PATIENCE AS A REQUIREMENT

SUNDAY, THIRD WEEK OF ADVENT

Isa 35: 1-6,10; Ps 146:6-10; Jas 5:7-10; Mt 11:2-11

The Greatness of Our Salvation in Christ

Patience is an inestimable virtue in our dealings with God, for it is a virtue that inherently characterises the creature before the Creator. It is an outgrowth of the faith we profess in God. Faith takes the form of patience because it has no prior understanding or knowledge of the salvation God promised us. We only attempt a reconstruction of our salvation from our present ills and woes. We try to imagine a situation or existence without problems of our present mortal life, which gives us an idea of what salvation God promised would look like. But a proper conception of the salvation God promises us is impossible. Because God promises us what has never entered the human mind, no eye has seen, no ear has heard what God is preparing for us. 1 Cor 2:29. We have no idea where God is taking us or what he has promised us as a reward of faithfulness; we can only wait in patient endurance for its revelation and fulfilment. Saint Augustine explained our ignorance as a learned ignorance, in the sense that the Holy Spirit, who is already present within us, is creating a capacity within us to contain what God has promised us. The echo of this capacity within gives us an idea of what we are to receive, though not in a concrete sense. Hence, our patience in faith is illuminated by the Eternal Word of God with us.

What the Holy Spirit is doing within us is similar to what the prophetic words did to the people of God in the Old Testament. The prophetic words were like lamps lighting up the way or path of the people of the Old Testament, giving them safety on the path and assurance of possessing what they hoped for or arriving at the promised inheritance. Consider the messianic prophecy of Isaiah given to us today. “Let the wilderness and the dry lands exult, let the wasteland rejoice and bloom, let it bring forth flowers like the jonquil, let it rejoice and sing for joy. The glory of Lebanon is bestowed on it, the splendour of Carmel and Sharon; they shall see the glory of the Lord, the splendour of our God.” These words were given to the people of the Old Testament in their trials and difficulties. There was no way they could have understood the full meaning of these words and how God would fulfil all of them. But they believed and held onto the prophetic words as a lamp lighting their way through the difficult terrain of their mortal existence. Some of them who died without seeing the glory of God revealed in their lives and situations must have come to understand that the light of the word of God goes beyond the darkness of death. For the alternative would be to abandon faith, lose heart, and despair in death. But that is no way to travel for souls who proved faithful through life. So, they followed the light of the prophetic words through the valley of death and darkness.

Subsequently, they must have come to understand that the prophetic words apply even to the dead, for the word of God is true even in the land of the dead. “Strengthen all weary hands, steady all trembling knees and say to all faint hearts, ‘Courage! Do not be afraid. Look, your God is coming, vengeance is coming, the retribution of God; he is coming to save you.’” The prophetic words were fulfilled for those living mortal life, no less than for the dead. Those who believed in the words of the prophets and received their fulfilment while still alive were considered privileged by the Lord, for they received what God promised in their mortal life. John the Baptist witnessed the presence of Jesus, which is the fulfilment of the prophetic words of Isaiah. Death still challenged his faith as it did the faith of the people of the Old Testament. “John in his prison, had heard what Christ was doing and he sent his disciples to ask him, ‘Are you the one who is come, or have we got to wait for someone else?’” The promise of God is not essentially for the present life, which must end, but for the life after, which endures forever.

On the full meaning and implication of the promise and the gift of God, we are not better than the ancients who believed in the prophetic words. We are only greater than they because we received a certain measure of what was promised in our mortal life; that is, the new birth in the Holy Spirit that confers Christ’s life on us. Though our Lord praised John the Baptist as the greatest of those born of women, the people of the Old Testament, we are greater than him because we have received the life of Christ within us as the hope of glory. “I tell you solemnly, of all the children born of women, a greater than John the Baptist has never been seen; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he is.” As we already explained, our greatness is about this life. Those who believed in the prophetic word received the fulfilment of their hope when Jesus Christ came to them in the land of the dead. Hence, they rose with him to fullness of life. Our own patient requirement is to persevere till death. Therefore, Saint James advises us, saying: “Be patient, brothers, until the Lord’s coming. Think of a farmer: how patiently he waits for the precious fruit of the ground until it has had the autumn rains and the spring rains! You too have to be patient; do not lose heart, because the Lord’s coming will be soon.” The Lord comes for us when our mortal life ends; he brings us to Eternal life, which he promised us. Advent is a time to reawaken our desire for what he promised us, eternal communion with him.

Let us pray: O God, who see how your people faithfully await the feast of the Lord’s Nativity, enable us, we pray, to attain the joys of so great a salvation and to celebrate them always with solemn worship and glad rejoicing. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Sonn, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.