On Anticipation

The Third Sunday in Advent

O LORD Jesu Christ, who at thy first coming didst send thy messenger to prepare thy way before thee: Grant that the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in thy sight; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

Advent

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 Spirit, now and ever. Amen.

 For many people, even Christians, this is not the season of Advent, but rather Christmas. This is a cultural rather than Christian influence. It is a season of peace and joy. That peace and joy are often found not in reflecting upon Holy Scripture, but rather in the gathering of family, sharing veritable feats with friends and family and the exchange of gifts. This is understandable, because even those who try to oppose the secularization and commercialization of the Christmas do so from the perspective that, “the reason for the season,” is exclusively found in the birth of Christ.

If you ask most Christians why that is important, they would probably focus on the atonement. The logic effectively becomes we celebrate Christ’s birth so that he can die for our sins and bring us repentance. This is entirely understandable.  In the Nicene Creed, it describes the incarnation thus, “For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven...” There is nothing untrue in the logic that the reason for the incarnation is salvation, though it perhaps misses the point. “The reason for the season,” argument doesn’t fully express the issue because it points to the wrong season. We aren’t yet in the season of Christmas, but in Advent.

Advent is derived from Latin and means coming. It is the season prior to Christmas in which we anticipate Christ’s coming. That can be a confusing statement and leads to another issue. It is simple for many people to say they are anticipating Christmas, but that is not really what we are meant to anticipate, even though the fact that we think of the Nativity in terms of a past historical event, which is therefore hard to anticipate. This leads to the anticipation of Christmas as a holiday rather than Christmas as a holy day.

When we say Christ’s coming, though, there is a three-fold meaning to it. It means first and foremost his coming in history, celebrated at Christ’s mass, the feast of the Nativity. It also refers to our anticipation of how he continues to come in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Finally, it reminds us to anticipate his coming again on the last day.

When looking at Advent in this traditional three-fold lens, it is much easier to see how we are called to anticipate Christ’s coming. It still is not the complete picture, however!

We anticipate his coming in history in and of itself, and not simply for its final victory in Christ’s crucifixion. His incarnation in and of itself is worthy to be recognized for the change it brought to our understanding of God.

St Athanasius the Great wrote, “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.”   This statement requires a little bit of unpacking. Perhaps a bit lengthier way of expressing this sentiment, that more clearly articulates its meaning, would be to say, “The Son of God, fully God, became Man, fully man apart from sin, in order to make clear the nature of God to Man, that Man might become more God-like.” In other words, St Athanasius is not referring to some kind of apotheosis but rather is suggesting that it is through the incarnation that we become more like we were meant to be, having been created originally in the image and likeness  of God.

Anyone who is familiar with the Old Testament would recognize the biographical elements of it. Through different authors, we are given a picture of God’s nature. His mercy, his judgement, his love for mankind and particularly for his chosen people. We see times in which God was close to particular people. Great saints of the Old Testament like Abraham and Moses were counted as friends of God. In Exodus, Moses spends so much time conversing with God that his face glows (Ex 34. 29) and yet through this friendship, Moses continues to refer to God using the same style as any other Jew would. God also tells Moses that no man may see God’s face for they would die (Ex 33. 20). Moses was a friend to God but there were limits to how well Moses could know God.

Yet today, almost every Christian recites the Lord’s Prayer in which God is given the far more intimate address of Father. It is through Christ’s incarnation that we have come to know God. Colossians tells us that Christ, “is the image of the invisible God,” (Col 1. 15) and through him we can now see not just the Lord, but our Father. Whereas the Old Testament might be an objective historical account of God’s nature, the New Testament presents us with an intimate and personal portrait of who God is and his love for us. Indeed, to paraphrase CS Lewis, it is through the incarnation that we go from being creatures of God, looking upon him from afar, to being children of God, adopted into his family.

This concept that we have become adopted into God’s family is at the heart of the connection between Christ’s historic coming and how he continues to come. It is in that adoption that we now do not simply look into God from afar, but intimately participate in life with God. In his first epistle, St John tells us that he testifies to Christ’s life, in which the Father was made manifest, so that we might share in this intimate fellowship and participation with our fellow believers and with the Father (I St Jn 1. 1-3)! St Paul then uses the same language of intimate fellowship, communion and participation when he asks of the Eucharist, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” (I Cor 10. 16).

We continue to anticipate his coming because just as the incarnation was a sign promised by the Father (Isa 7. 14) for Christ’s incarnation, the sign of his grace reminds us that he continues to love and support us and he seeks to prepare us for his coming again on the last day. It is by grace that we will be judged righteous on that last day, and so again that same sign which he gives to us in the Eucharist is a reminder of is coming for us in the future. Joy in advent is reflection that by his continued coming, by the grace he imparts, we are able to anticipate his coming again with joy and not with dread.

That is the true reason for the season.

On Human Nature

The First Sunday in Advent

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 Spirit, now and ever. Amen.

 For most children, at some point in their school career they will be asked that basic philosophical question about the nature of humanity. Are humans, by nature, evil or good? It is a complex question that many philosophers throughout the ages have struggled with. For children, it is perhaps a simpler question of examining the world around them and reporting on it.

They see evil, murder, theft, sexual violence, war and conclude that it is part of human nature to do evil. Others might, in the midst of that evil, particularly if they are not touched by it directly or are perhaps by virtue of their parents shielded from it in some way, conclude that humanity is by nature good.

Children who are shielded from the news and other sources of violence might conclude that humans are generally good because that is what they experience around themselves. Those who see evil—murder, theft, sexual violence and immorality and war—might conclude that humans are by nature evil. Sure enough, when something bad happens or someone sins, how common is it for someone to suggest that it is human nature?

Even within Christian communities, when someone speaks of their own trouble with temptation and sin, how common is it for someone to suggest that it is simply human nature that we sin or otherwise succumb to temptation? Is that correct?

It is not. God did not create humanity to sin. Indeed, we are made in his image and likeness.

In the ancient Church, worship was for the saints while it was adoration that was reserved for God. Today, we worship God and adore babies. As Fr Michael McKinnon once joked, however, there is only one adorable baby in human history, and that is Christ himself.

Yet when we consider the nativity and incarnation, it’s not simply to think about the adorable baby he was born as (in both senses, certainly), but rather what the implications of the incarnation are. In this season of Advent, as we anticipate the incarnation, it seems appropriate to consider what Christ’s taking on a human nature implies about our own humanity.

Isaiah contains a number of prophesies related to the coming and incarnation of Christ the Messiah. St John of Damascus, in considering Isaiah 7 which contains the famous prophesy that, “the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel,” (Isa 7. 14), suggested that Christ’s incarnation reflects on human nature itself, that, “by the transgression [of Adam and Eve] we were driven from the natural to the unnatural, but the Lord led us back from the unnatural to the natural. For this is what is the meaning of in our image, after our likeness.”

To St John, then, humans are by nature good, and this is reflected in Scripture both in the creation story of Genesis, but further in the discussion of Christ’s nature and explication on why the incarnation occurred as it did. This view of the natural state of humanity being good, impaired by sin to the unnatural state of sin, was shared by other early fathers of the Church.

St Gregory of Palamas, a 14th century theologian venerated primarily in the East, wrote extensively on the incarnation, again affirming the beliefs of the fathers. He describes how Adam was created undefiled, until he turned aside from God, tempted by the pleasures of the flesh and underwent the defilement of sin. In so saying, he argues again that by nature, man is good and it is the tyranny of sin which, contrary to our created nature, pushes humanity towards evil.

In his own words, “originally God created the first Adam undefiled and he was new until he voluntarily obeyed the devil. He turned aside after the pleasures of the flesh, underwent the defilement of sin, grew old and fell into what is contrary to nature.”

St Gregory spoke to the incarnation of Christ, noting that the purpose of the incarnation was that in coming among as us as man, Christ could take our sins upon himself, a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for all and for all time. In order to do this, though, a number of things were needed.

Christ was not conceived by ordinary means, but by the Holy Spirit, such that:

he was the only one neither shapen in iniquity nor conceived in sin, that is to say in the fleshy pleasure, passion and unclean thoughts that belong to our nature defiled by transgression. The point of this was that the nature he assumed should be entirely pure and unsullied, so that he himself would not need to be purified but would, in his wisdom, accept everything for our sake.

Note again how St Gregory stresses, as St John of Damascus did, that human nature had been defiled by the transgression of Adam, yet in Christ’s incarnation and pure life he was able to die, not because of his own sins, but in order that he be a sacrifice for ours. He writes further, “Born of a woman that he might restore the human nature created by him.”

Sin and evil are not humanity’s nature, they are a corruption of our natural state. In as much as Christ had a dual nature, both fully God and fully man, humans too can be viewed, in some respects, as being of a dual nature: our natural state, as we were created before the fall, and our current state, corrupted in sin. In his sacrifice St Gregory writes, Christ has made, “his flesh an inexhaustible source of sanctification with abundant power to wash away the defilement of our first parents, and sufficient to sanctify everyone who came after them.”

When we see evil in the world, injustice, violence, hatred or any other kind, it should not be viewed as part of our nature. It is alien to us. What we are seeing is the nature of sin, and often enough lives lived in slavery to it.

St Paul wrote often using the imagery of our slavery and bondage to sin. He also wrote, however, that in Christ there is freedom. Our shackles will be removed. Our sins will be wiped clean. In Christ, we come closer and closer to true human nature, the image and likeness of God in which we were first created.

In this season of advent, it is this reality that we are called to reflect upon. The true meaning of the Nativity of our Lord.