and light, taking off and putting on. Paul is telling the Romans - and us - that we are living in pivotal times, that where and what we are at this moment is not where and what we are going to be in the near future. A different kind of life lies ahead of us. A basic element of Christian life on this earth is the expectation of change.
The change that we are invited to look forward to is the advent of the final stage of salvation, when the risen Christ will take into His glorified life all of creation, once and for all, finally. There will be a new heaven and a new earth in which sin and selfishness will be definitively rejected, in which only that which is clean and bright and holy will have a place. Our incorporation into Christ by faith and baptism has given us an initial association with the glory of the end. But more, much more, is still to come.
And in all this we each have a part to play. While our sharing in the life of Christ is pure gift which we can never earn or deserve, we are expected to exert ongoing moral effort to assimilate that life ever more deeply, ever more intensely. We have to divest ourselves of "the works of darkness," the desires and sins like those Paul mentions, and "put on the Lord Jesus Christ," i.e., allow ourselves to be clothed in Christ so that we take on His likeness ever more clearly.
Taking off sinfulness and putting on Christ is the basic, ongoing task of our Christian existence. It’s a task that was made possible by the life and ministry of Jesus, by His death and resurrection. These are events of the past that determine our present. But these realities also direct us toward the future. Each day offers us the opportunity to move closer to the final and eternal brilliant daylight of heaven. The unfolding of our life offers us the chance to help bring all creation a little closer to final life in Christ through our action in the world, through our love and care for those around us. We each have a part to play in the history of salvation, not just a part in our own individual history, but a part in the history of it all, the history that begins with the very beginning of the past in creation and stretches to the ultimate future in the final coming of the Son of Man.
As this new Church year begins, God’s word says to us, "Get up! Get dressed! Get busy! It’s almost light and you’ve got an important day ahead of you!"
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Conversation Questions.
How is my life directed by the past?
How is my life oriented toward the future?
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