First Sunday of Advent

Today's Mass Readings

We wait in order to learn the hiddenness of redemption and holiness.

In today’s readings, we have two fine Scriptures to guide us to our hidden God. Isaiah says in the first reading: “You have hidden your face from us and have delivered us up to our guilt.” Paul tells us: “You are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Abbot Gregory says that, “waiting is one of the great postures of faith in the Scriptures. To wait is to trust; to wait is to suffer; to wait is ripen; to wait is to hope; to wait is to love.” Our task is to learn how to wait well, patiently learning to perceive God’s saving action in our lives.

Strange as it sounds, a sure but uncomfortable place to do this waiting, and find God, is our sins! We do not care to go there. Yet, in not going there, in refusing to face our sins, we deprive ourselves of a premier place to find God. In Biblical language: we find our Redeemer where we need Him; and that is in our sins! Again, from our first reading today:
You, Lord, are our Father, our redeemer you are named forever. Why do you let us wander, O Lord, from your ways, and harden our hearts so that we fear you not? …. No ear has ever heard, no eye ever seen, any God but you doing deeds for those who wait for him. Would that you might meet us doing right, that we were mindful of you in our ways!

The mystery of sin is a divine and human mystery! We enter this mystery by remembering that it is about a relationship, a relationship with God. Losing this understanding of sin, we lose so much of the meaning of our lives, so much that we undergo daily.
St. John’s Gospel puts it this way:
And so they could not believe, because Isaiah also said, “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, so that they might not look with their eyes, and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.” John 12: 39f

God had “blinded their eyes and hardened their heart.” This is the Biblical way of saying that God allowed them freely to refuse to believe. They freely refused; God permitted it to happen. So, from what they did, God permitted his Son to die for our sins.

So that sins may be forgiven. Our turning, our repenting, is a way we wait for God to save us because he comes to us, as it were, with forgiveness. This turning, this repenting, we can do because we are “not lacking in any spiritual gift as [we] wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

We never cease to admit that we are sinners, that we need God, who wants us to need him. We admit that we are not God and that God is the only One—the Redeemer—who can and wants to free us from our sins. I suggest we never let a day end without asking ourselves, ‘What inspirations to love and to accept love have I acted upon today?’ I am grateful to Christ! And, ‘What inspirations to love and to accept love have I let pass by today?’ I ask Christ for forgiveness.

Reflection by Fr. Xavier Nacke, OSB