He Comes!
2nd Sunday of Advent – Year B
“Here is your God” (Is 40:9)
Particularly during Advent, I love to use the following set of penitential invocations that goes with the ‘Kyrie Eleison’ or ‘Lord have mercy’:
Lord Jesus, you came to gather the nations in the peace of God’s Kingdom.
You come in word and sacrament to strengthen us in holiness.
You will come in glory with salvation for your people.
This set of invocations remind us that the coming of Christ can be understood in three ways, so to say, with three tense markers: in the past tense, in the present tense and in the future – Jesus came; He comes; and Christ will come. The 1st coming of Jesus is plain enough. It refers to the historical coming of the 2nd person of the Trinity, about 2000 years ago, as Jesus of Nazareth. We call this, the mystery of incarnation. The future coming of Christ, which is often referred to as the Second Coming is something that we hopefully await. But there is also the coming of the Lord in the present: He comes!
While the season of Advent helps us recall the historical coming of Jesus at Christmas, it also invites us to look expectantly to the Second Coming. The second reading of the liturgy of today refers to this as the “Day of God”. Yes, during this season of Advent we talk about waiting. In the 2nd reading, Peter also tells us how to live our lives now even as we are waiting: “do your best to live lives without spot or stain so that he will find you at peace” (2Pet 3:14). In other words, while looking forward to the future we shouldn’t forget the present. In the first reading, Prophet Isaiah speaks of the voice in the wilderness. He invites the joyful messenger to Jerusalem to shout without fear: “Here is your God” (Is 40:9).
Jesus is “the Son of the Living God” (Mt 16:16)
The answer to that classical question in the catechism is well-known: Why did God make you? To know him, love him, (serve him), and to live with him in eternity. My focus is on ‘eternity’. I am beginning to gather that a lot of people understand ‘eternity’ as what follows after death, in terms of heaven or hell, or whatever. But we also say, God is eternal. So what does ‘eternity’ mean then? In theology, eternity is defined as ‘now without succession’, that is without past and future. That is, God does not have past and future; He is just here and now. Therefore, I feel, God in Jesus has to be experienced here and now. His grace is here and now, even if our own awareness of it could be in terms of past and future.
Maybe you have heard that popular story about an atheist who had a big poster hanging on the wall of his drawing-room, which said: “God is nowhere”. One day, while he was reading the newspaper, his little daughter, who was busy doing her school home-work, suddenly looked at the poster and began reading it aloud, God… is… now… here! She was proud that she had successfully read the sentence for the first time in her life. The father who wanted to correct her went silent. He had not seen that possibility. The next time he looked at that poster, he couldn’t help reading it, God is now here. I think, the denial of God is an outcome of an inability to see him as the Living God – as the God who is here and now. And every time believers fail to live as seeing Him who is here and now, they could be giving reason for the non-believers to claim that god is dead.
The mission of John the Baptist, on whom we focus so much during Advent, as in today’s gospel text (Mk 1:1-8), was not only to prepare the way for the historic coming of Jesus, but to alert everyone to the Lord who comes here and now. As he pointed out to the first two disciples: “Behold, the Lamb of God!” (Jn 1:36), he invites us today to behold Jesus here and now, and in Jesus to experience the Living God. Are we ready to experience Jesus as “the Son of the Living God” (Mt 16:16)? Are we willing to experience God here and now?
The Living God is Here and Now
I see no better way to commemorate the Lord who came, and to wait for the Lord who will come, than in opening our hearts to experience him here and now. The early Christian communities saw this clearly, as we read on several occasions in the epistles in the New Testament. For instance, Peter tells us, “Bow down, then, before the power of God now, so that he may raise you up in due time” (1Pet 5:6); and John says, “Therefore remain in him now, children, so that when he appears we may be fearless, and not shrink from him in shame at his coming” (1Jn 2:28).
I would like to conclude with the poem entitled, “Silent Steps” by the Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore:
Have you not heard his silent steps?
He comes, comes, ever comes.
Every moment and every age,
every day and every night he comes, comes, ever comes.
Many a song have I sung in many a mood of mind,
but all their notes have always proclaimed,
`He comes, comes, ever comes.’
In the fragrant days of sunny April through the forest path he comes,
comes, ever comes.
In the rainy gloom of July nights on the thundering chariot of clouds
he comes, comes, ever comes.
In sorrow after sorrow it is his steps that press upon my heart,
and it is the golden touch of his feet that makes my joy to shine (Gitanjali, XLV).