Tomorrow You Shall See the Glory of the Lord

Readings: II Samuel 7: 1-5, 8-12, 14,16; Psalm 88; Luke 1: 67-79

Christmas Eve is a day of anticipation. Even its name identifies it as ‘the day before’ Christmas, and today’s liturgy repeats many times the words ‘Today you shall know that the Lord is at hand, and tomorrow you shall see his glory.’ These words are drawn from the Book of Exodus (Ex 16: 6-7), and in their original context refer to the miraculous feeding of the people of Israel in the wilderness: it is in the miraculous gift of manna from heaven that the Israelites will, in the morning, see the glory of the Lord.

Now, though it’s the words themselves – ‘the glory of the Lord’ – that make this text an obvious choice for today’s liturgy, the parallel with the account of the gift of manna in particular can also help us think about our anticipation of the Nativity. Throughout the whole of Advent, the reading of the prophets at Mass has been drawing our attention to the fact that the prophecies of the Old Testament find their fulfilment in the amazing truth that God has taken to himself a human nature like ours, and was born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem around two thousand years ago.

Today’s Old Testament reading, though, steps back beyond the period of the so-called prophetic books, which lament the current situation in Israel and Judah and speak of an impending restoration or of judgement. Rather, today we turn to the story of King David which we find in II Samuel (though interestingly – as an aside – the historical books are also counted among the prophets by Jews) a much earlier example of God’s intervention in history not just to put right what has gone wrong with Israel, but as the completion of his plan for all humanity in which the people of Israel, and the house of David, have a special part.

And if the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem (‘the house of bread’ in Hebrew), the city of his ancestor David, is the fulfilment of God’s plan to which the whole of the Old Testament bears witness, then his gift of manna to the Israelites in the wilderness can also be understood as pointing in some way to his gift of his Son to the world to satisfy that most profound human hunger for a knowledge of God. And it turns out that that knowledge of God is not revealed to us in complex propositions or grand pomp, but in a helpless child lying in a manger – the same Jesus who, on the night before he suffered and died, took bread, broke it, and gave it to his disciples as the best sign of what he was doing for them.

As we make our various preparations for tomorrow’s celebrations then (some of which may well be undertaken with a view to satisfying our physical hunger), we should remember also to prepare ourselves to receive ever more fully God’s gift of himself which he made by taking human form and being born two thousand years ago in Bethlehem.

Fourth Sunday of Advent: Recognition and Rejoicing

After a few lines of introduction Luke kicks off his Gospel with two Annunciations: in the first the angel Gabriel comes to Zechariah the priest while he is serving in the temple and tells him that his now elderly wife Elizabeth will finally conceive the child that she has longed for. This child is to be named John (Luke 1:13) and he shall make ready for the Lord a people prepared (Luke 1:17). Zechariah expresses surprise and so Gabriel declares that Zechariah will be struck dumb for his lack of belief. This invites us to contrast this first annunciation with the second which immediately follows it. This time Gabriel comes to Our Lady and greets her: ‘Hail, full of grace’ (Luke 1:28). He goes on to tell her that she will conceive a son who is to be named Jesus (Luke 1:31), and that he will be Son of the Most High and rule over the house of Jacob for ever (Luke 1:32-3). Mary, like Zechariah, is surprised and asks "How shall this be, since I have no husband?" (Luke 1: 34). Yet Mary is not struck dumb. Instead the respectful and even reverential Gabriel explains that the Holy Spirit will ‘overshadow’ Mary and ‘therefore the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God’ (Luke 1:35). Gabriel then drops Mary a heavy hint: Elizabeth, who had been called barren, had herself conceived (Luke 1:24. 1:36).

On the one hand, then, Luke seems to be encouraging us to reflect on the differences between these two pregnancies: Elizabeth is elderly and had been considered barren; she is married to a temple priest and is thus she at the heart of the religious establishment. Her pregnancy took away her shame and ‘reproach among men’ for not bearing a child, but her husband’s lack of faith left him dumb. Mary, in contrast, is young (probably in her mid-teens), betrothed to Joseph of the line of David, yet still a virgin. In Luke’s gospel, unlike the gospel of Matthew, Joseph’s attitude to Mary’s pregnancy is not discussed, but it seems clear that Mary’s fiat is a risk and a profound act of faith. Against the backdrop of this contrast between Elizabeth and Mary, and by implication their sons John and Jesus, Luke moves on in this Sunday’s Gospel to underline how these two children are intimately connected. 

After hearing that Elizabeth was pregnant we read that Mary ‘rose up’ and went ‘with haste’ to the hill country of Judah to visit Elizabeth (Luke 1: 39-40). According to scripture scholars, this is likely to have been a four day walk from Galilee - a long journey for a pregnant teenager. The fact that Mary made all this effort to visit Elizabeth is usually interpreted as a sign of Mary’s great charity: Mary made an extraordinary effort to care for an elderly relative. Yet this explanation does not exclude the possibility that Mary went to Elizabeth hoping for more information. Gabriel had, after all, hinted to Mary that Elizabeth’s pregnancy was somehow connected with her own. If this was indeed at the back of Mary’s mind then her hope was not disappointed. As soon as Mary’s greeting reached Elizabeth’s ears John the Baptist leapt for joy in his mother’s womb and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, prophesied (Luke 1: 41-45). 

The prophetic word, then, after centuries of silence, returns to Israel once more when John, still in his mother’s womb, recognises the presence of Jesus and leaps for joy. From his mother’s womb, then, John the Baptist was pointing to Christ, leading others to recognize Christ, in this instance his mother Elizabeth whose prophecy helps Mary herself to better understand the gift that she had been given. The scene, then, is set for the rest of the Gospel. John, the son of an elderly woman, from a priestly background, will ‘make ready for the Lord a people prepared’ (Luke 1: 17) by recalling Israel to its vocation and by pointing those that come to him to Christ. Hence John is the greatest and the last of the Old Testament prophets: indeed his vocation sums up all Old Testament prophecy. Yet as John himself will later proclaim, he is not ‘worthy to untie’ Jesus’ sandals (Luke 3:16) and it is the holiness of Mary’s child that Elizabeth, through John, recognises in today’s gospel. 

At the visitation, then, we reach the pinnacle of Old Testament prophecy: the recognition of God Incarnate. If we read on in Luke’s Gospel reading beyond this Sunday’s passage we read that Mary responds to Elizabeth’s prophecy by breaking out into the Magnificat: the exultant and prophetic song of praise that the Church sings everyday as part of the evening prayer of the Divine office. In the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel, then, we have a kind of chain reaction of recognition and rejoicing. Gabriel announces to Mary that she will conceive by the Holy Spirit, and hints that she should visit Elizabeth who is also mysteriously pregnant. Elizabeth, prompted by the infant John in her womb and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, jubilantly recognises Mary as the ‘Mother of her Lord’ (Luke 1:43). Mary, perhaps only for the first time beginning to grasp the significance of what had happened to her, is overcome with joy and explodes into song: a song that is sung every day by the Church at evening prayer and is at the heart of how the Church understands itself. This hymn begins: ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour’ (Luke 1: 46-7). We rejoice, like John the Baptist, like Elizabeth, and like Mary, because Jesus is near, because God is with us.

The Pope's First Tweet and the End of the World

So the End of the World has still not yet happened, and perhaps you are tired of all this waiting?

In case you're on tenterhooks, you can keep abreast of Doomsday live at the Guardian blog.

As for me, I've lost count of the number of predicted apocalypses in recent times. Earlier this year, 21 May was announced (then promptly retracted) by the Californian 'Christian preacher', Harold Camping. But believing in nonsense normally ends in disappointment. When that date passed without doom, some people were quick to console Mr. Camping:

Of course, Mr. Camping can't have read his Bible very carefully. For Our Lord clearly states that we cannot predict his Second Coming: 'Watch, therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of Man cometh.' (Mt. 25:13) Perhaps we will one day make reasonable predictions when the world will end, not from religious posturing but from scientific observation – of the Sun's expansion, of wayward asteroids, or whatever. But no such threat is even remotely plausible at the moment and should not trouble our sleep in the slightest.

Far more important is the fact that the Second Coming could happen any minute now, without any warnings or predictions whatsoever. So, although apocalypse is the theme of the readings at Mass at the end of the liturgical year (i.e. just before Advent), it remains relevant now, for Advent is the period par excellence of watching and waiting.

Of course, Advent is not explicitly a preparation for apocalypse, but for Christmas; and it would be foolish to conflate these two! More importantly, we have to reject 'secular' understandings of apocalypse, by which people mean the simple destruction of the world. For Christians, 'apocalypse' – literally the unveiling, or revelation – is God's definitive act of re-making the cosmos. So, the end of the world is not destruction, but re-creation: 'a new heaven and a new earth' (Rev. 21:1).

It's been a good month for earth-shattering claims. A great storm of anticipation arose when it was announced that the Pope, with brand-new Twitter accounts in eight languages, would send his first ever tweet on 12 December (that one in June 2011 doesn't count because it wasn't from his personal account...).

So, without a single tweet, the Holy Father (@pontifex) amassed over a million followers – at least when you add up his accounts in all languages – while not 'following' anyone but his own accounts in return. I took this snapshot a little earlier, but by the time his first tweet came out he had over 723,000 followers in English.

And, when it at last appeared, what did the pope's first tweet actually say? 

Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart.



With all the hype, the media and the Twitterati quickly pounced on it, according to the full range of rather predictable responses. And immediately, @pontifex achieved a better retweeting record than Justin Bieber.

Five more tweets followed the same day. Look them up (or click image below), if you haven't already, and notice what @pontifex is saying. He asking predictable rhetorical questions, followed by pithy, profound answers. The format is unusually clipped, but the content is what we've come to expect from the man who is at once theologically deep and pastorally precise. No pictures of kittens. No earth-shattering revelations. Just apparently Business as Usual for the shepherd of Christ's earthly flock. Small wonder, then, that the hype has largely subsided. The Pope is a Catholic! No news there..... although The Onion imagined some humorous alternatives ('I'm still catholic I just don't go to church or believe in jesus [sic]'). 

But can Pope Benedict keep up this online activity? Breaking out into the Twittersphere was one thing, sending a great message for the Church and modern connectivity; but is it necessary or even beneficial in the long run? In fact, the Vatican confirmed that subsequent tweets would not be posted by the Pontiff himself, though 'it's always going to have his engagement and his approval'. @pontifex won't follow other accounts (how could he/they possibly choose?), won't crack jokes, won't retweet or use the hashtag. In effect, the Pope is not 'on Twitter', in the normal sense of that phrase. It would absurd if he were.

That does not obviate the possibility of other meaningful papal interventions in secular public discourse. Witness Benedict's article in the Financial Times, just three days ago, perhaps the first time a pope has ever written for a secular newspaper. Recall, too, how Christmas 2010 saw the papal debut on the BBC's Thought for the Day. These are incredibly significant acts, almost necessitated by the global growth in social networks. We could almost say, it's not enough that the Pope is the Pope: he must be seen to be the Pope! In so doing, he is reassuring those of us Catholics who are active online, that what we do here can be a fruitful work for the sake of Jesus Christ and his Gospel.

This work of the New Evangelisation is a participation in God's own fructifying providence. God is always doing new things, always re-creating.

See I am doing a new thing! 

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness

and streams in the wasteland. (Is. 43:19)

So it's time to prepare – the best is yet to come. The world has not ended with a cycle of the Mayan calendar; nor with the advent of @pontifex to the world of social media. It is Christ's coming at Christmas which we wait for in hope – an event far greater than a mere tweet, even a Papal Tweet.

A Virgin will Conceive ...

Isa 7:10-14; Ps 24:1-6; Lk 1:26-38. Also Mt 1:18-25.

It is interesting that the liturgy places the reading of Isaiah’s prophecy that ‘a young woman / virgin is with child and will bear a son’ with Luke’s account of the annunciation to Mary of the conception of Jesus. Luke’s text makes clear that Mary is a virgin, and, interestingly in view of her impending marriage to Joseph, that she sees her virginity as a problem to the fulfilment of the promise of motherhood of the messiah made her by the angel (v 32-34). Luke’s account goes on to make clear that it is God himself who will directly bring about the conception of the child in her womb, without the intervention of a man, God’s action described in terms taken from the way God visits and fills his temple with his presence (v 35). The child will thus be holy in a special way and called Son of God. (Overtones of the language of the act of divine creation may be present as well.) But commentators in general do not think that Luke is actively drawing on Isaiah for his account. It is Matthew that makes explicit and very significant use of it, seeing the text as referring both to the virginal conception of Jesus by Mary and the fact that the child is properly called or at least described as Emmanuel, God-with-us’ (Mt 1:18-25).

Why does Luke seem to omit it but Matthew use it? The decision of both authors may be based on a similar knowledge of the linguistic detail and history of the Isaian text. Their respective choices may well highlight important but different features of the nativity events. The Hebrew version of Isaiah uses the word ‘‘almah’ which in the Old Testament refers to a young woman who has reached puberty and thus is ready for marriage. The stress does not fall on her virginity though that would be expected or hoped for in such societies. The Greek Septuagint (LXX), a later translation but in common use at the time of Jesus, in Isa 7:14 uses ‘parthenos’ in Isa 7, a term that means a (young) woman of marriageable age but it has far more stress on virginity. The Hebrew text does not explicitly speak of or point to a virginal conception since a natural conception could be a sign of divine blessing. The LXX allows for a more supernatural interpretation of the sign of ‘the virgin who will conceive’, but does not linguistically demand it.

But there was no clear expectation of such a supernatural conception of the Messiah, nor of a divine incarnation, at the time of Mary. These were new actions of God in history, unprecedented. Certainly in the light of them it was possible to read the Jewish Scriptures in a new and truer way – the true way – and see the prediction of Jesus in Jewish prophecy, symbol, divine action and liturgical rite. But that interpretation was undertaken precisely in the light of this new and direct and decisive act of God. (As St Paul put it, for example in Eph 1, Jesus was the mystery, hidden from the beginning, if then prepared for, but only made known in his own day.) Jesus unlocks the secret and obscure meaning of the Scriptures that precede him.

It is because of this newness that in Luke’s account Mary legitimately questions God (v 34): she is not expecting a virginal conception. And it is her simple but committed acceptance of its announcement to her, an act without precedent in Jewish history, that points to the greatness of her faith (v 38). Luke’s ‘non-use’ of the Isaian text emphasises this point.

Matthew does things differently. In the light of the fact of the Virgin Birth he uses the providential creation of the LXX as God’s way of furnishing, or at least flagging up, a prophecy about the virginal conception and Incarnation and thus of showing that they did fulfil Scripture. In this way he commends them for belief to Jewish and other audiences.

But let us focus on Luke’s text, which is today’s gospel reading, and on the extraordinary faith of Mary. It is a faith born of and sustained by divine grace. It was God’s gift to her but was also really her own, risk-filled, but loving response. She is stepping out boldly in faith, believing God can bring about her pregnancy and make the child the saviour of Israel, the fulfilment in person of the temple and its liturgy. As such she accepts and commits herself to this new and decisive act of God in history which is the Incarnation.

We are called to enter into the faith of Mary, so that Jesus may be formed in us, born of us (as we have first been born of him), so that we may show him, he who is God-among-us, to the world of today. Like Mary we are directly reliant on grace for this: the flesh cannot instigate it (cf Jn 1:13). In this all Christians are called to be virgins, but ones that bring forth Jesus. May we bring forth Jesus and show him to others this Christmas!

Advent: Who is this man?

Readings:Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent: Jeremiah 23:5-8; Psalm 71; Matthew 1: 18-24 

In these last few days before Christmas our Gospel readings at Mass are taken, unsurprisingly, from the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke. Both of the evangelists use an account of the circumstances surrounding Jesus's conception, birth, and infancy as  an interpretative  key for the rest of their gospels: from the very first chapters of Matthew and Luke the reader is let in on the secret  of Jesus's true identity so that we might better understand his life, words, and deeds. Yesterday for our Gospel reading we heard the famous genealogy which opens Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 1: 1-17). This genealogy is marked by a continual repetition of the same pattern over  and over  again: X was the father of Y, and Y the father of Z and so on all the way from Abraham through to King David and finally reaching Jacob the Father of Joseph: yet here the pattern is broken. We do not read: ‘and Joseph was the father of Jesus’, as the continual repetition might lead us to expect but instead: ‘Joseph [was] the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born’. Thus from the very first chapter of Matthew’s Gospel the question of Jesus’s paternity is raised. What is Jesus' relation to Joseph?

Today’s Gospel, Matthew 1: 18-25, follows immediately after this genealogy and tells the story of Jesus’s conception from Joseph’s perspective. Interestingly, Matthew takes Jesus’s Divine paternity for granted. Mary, he tells us very briefly, conceived by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:18): Jesus, then, is Son of God. Matthew swiftly moves the narrative on to focuses his attention instead on establishing that Jesus is also Son of David, a legitimate heir of the line that he has just traced through his genealogy. This explains Matthew’s focus on Joseph rather than Mary: the Davidic line could only be transmitted through the Father. 

The doctrine of the Virgin birth, then, requires that the place of Jesus in David’s line be secured by adoption by one who is already a ‘son of David’. Joseph grafted Jesus into his line by naming him (Matthew 1:25). Names in the Jewish tradition were understood to have a kind of vocational power: they served to define the child’s identity and thus destiny. It was the father’s privilege to name his child. In so doing the father acknowledged that the child was born in wedlock and identified the child as his own. Joseph, we read, did not choose Jesus’s name, this was given to him by the angel, but by following the angels instructions and naming him he claimed Jesus as one of his own on behalf of David’s house and on behalf of humanity. Thus Jesus’s dual paternity is affirmed: Jesus, ‘God dwelling with us’ (Matthew 1:23) or in popular etymology ‘The Lord saves’, becomes invested with the significance of the house of David. Matthew sees in this an encouragement to interpret Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, in the light of the promises made to Israel and the promises made to David: Jesus both fulfils the promises of the Old Testament and illuminates them. 

Matthew offers us, then, in the opening chapter of his Gospel, some strong clues as to how to interpret the narrative that follows: Jesus is both Son of God and Son of David, he both fulfills and interprets the history of Israel. Matthew also offers us, in his portrait of Joseph, a model of how to receive the Gospel. Joseph, we are told, is a righteous man (Matthew 1:19): in other words he was a faithful observer of the law. This law, it was understood at the time, would not allow him to take as his wife a woman that had been violated or seduced. Once he was aware of Mary’s pregnancy he had no choice but to divorce her. Yet his desire to ‘send her away quietly’ (Matthew 1:19) showed that he was merciful. He did not, for example, insist on a public trial in attempt to identify the father of Mary’s child so as to avoid the obligation of paying what he would have pledged to Mary in case of divorce. Instead he planned to shield her as far as possible from public disgrace and risk it being publicly assumed that he was in fact the guilty party in this divorce. The man chosen to be Jesus’s human father, then, was merciful and just. In such a heart, a place for the Lord was already prepared.In such a home, the Lord could make his dwelling.

Advent: The coming of the Good Shepherd

These themes of the lost sheep and of the Good shepherd occur in Advent’s readings. They relate to Isaiah’s prophecy announcing the coming of the Lord (Is 40:1-11).  They remind me of a story that I heard on the radio on a bus from London of this kid who comes home from a Sunday school, running and shouting: ’Mummy, mummy: did you know that we are all sheep and God is our leopard?’ I am not sure I agree with this kid but what do I know about animals, anyway?

The lost sheep!

The story of the lost sheep tells us more about the shepherd who cares for the sheep, but we can say a few things about the sheep before we say some about the shepherd. So, how do the sheep get lost in the first place? Sometimes the sheep are lost or disappear because they want autonomy, sometimes because there is a wild animal that steals them… And sometimes, they just get lost and they have really not much to do with it, but they still face the consequences. If we apply this to believers, it is very difficult to explain how people get in the position of the lost sheep. Some people decide that the life in the flock is not good for them; they find it boring, demanding or unfair. Others grow up in circumstances that hardly help them to stay with the rest of the flock. Some people grow up to become evil and are hated by almost everyone. I remember when I started Grade 6 after the Rwandan genocide; some kids were brought into our classrooms: ex-child soldiers. We used to call them little monsters… We grew up thinking they were marked for good. Many of them are now good fathers and mothers in families. 

The same thing happens over and over everywhere in the world: some people, from all classes, all conditions of life, grow up in situations that might shape their character. Some of them grow up in abusive families, dangerous neighbourhoods, judgmental communities, money-worshiping families, and so on. That might give us a glimpse into why the shepherd still wants to go after them and bring them back. Indeed, the shepherd in this case is also their creator. He loves them dearly, more than the way the best parents in the world love their children, even if these happen to be the worst, most disrespectful children. God has the full picture of the lives. When we feel good for being better than a fellow human being, we forget that in the eyes of God we are all children; his little beloved children. 

How easily can we get discouraged facing someone who does not follow his/her way and went adrift, even condemn him/her forever because we lost all hope for him/her? We no longer have time; we are disappointed and perhaps exhausted because we do not see a way out. We do not understand, we no longer understand. We put barriers to protect ourselves. We become weak… And that is normal: we are just humans. But we should keep faith in God, the good shepherd. He will go after the lost person.

Third Sunday of Advent - Gaudete Sunday

On this, the third Sunday of Advent or Gaudete Sunday, we sense a definite mood change. The austerity of what can be a sombre though hope-filled penitential season is replaced by a shift of emphasis. We see a burst of colour appearing at the Mass today as rose-coloured vestments replace the violet and we are enjoined at the Introit to: Rejoice in the Lord and again I say rejoice or Gaudete in Domino semper, hence Gaudete Sunday.  But why this shift in emphasis? We are edging that bit nearer to celebrating the coming of Our Lord at Christmas, that is undeniably true, but looking at today’s Gospel we also see that we have built upon last week’s message of preparation in Luke’s Gospel and now we see John the Baptist actively proclaiming the Coming.  ‘I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming.’ John the Baptist’s proclamation is sure and certain, filled with hope and, one must assume, wholly joyful. Can we also feel in the depths of our hearts such joy as we hear this news?

To prepare meaningfully for Christmas can be exceedingly difficult. We must ask ourselves whether, amidst the tumult of our everyday lives – the rush to find the right presents, get the cards away on time, attend the obligatory functions – we are allowing ourselves to find the time to truly prepare and, more dauntingly perhaps, truly proclaim this wonderful news. That Christ dwells in us, each and every one, and that, in little over a week, we will celebrate the most astonishing and wonderful event that is Christ’s birth here in our midst, should truly fill us with such joy and peace. However, it can only do so if we allow ourselves the time to reflect, to pray and to prepare. Only then will we, like John the Baptist, be so moved by the Spirit that we will also wish to proclaim this blessed coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in a world that greatly needs to hear His message of salvation.

Advent Silence

'Silence is golden' – really? Just think of all the pejorative adjectives we attach to silence: an awkward silence, an embarrassing silence, an oppressive silence, a stony silence, a deathly silence, even a silence you can cut with a knife. Uncomfortable silences are now eased only by the Awkward Turtle...

Generally, our busy and noisy culture has no time and space for silence. Our time costs money – if a lawyer snoozes for two minutes, that's a loss of £50! We tend to think of silence as something empty and boring, to be filled as soon as possible with talk or music – almost any kind of noise will do to keep silence at bay. We may be afraid that, when the noise dies down and we are left vulnerable to our innermost thoughts, all our suppressed anxieties and traumas will resurface.

This is the problem diagnosed by a new book, The Power of Silence: the riches that lie within, by the journalist, Graham Turner. I met Graham yesterday, after he presented his book at the University Church in Oxford. Talking about silence may sound like an oxymoron, but someone's got to do it! The book is based on interviews with many people around the world and in all walks of life. You might expect all of them to be professional silence-keepers – monks and nuns and Zen Buddhists – and these certainly make an appearance. But silence becomes absolutely fundamental to the life of everyone who discovers its power, including those whose professions might seem to be anti-silence: actors, musicians, mountaineers, and even dentists! More importantly, silence can be the only way for us to face, and then to overcome, our suppressed problems. We may have much to learn from Graham's tale of the convicted murderer who sought healing through silence.

Silence alone, however, is not enough. If it were an absolute nothingness, it would be dead. The reason silence can be fruitful and creative, is that it helps us cultivate attentiveness. That's the problem with filling our lives with constant noise (no matter how 'entertaining'): the more noise there is, the less we really listen to it, and it stops us hearing other things. Then, when the silence occasionally falls, we probably feel lost, awkward and rudderless. So we need some kind of direction, something luminous on which to focus our attention. Instead of the Awkward Turtle, perhaps the traditional Catholic response is more positive: Un ange passe...

Yesterday, Graham Turner described how his morning meditations often result in quite clear and definite resolutions, arising not in any perceptible way from within but coming as an external certainty – what he calls a 'response of love'. I think the phrase is exact and well chosen. Graham insists that not everyone need ascribe this to 'God'. But his phrase captures precisely what Christians mean by God: the personal, loving Creator who calls us and responds to our every need. The silence of God is a creative Word, a presence without oppression, a command without coercion. God's stillness is full of life, His music without noise. But I cannot describe this adequately at all; far better you go and read the Christian mystics.

Indeed, as a Dominican, I belong to a fairly talkative Order! The work of preaching (pace St Francis) must often be done with words. Yet, we also practise the contemplative life, praying the Divine Office together and spending periods in silence. Our preaching must be the fruit of contemplation, for how can we preach God's Word unless we first receive it ourselves in attentive silence? Thus, one of our Dominican mottos is contemplare et contemplata aliis tradere: to contemplate and to hand on to others the fruits of contemplation.

And what has silence got to do with Advent? This is the period when we wait in hope for the coming of Jesus Christ, as we prepare to celebrate Christmas. Waiting is often a time of quiet and stillness, especially when we don't know how long we have to wait. Unless we are silently attentive, we might miss what we are waiting for! This is especially true when we wait for God, who has an unsettling tendency to come in humble, unobtrusive and unexpected ways. 'Be still and know that I am God.' God comes in the silence; on the gentle breeze; on the quiet altar of adoration; and, in the flesh, even as a vulnerable little baby in a manger. That is truly a 'response of love' worth waiting for, especially in silence.

Advent Mountains

Isa 25:6-10a, Ps 23, Mt 15:29-37.

Mountains feature prominently in today’s reading from Isaiah, as they also did on Monday (Isa 2:1-5). The action of the Gospel is also recorded as taking place on a mountain (Mt 15:29). I will offer some reflections on the significance of mountains in the thought of the Biblical world that might help make sense of the readings, and of the relevance of such imagery to Advent.

Mountains were often seen as places of security: cities were built upon them for defensive reasons (most notably Jerusalem, with particular focus on Mt Zion). People sought escape from their enemies on uninhabited mountains. Because of their elevation, in many religions they were seen as the meeting place of heaven and earth, and as such a privileged place of divine encounter (Mt Sinai, Mt Carmel, Mt Zion etc, but other religions had special ‘divine’ mountains too).

Certainly God made and sustains creation, including the mountains, and the mountains reflect his stability and endurance and strength. And they were a place of refuge and of divine encounter. As such God’s mountain is higher and better than all the other mountains! But a critique is at work too, and offered to the reader. It is not the mountains that make you safe and in which you are to place your trust: rather it is God who is much more elevated in being, more transcendent, than the mountains (Ps 121). One can have a certain confidence in encountering God on his holy mountain(s), but one should not treat God as merely familiar, or consider that God has to or will bow to our standards or control just because we know where God’s mountain is and we have some access to it. Rather God’s visitation of his people includes judgement in truth and power, if also a vindication of his living reality and of his promises to his people and thus or rich provision for them in covenantal love, teaching, and magnificently rich blessing (Isa 25). This critique embraces a sense of divine immanence, divine transcendence and the visitation of God that brings both into paradoxical proximity. Thus God’s immanence in creation means the mountains are a powerful sign of God and bring us close to God’s presence, but they also point beyond themselves to the transcendent God. Likewise, they concretely ‘locate’ the privileged encounter with God in covenant that God has called humanity to enter, and but also point to the final and full divine judgement and vindication, which will come from on high.

The mountain imagery of the Old Testament is fulfilled in the new. Many incidents, including today’s gospel, take place on mountains. But in a more profound way, Jesus is the mountain of the Lord: in him God is present, fully immanent, yet he points, like them, beyond his flesh to his origins in the full transcendence of the Trinity. In him God visits his people, making covenant. In him we meet God yet, we know and look to a fuller visitation to come: his Parousia at the end of time.

All this makes mountains a good image for Advent: we recall God’s visitation to us in the gift of Jesus; we seek to be instructed and fed more by God as we ascend the mountain of holiness by progress in sanctification; we grow in hope of that final mountain top visitation which is the return of Christ in full Glory. Hopefully he will judge us worthy to dwell on his mountain, that is, with him, forever.

First Sunday of Advent - The First and Second Comings of Christ

Readings: Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25; I Thessalonians 3:12-4:2; Luke 21:25-28, 34-36

I’m sure I’m not the only person who, as a child, got rather excited about the prospect of Christmas. Indeed, perhaps to a rather lesser degree, I imagine some of you still do – and of course, by giving us this season of Advent, I think it’s even fair to say that the Church encourages us to look forward to Christmas. And just as part of the anticipation of the more secular side of Christmas involves various kinds of preparations – be it writing Christmas cards, decorating the tree, or whatever it is – so the Church, in the liturgy of this season of Advent, prepares us to celebrate the Birth of Christ by setting before us, especially in the Scripture readings, a vision of how the Incarnation which we celebrate at Christmas fits into the great story of God’s plan of salvation which is gradually revealed in the history of Israel his chosen people.

Or at least that’s what we find on all the other Sundays of Advent: and it makes sense, after all. On this First Sunday, though, things are a bit different. If the Old Testament reading from Jeremiah could be applied to the Birth of Christ, the second reading from First Thessalonians and the Gospel make it clear that the focus is not on Christ’s coming as a baby in Bethlehem but on some still future event when ‘they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory’ (Lk 21: 27). How does that help us prepare for Christmas?

Well, I suppose in one sense you could think of it as a kind of “sneak preview”: by setting before us Jesus’ own words about his coming in glory to judge mankind, the Church gives an extra dimension to our reflection on the meaning of Christmas. As we contemplate that image of Christ coming in glory, not only does it remind us, at the simplest level, quite who this baby is whose birth we are to celebrate, but it also illustrates for us the humility with which God chose to reveal his love for us – coming not in a cloud with power and great glory, but as a babe lying in a manger.

But I think there’s another aspect to this whole question of anticipation and preparation which today’s readings remind us of, and that’s the fact that, as we start thinking about Christmas – the birth of our Saviour and Redeemer – we mustn’t forget what Christ’s coming as a baby in Bethlehem means for us in our lives today. And just as remembering what we have been told of Christ’s second coming can help us better understand his first, so the way in which God chose to bring about our salvation – by assuming a human nature like yours and mine – has something to tell us about his coming at the end of time to bring to its visible conclusion the work of redemption which he brought about through the Incarnation.

If, then, Advent is a special period of time for preparing to celebrate the Birth of Christ at Christmas, does that mean it’s also – in the light of today’s focus on the future coming of Christ – a time when we should particularly prepare for that tremendous event? Well, that’s not quite the message that comes through from today’s readings. If the season of Advent illustrates the need to prepare for the coming of Christ, then both St Paul in the second reading and Our Lord in the Gospel make it clear that our preparation to meet the Lord is nothing more and nothing less than the living out of our ordinary lives. Saint Paul tells the Thessalonians, ‘as you learned from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, ... do so more and more’ (1 Thess 4: 1).

And so, as we enter upon this season of preparation for the joyful celebration of Christ’s coming as a baby in Bethlehem, let us remember too that as we live out our ordinary day-to-day lives as Christians, we are also preparing for the joyful completion of that work of our salvation which, in becoming human, Christ has wrought for us.

Councils of Faith: Constantinople III (680-681)

Those who find that the Church uses highly complicated theological words to define her dogmas might not know much about the events that led to those terms. Passionate and often violent councils led to the definitions of the articles of the Catholic faith. Many reasons led to those councils and there were not always religious but often political.

The Church having asserted two natures in Christ (human and divine) in its first five ecumenical councils, one would obviously have expected the discussion to go further, especially trying to understand how both natures work in one person. The Church had been divided, many churches remaining monophysites. The main cause was of course the disagreement with the doctrine of two natures in Christ but also political issues. It had become obvious that the Roman Empire was losing territories in the East. That is why Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople, with the approval of Emperor Heraclius I, introduced monothelitism in order to reunify the Church. Monothelitism affirmed the two natures of Christ but also professed one will (thelema in Greek) and one activity (or operation). Although monothelitism succeeded to bring a few monophysites back to the Church, it was rejected by many theologians, including Sophronius of Jerusalem. It was unthinkable to them to say that the divine and human natures of Christ had a same activity. Sergius, convinced by that approach, abandoned the idea of one activity and expressed that by promulgating a decree, Psephos, which forbade all Christians to mention ‘the number’ of Jesus’s activities.

Honorius the First accepts the Psephosbut keeps the idea of one will in Christ and writes it in the Ecthesis in 638, confirming the Psephos and stressed his belief in a unique activity of Christ. Much later, in 648, Constans II abolishes the Ecthesis and promulgates the Typus. He intended to stop the debate but carries on being a monothelite quietly. In the end, in 678 Constantin IV calls for an Ecumenical Council to put an end to a strong division between the churches in the East and those in the West.

The Council lasted for two years (680-681) having taken two more years to start after it had been summoned. Papal legates and bishops gathered at Constantinople and studied the Holy Scripture and the texts of the fathers of the Church, trying to understand the whole question of will and activity in Christ. The Council fathers adopted the theory that affirmed that there are two wills and two activities in Christ. Among them was the Patriarch of Constantinople. In the last paragraphs of the Acts, one can read: “And we proclaim equally two natural volitions or wills in him and two natural principles of action which undergo no division, no change, no partition, no confusion, in accordance with the teaching of the holy fathers”. Their greatest opponent became Macarius of Antioch who was later anathematised together with all those who previously had held the monothelite view. Pope Honorius the First was also condemned for not having condemned but supported monothelitism. Although Agatho was Pope when the Council convened, at its end Pope Leo II had succeeded him and it was to him that the council fathers sent a letter for the confirmation of the Acts.

The Council of Constantinople III might be the one that could confuse us very much as it condemned a thought that intended to reunify the divided Church. But at the same time, one should understand the need of a sound doctrine. And, although the influence of politics in the Church's vital decrees cannot be denied, one could hardly also reject the good will and the honesty of the Councils’ fathers who kept the true doctrine in those councils even when they were not the most powerful or influential. It would thus be unchristian to doubt the work of the Holy Spirit in those councils.