1st. Sunday of Advent
(B)
(Isaiah 63:16b-17; 64:1, 3-8; 1st. Corinthians
1:3-9; Mark 13:33-37)
Our reading from the prophet Isaiah
on this, the first Sunday of the Advent season, is a direct preparation for what
will be the ultimate realization and fulfilment of the purpose for which Jesus
the Christ came as man, and the supreme proclamation of His Good News: namely,
the revelation of God the Father, and the re-birth -- by the Holy Spirit -- of
Jesus’ disciples as true children of the heavenly Father.
At the very beginning of our adapted
first reading Isaiah referred to God as Father twice:
You are our
father. Were Abraham not to know us, nor
Israel to acknowledge us, You, Lord, are our father, our redeemer you are named
forever.
Yes, Isaiah was very conscious and
proud of the fact that God was a father to Israel; and yet, what did he mean by
that word ‘father’?
For an answer to our question we
must turn our attention to the Law, in particular to the book of Deuteronomy,
source of the fountain which inspired Isaiah, for there we read:
You were
unmindful of the Rock that begot you, you forgot the God who gave you
birth. (32:18)
And he then continues, speaking in
the name of the Lord:
They have
provoked Me with their ‘no-god’, I will provoke them with a ‘no-people’; they
are a people having no understanding. (32: 21, 28)
So, though the word ‘father’ is
used, and even backed-up by words like ‘begot’ and ‘gave you birth’,
nevertheless they are all used metaphorically, since it is all about the
creation and establishment of a nation, from those who formerly had been a
persecuted minority of slaves in Egypt and latterly a mere wandering, mongrel,
collection of tribes-people. That is why
when for the third time the word ‘father’ is used in our reading from Isaiah we
hear:
O Lord, you
are our father; we are the clay and you the potter: we are all the work of your
hands.
Obviously Isaiah did not intend the
full and literal meaning of the word ‘father’; for, though he said: ‘You are our father, our
Redeemer You are named
forever’, he showed more precisely what
he meant with the word ‘father’ in the words that followed: ‘You are our father,
we are the clay and you the potter’.
So we have it: the prophet himself
was not, and could not be, aware of the full meaning and true significance of
the word he used when calling God the father of Israel; nevertheless, his
ignorance of the full meaning of the word he used was and is a true sign of the
inspiration of his prophecy. For, as St.
Paul said to his Christian converts at Corinth:
God is
faithful, by Whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ
our Lord. (1 Corinthians 1:9).
Yes, God the Father, in His great
faithfulness, was true to His originally Chosen People over more than a thousand
years – which surely is one of the deepest reasons for our trusting and hoping
in Him – and, having led Isaiah and indeed Israel as a whole to use a word they
could not fully appreciate, He then guided history itself so that those words of
prophecy and traditional faith were ultimately shown to be true in the sublime
beauty of their fullest meaning and deepest significance when He brought about
-- through Mary of Nazareth, the Flower of Israel -- the birth in time of His
only-begotten, eternally-beloved, Son.
Yes, God sent His consubstantial and
co-equal Son to fulfil the words of the prophet and save His people from Satan’s
power of sin and death. Through faith
and baptism into Jesus our Brother, humankind becomes adoptive sons and
daughters of God: truly begotten by the Spirit, in the Son, for the Father. By the Gift of the Holy Spirit -- bestowed on
us in Mother Church by our loving Saviour in accordance with the Father’s
promise -- we are established, sustained, and nourished as living members of Him
Who is the eternal and only-begotten Son; thereby enabling us to live our human
potential to its sublime fulfilment, becoming, in Jesus, adopted children of the
one true God and Father of us all. That,
dear People of God, is why you heard St. Paul exclaim in the second reading:
I give thanks
to my God always on your account for the grace of God bestowed on you in Christ
Jesus.
As we are now entering upon a new
Church year, it is not only right and proper, but surely, also, supremely
helpful and comforting, for us to be clearly aware of the ultimate goal of our
life in Jesus. However, it is not only
Jesus and the Holy Spirit Who are at work in us, leading us to and forming us
for, the Father; no, the Father Himself comes to us, as Jesus
promised:
If anyone
loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to
him and make Our home with him.
(John 14:23)
The Father Himself, that is, comes –
with Jesus and the Holy Spirit -- to abide within us and to help us become His
true children in Jesus, and this He does in a way that is unique to Him, that
is, by showing Himself to be our most perfect, and indeed only true,
Father:
As for you,
call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in
heaven. (Matthew 23:8–9)
The Father can speak to us -- if we
will hear and listen -- from our earliest years, because He is able speak to us
in the very centre of our being. Good
parents have this ability also although only to a very limited extent; it is
indeed a special gift from God for them, which is why the words and attitudes of
our parents can remain with us throughout life.
Since the Father, however, deals with us through unspoken words in the
depths of our personal being; and since, in our early years we have hardly
learned to recognize His traces, early experiences of such communications seem
to originate with ourselves, to be ours: mysterious longings and desires, sudden
lights and quiet convictions, protecting fears and simple assurance, all can
seem to be very much a part of us because they come from the centre of our
being; and yet, because they are communications from the as-yet-not-known
Father, they remain inexplicable to ourselves. The Father’s speaking to us only
becomes intelligible as we walk, by the Spirit, along the ways of Jesus -- as
indicated to us by Mother Church -- and thus growing in awareness of and
responsiveness to His loving Presence and continuing Providence. When diverse and apparently unrelated events
come to be suspected as connected and coherent parts of one embracing
Providential plan protecting us from our own ignorance and guiding us through
our own sinfulness and weakness towards a previously unanticipated goal; when
parents, and even perhaps teachers and friends, come to be appreciated as having
been aspects – fleeting or enduring -- of a Providence overarching our life; and
when the past as a whole is gradually seen to harbour a shape that promises to
give meaning and purpose to the present, as well as hope and expectation of
future possibilities of good, then the Father’s Presence and Providence is revealing itself to
us in glimpses reflecting the beauty of His truth and the splendour of His grace
in the Scriptures and in Mother Church;
glimpses where greater certitude arises from presence rather than proof,
and deeper knowledge from experience rather than investigation. Then, indeed, amazement stuns our mind, while
love inflames our heart and restores our soul: God is so wondrously over and
above us, and yet so mercifully and lovingly in us and for us.
In ways such as these the Father can
speak to us in any situation and throughout the whole extent of our life. No earthly father or mother, no friend, no
lover, can speak so intimately or be present to us in such a way: because He is
the God who originally made us in His Own likeness, for whom He gave up His
only-begotten Son, and on whom He bestows a breathing of His very
Spirit.
Indeed, such is His great goodness
to us that He would be our all, not only in our origins, but also in the end and
ultimate justification of our being. He
wants to be for us the perfect Father: such a Father to Whom only Jesus can
introduce us, for Whom, only the Spirit can form us; and Whose Presence we can
encounter only as living members of the glorious Body of Christ, our Brother and
our Head. He is indeed, and wills to be
for each one of us, the sublime
Father Who is always there -- with us and in us -- far closer to us than we
are, or ever can be, to ourselves; the Father who first of all draws us to Jesus
and, in Jesus, forms us for Himself by the Spirit.
If we bear in mind that, in the
Catholic patristic tradition, the Son and the Holy Spirit have been spoken of,
figuratively, as the hands of the Father, we are now in a position to understand
the true significance of Isaiah’s words:
O Lord, you
are our father; we are the clay and you the potter: we are all the work of your
hands.
Understanding the significance of
Isaiah’s words and realizing that they were pronounced hundreds of years before
Jesus, we are also in a position to appreciate not only the loving providence
and sublime wisdom of our God but also the fact that, as the most perfect of
Fathers, He has indeed loved us before we were born, and continues to love us in
such a way and to such an extent that, in return, we most surely can and should
-- always and unhesitatingly -- commit ourselves to His wisdom and love wherever
life may lead us or death o’ertake us.
