SECOND SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS

January 5, 2024

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

 

 

Some years ago, I was talking to a former parishioner of the church where I was then serving as Rector. This man had been brought up in the church—the son of several generations of prominent members of the parish—but he’d fallen away and stopped attending in his adult years. Apart from Christmas and Easter, he didn’t come to church anymore. Explaining why, he commented that the Christian Gospel was a “nice story,” but not anything that contemporary people could find credible or take seriously.

 

What intrigued me then, and still does now, was his characterization of the Gospel as a “nice story.” That’s not quite how I would describe it. But, on reflection, perhaps we can understand how people who come to church twice a year, and maybe to the occasional wedding or funeral, might get the impression that all we have to offer them is just a nice story.

 

Come to church on Easter morning without having attended on Palm Sunday or Good Friday, and you hear the proclamation of the Lord’s Resurrection without the prior unpleasantness of his Crucifixion. Come to church on Christmas Eve, and you’ll hear the joyous angelic proclamation to the shepherds: "Behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord." But if you don’t come back on the subsequent days of the Christmas season to hear what happens next, you might be excused for thinking that all you’ve heard is a nice story.

 

Today’s Gospel, however, relates the series of dark events that overshadow Matthew’s account of the wise men or magi bringing their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to worship the newborn King. In fear for his reign and indeed his life, King Herod secretly summons the wise men and asks them to come back and tell him when they’ve found the child, so that he too may come and worship him. But warned in a dream not to return to Herod, the magi depart to their own country by another way. Then Joseph is similarly warned in a dream to take Jesus and Mary and flee into Egypt, for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him.

Realizing that the wise men have tricked him, Herod sends his troops to kill all the male children under two years of age in the vicinity of Bethlehem. So, Matthew writes in some of the most poignant words in all the New Testament: “Then what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

 

Some of the parishes I’ve previously served hold an annual children’s Christmas pageant that’s one of the high points of the Church year. In most such pageants that I’ve seen, the climactic moment has always been the arrival of the three kings to honor the newborn Christ child with their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. In one of my parishes, this was a stunning spectacle that rounded off the pageant with a magnificent flourish.

 

However, I’m told that in some parts of the country, some pageants used not to end there, but instead followed the pattern of medieval mystery plays in continuing the story through the slaughter of the Innocents and the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt. (Apparently, the kids playing the roles of Herod’s soldiers and their young victims really got into it!)

 

Whatever we may think of the effect of such gruesome play-acting on impressionable young minds—and I’m certainly not encouraging it—one thing we can say for sure is that anyone witnessing such a pageant would be free of any illusion that this is a nice story. It’s instead a story that lays bare, with stark realism, the cruelty of life in a fallen world.

 

Still, in order to save us, Jesus must become incarnate in precisely such a world. If the Incarnation of the Son of God is to speak to us as something more than just a nice story, then it must be able to offer hope in a world of suicide bombings, of children kidnapped and forced to become child soldiers, of ethnic populations displaced by massacres, of migrants forced to flee their homelands to find safety and security in new lands.

 

The most basic affirmation of the Christian faith is that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. That is, God saves us not by waving a magic wand to make all the word’s troubles disappear. Rather he does something infinitely more radical and profound: he comes down from heaven to share in our human life, with all its pain and grief, so that no matter what we may have to face in this life, we need never be alone. Jesus is always there for us, and with us; he knows what we’re going through, for he’s gone through worse himself. And he offers us the hope that because he shares with us in all the joys and sorrows of our human life on earth, so he’ll bring us to share with him in the unending bliss of his divine life in heaven.

The slaughter of the innocents, and the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt, remind us that Jesus is born not into a fairytale world of angels, shepherds, and exotic sages from faraway lands, but rather into the same world we see depicted every day on the news. The Son of God becomes incarnate amidst the stark cruelty of this very world we inhabit. Our Lord knows what it’s like to be a migrant, for he started his earthly life as a migrant himself. He’s no stranger to the violence of the powerful, which almost succeeded in extinguishing his human life as soon as he was born, and which ultimately succeeded in ending his earthly career on a cross thirty some years later. But that, as we know, was not the end of the story!

 

All this is entailed in the Christian affirmation that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And no, it’s not a nice story. But it is very Good News. A nice story cannot change lives, let alone the world. The Good News can—and does. So, we make it our business as the Church to continue sharing this Good News in this New Year of the Lord’s grace and favor that has now dawned upon us.

FIRST SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS, YEAR C

December 29, 2024

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Isaiah 61:10-62:3

Psalm 147:13-24

John 1:1-18

 

Just over a week ago, on December 21st, we marked the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Between now and the Spring Equinox on March 19th, we can expect the worst of the winter cold even as the days begin to lengthen again. And a theme running through the readings appointed for this first Sunday after Christmas Day is the light and warmth that Christ brings us, illuminating the world with his glory, dispelling the darkness of sin and death.

 

It’s no accident that today’s reading from the Prophet Isaiah employs springtime imagery to portray the Lord’s arrival: “For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.” Then the prophet switches to the image of light driving out darkness: “For Zion's sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until her vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch.”

 

The verses of Psalm 147 that we’ve just sung together describe a freezing winter storm: “[God] gives snow like wool; he scatters hoarfrost like ashes. He scatters his hail like breadcrumbs; Who can stand against his cold?” But then, in the immediately following verse, comes the springtime thaw: “He sends forth his word and melts them; he blows with his wind and the waters flow.”

 

The Church’s tradition reads such a psalm as depicting not only outward meteorological conditions but also inward spiritual realities. God’s word is capable of thawing not only a frozen landscape but also our frozen hearts. Moreover, this image of God blowing with his wind so that the waters flow calls to mind the breath of the Holy Spirit and the waters of Baptism.

 

Today’s Gospel sums up all these images in its description of the Incarnation of the Divine Word, the eternal Son of the Father, whose life is the light of all people: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it … The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”

 

In the children’s story, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe—a spiritual classic which I recommend highly to readers of all ages—C. S. Lewis deploys the metaphor of winter to portray a fallen world. The alternate-reality land of Narnia, accessed by a group of school children through a magic wardrobe, lies frozen under a curse, blanketed by snow. As Lewis puts it, it’s always winter, and Christmas never comes.

 

But then the lion Aslan, the story’s Christ-figure, arrives in Narnia. The snowing ceases, the ice begins to melt, shoots of plants and flowers start poking through the ground, the leaves on the trees begin to bud, and, to cap it all off, Santa Claus arrives with his reindeer and sleigh to distribute gifts to one and all. (Of course, as a British writer of a certain generation, Lewis calls him not Santa Claus but Father Christmas.) Aslan’s arrival in Narnia wonderfully symbolizes Christ bringing light, warmth, and life to a world that has lain for centuries under the curse of darkness, sin, and death. Christmas has come.

 

The Collect of the Day often gives us a helpful key to the meaning of the readings and psalms appointed for any given day in the Church calendar. So, let’s listen again to today’s Collect: “Almighty God, you have poured upon us the new light of your incarnate Word: Grant that this light, enkindled in our hearts, may shine forth in our lives …”

 

Notice how this this Collect describes a three-step process. First, God pours upon us the light of his incarnate Word. Jesus Christ comes into the world; his birth is what we’ve just celebrated on Christmas Day.

 

But second, this light is not meant to remain external, as it were, illuminating us from without. We pray that it may be enkindled in our hearts, enlightening and warming us from within.

 

Then, third, with our hearts thus set on fire, we pray that it may shine forth in our lives, bringing life and warmth to those around us—to our families and friends, our homes and workplaces, and indeed further afield, among people and communities across the nation and throughout the world.

 

So, to recapitulate—Step One, God pours upon us the light of his Incarnate Word; Step Two, that light ignites and enflames our hearts; and Step Three, that same light shines forth through us, brightening the world.

 

A tension sometimes arises in the Church’s life between two tendencies that are sometimes called “personal religion” and “the Social Gospel”—or, in more traditional terms, “the contemplative life” and “the active life.” That is: between those, on one hand, who want to emphasize the Christian’s personal relationship with God in worship, prayer, and meditation; and those, on the other hand, who want to emphasize our Christian calling to go out into the world and participate actively in the Church’s mission and ministry.

 

Today’s Collect suggests, however, that the answer is not “either/or” but “both/and.” The light of Christ cannot truly shine forth in our lives unless it’s first enkindled in our hearts. But conversely, when that light does warm our hearts, we can’t help letting it shine forth by acts of kindness, words of encouragement, works of mercy, and lives of service.

 

Above all, we need to remember that Jesus Christ, the Word Incarnate, is the only source of true light, warmth, and life. As today’s Gospel says of Saint John the Baptist, we are not that light, but are sent to bear witness to that light.

 

And so, during this twelve-day season of Christmas—today is the fifth day, by the way—we might profitably reflect on what steps we might take to invite (or indeed re-invite) Christ into our hearts, so that he may set us on fire, making our lives a beacon of his light and love to this cold and darkened world.

THE NATIVITY

December 24 / 25, 2024, 6 pm / 9 am

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Saint Luke 2:1-20 (AV)

 

A striking feature of the Nativity story in Saint Luke’s Gospel is that its principal human characters are the shepherds. More than one commentator has remarked that Luke disposes of Our Lord’s actual birth in one sentence: “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.”

 

Then the narrative switches immediately to the shepherds in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. Totally unexpectedly, an angel appears to the shepherds, and the glory of the Lord—the supernatural light that characteristically accompanies God’s presence—shines round about them. As in almost all such biblical accounts of appearances of heavenly messengers, the shepherds’ initial reaction is one of sheer terror. Angels are frightening to behold. For this reason, their first words when they appear are almost invariably, “Fear not,” or “Be not afraid.”

 

The angel then delivers the announcement: “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” Here, the verb translated as “to bring good tidings” is exactly the same verb that Luke and the other New Testament authors use for “preach the Gospel” when writing of Jesus and the apostles. The angel’s message is thus a proclamation of the good news of God’s salvation.

 

The angel continues: “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” Here the angelic proclamation takes a form resembling that of a court herald announcing the birth of an heir to the throne in an earthly kingdom. But the three titles—Saviour, Christ, and Lord—signify unmistakably that this birth is no ordinary royal birth, but none other than that of God’s anointed one, the Messiah.

 

Then the angel gives a sign: “Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” In the Bible, the purpose of signs accompanying messages purporting to be from God is to provide a means of verification, so that the recipient may know that the message is true, and not a hallucination or deception.

 

Apart from the angels’ message, the onlookers and passersby in Bethlehem would likely find nothing much in the event itself: an infant born to a traveling couple in makeshift lodgings using a feeding trough as a makeshift cradle. The gift of new life is always joyous and awesome. At the same time, however, it’s a common enough occurrence.

 

At the same time, as soon as they see it, the shepherds will recognize exactly what the angel told them to look for. So, the announcement interprets the birth as that of "a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” And, reciprocally, the birth’s distinctive circumstances—“the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger”—confirm the truth of the announcement.

 

Once the angel finishes speaking, the shepherds are granted a glimpse into heaven itself, of the angelic host worshiping God and singing: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace ...” The shepherds’ experience that night thus combines the heavenly and the earthly: on one hand, a supernatural vision of celestial glory; on the other hand, a beautiful but plainly natural scene—for what could be more natural than a newborn infant with its parents? But that is the deepest meaning of the Incarnation after all: God comes down to earth from heaven; the Word is made flesh and dwells among us.

 

The angelic chorus proclaims that the birth of Jesus not only glorifies God in heaven, but also brings peace on earth. But what does “peace on earth” mean? Clearly, the world’s history in the two millennia since Christ’s birth has not been marked by what we normally think of as peace. On the contrary, it’s been a sad chronicle of conflict, war, revolution, massacre, and genocide. If God’s reign of justice, love, and peace is meant to be an historical reality, its time is clearly not yet.

 

The New Testament nonetheless uses the word “peace” 92 times: most often to describe a gift of God available to us here and now. In all Bible translations, the English word “peace”—like the Latin pax and the Greek eirēnē—harks back to the Hebrew shalom. And shalom signifies far more than what usually passes for peace in our world—namely, the absence of active hostilities or a state of armed truce. Instead, shalom implies a state of communal wholeness, well-being, reconciliation, forgiveness, unity, and harmony.

 

And I’d like to suggest that the peace that Christ brings has three dimensions: namely peace with God; peace with one another; and peace within ourselves.

 

Peace with God comes first. In the biblical understanding, the basic human predicament is that we’ve rebelled and are at enmity with God. Our first and greatest need is for God’s forgiveness. At Bethlehem Christ comes into the world precisely to reconcile us with God by means of his death, resurrection, and ascension.

 

Then comes peace with one another. Christians are called to be peacemakers. Because Christ has reconciled us with God, we’re obligated to be reconciled with one another. Nothing is more destructive to our souls than harboring resentments or bearing grudges. So, if we have anything against anyone, we need to pray for the grace, which only Christ can bestow, to forgive and be at peace.

 

Last but not least is peace within ourselves: “the peace of God, which passes all understanding.” In what seems at first glance a curious contradiction of the angels’ proclamation, Jesus says in Saint Matthew’s Gospel: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword.” He then foretells the rejection and sufferings that his disciples must undergo on his account. Still, it’s the peace within, the peace that only Christ can give in our hearts, that equips us to withstand all strife, turmoil, conflict, and persecution without.

 

“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace ...”

 

Even while peace remains conspicuously lacking in the world around us, Christ’s birth in Bethlehem brings us peace with God, peace with one another, and peace in ourselves. One of my favorite hymns, “They cast their nets in Galilee”— number 661 in the Hymnal—concludes with this verse:

 

The peace of God, it is no peace,

But strife closed in the sod;

Yet let us pray for but one thing:

The marvelous peace of God.

4 ADVENT, YEAR C

Sunday, December 19, 2024

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Micah 5:2-5a

Luke 1:39-55

 

One way Church tradition has described the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament is in terms of promise and fulfillment. The Old Testament records God’s promises of deliverance and salvation; the New Testament records God’s fulfillment of these promises in the coming of Christ.

 

The service of Advent Lessons and Carols is structured to make this point. We listen to a series of lessons and musical responses recording God’s promises to his people of a future anointed one, the Messiah, who will come as judge, king, and savior.

 

This all-too-brief Season of Advent invites us to put ourselves in the place of Israel waiting for the Messiah. In our Anglican tradition, we stubbornly keep this day as the fourth Sunday of Advent, refusing to decorate the Church or sing Christmas carols before the Feast of the Nativity has actually arrived. The idea is that if during Advent we can experience something of Israel’s longing for the promised Savior, then at Christmas our rejoicing at the birth of Christ will be so much more complete and full.

 

In one of today’s Old Testament readings, the prophet Micah, who lived about seven hundred years before Christ, delivers a promise from God addressed to the town of Bethlehem. You, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.

 

To catch the full impact of this prophecy, we need to remember that Bethlehem was where King David had grown up as a shepherd tending the flocks of his father Jesse. In times of national crisis, the people of Israel would look for another king like David to unite them and deliver them from their enemies, just as the original David had done so long ago. So, when Micah spoke of a ruler coming from Bethlehem, his original audience would have understood the promise of another David, another great king who would bring the people to safety as a shepherd gathers his flock.

 

In the concluding reading from the Gospel according to Saint Luke, we see the beginning of this promise’s fulfillment. Pregnant with the Christ child, the Blessed Virgin Mary travels to the hill country of Judah to visit her cousin Elizabeth—who’s also pregnant with the child who’ll become known as John the Baptist. And Elizabeth’s pregnancy is itself the fulfillment of God’s promise to her and her husband Zechariah that they would not remain childless in their old age.

 

But when Mary arrives, Elizabeth recognizes the fulfillment of a far greater promise. Filled with the Holy Spirit, she cries out: Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy.”

 

Then Elizabeth concludes: “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” These words have at least three layers of meaning. At the first and most obvious level, Elizabeth is honoring Mary for accepting the angel’s message that even as a virgin she would conceive and become the mother of the Messiah.

 

The second layer of meaning has a wider scope. Elizabeth is honoring Mary as the representative of faithful Israel awaiting the fulfillment of God’s promises. Mary understands her pregnancy in precisely these terms, as becomes clear in the song of praise we know as the Magnificat, sung in response to Elizabeth’s words: “He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and his posterity for ever.”

 

The third layer of meaning has the widest scope of all. Mary represents all people everywhere who faithfully believe that God will fulfill his promises to them. So Elizabeth’s words apply to us as well: Blessed are we who believe that there will be a fulfillment of what has been spoken to us by the Lord.

 

Think for a moment about the place of promise and fulfillment in our own lives. When we’re young, we naturally look to the future as a time of promise. One of the joys of being around little children is the opportunity to experience the approach of Christmas through their eyes. For children, this season is a time of enormous excitement and anticipation, which builds and builds until the final moment of fulfillment on Christmas morning.

 

As we grow up, we look forward to the various transitions and rites of passage in our lives as moments of promise, moments that we believe will bring about the fulfillment of all our hopes and dreams: graduating from school; finding the right job; perhaps for some, getting married and having children; perhaps for others, achieving some personal or professional milestone, such as getting published or receiving some honor or recognition in one’s field; and finally, in due course, retiring in the hope of doing all the things we didn’t have time for when we were working.

 

As we reach all these milestones, however, we find that sometimes the promise they held out for us is fulfilled, and sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes we get everything we hoped for; sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we achieve our goals only to find that they don’t bring us the sense of fulfillment we thought they would. Deep in our hearts, there always remains an inexplicable longing for something more—some deeper fulfillment, some greater joy—that we can’t quite put our finger on and that we don’t quite know how to name.

 

As St. Augustine puts it, God has created us for himself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in him. All our hopes and desires will never be completely satisfied until we see God face to face and abide for eternity in his presence. But that’s God’s promise to us as well: that the longing for eternal life and perfect joy that he’s implanted in our hearts won’t be in vain.

 

The birth of the Christ child in Bethlehem is God’s pledge to us that he can and will fulfill even this promise. Jesus comes to save us, to take away our sins, and to raise us to new life. As we prepare to greet him this Christmas, we place our hope in him as the one in whom all God’s promises find their true and final fulfillment.

 

THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT, YEAR C

December 15, 2024

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Zephaniah 3:14-20

Canticle 9

Philippians 4:4-7

Luke 3:7-18

 

From Paul’s Letter to the Philippians: Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. On account of these words, traditionally sung in Latin in the Introit (or Entrance Song) of today’s liturgy, the Third Sunday of Advent is known as Gaudete Sunday, or “Rejoice Sunday.”

 

We encounter this theme of rejoicing in the Old Testament reading, from the prophet Zephaniah: Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!

Then Canticle 9, from the twelfth chapter of Isaiah—which we sang in paraphrased version—takes up the theme: “Therefore you shall draw water with rejoicing, from the springs of salvation … Cry aloud, inhabitants of Zion, ring out your joy …” And the Gospel reading concludes joyfully: “So, with many other exhortations, [John the Baptist] proclaimed good news to the people.”

 

In keeping with this theme of rejoicing, today we light a rose-colored candle on the Advent wreath; we have pink roses at the Altar; and if we had them, we’d wear rose vestments, and adorn the altar with a rose frontal.

 

These biblical exhortations to rejoicing are not, however, without an element of paradox. When he bids the Philippians rejoice always, Paul is himself a prisoner in chains: not a situation we normally associate with rejoicing. The reading from Zephaniah, calling on Jerusalem to sing, exult, shout, and rejoice, is set in the context of a book full of prophetic warnings of impending judgment and doom. And John the Baptist’s preaching of good news paradoxically begins with the greeting, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”—followed by a series of solemn warnings to bear fruit befitting repentance.

 

The phenomenon of Christian joy amidst suffering sometimes proves puzzling to outside observers. The fifth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles recounts an incident in which the apostles are arrested, questioned, beaten, and then released. There follows the curious comment: “Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were found worthy to suffer dishonor for the name” (5:41).

 

Early Christian martyrs are reported to have gone to their deaths full of joy, singing hymns to Christ while the lions roared in the nearby cages. Saint Francis of Assisi is well known for finding “perfect joy” in a life of itinerant poverty. Such rejoicing in the midst of hardship, rejection, persecution, suffering, and death has struck more than a few critics of Christianity as fundamentally perverse.

 

We need to recognize, however, that the word “joy” has a special meaning in classical Christian usage. A great twentieth-century writer on Christian joy was C.S. Lewis. In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, Lewis described joy as a feeling of intense longing he first experienced as a child, and which recurred periodically throughout his life.

 

Lewis insisted that this experience was completely distinct from either happiness or pleasure. He described it with the memorable phrase: “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.” (Repeat.) In this sense, joy means something different from the present fulfillment of natural human needs. It’s more what we might call “anticipatory joy”—that is, the excitement of looking forward to something that hasn’t happened yet but remains hoped for in the future.

 

We all know what it feels like. Imagine, a student who’s been away from home for the first time in her life at a far-away university. As much as she loves her new life, she nonetheless misses her family and her hometown friends intensely. At last, final exams are over and she’s on her way to the airport to catch her flight home for the Christmas break. For days, perhaps weeks, her excitement has been mounting at the prospect of celebrating Christmas with family and friends once again.

 

Again, think of some of the most joyous milestones in people’s lives. When a couple announces their engagement, a large part of our reaction to the news is the joy of anticipation. (Assuming, that is, that we approve of the match.) We rejoice not only at what their engagement means for them now, but also at the future prospect of their wedding and subsequent life together. The announcement is an occasion of joy because it gives us something to look forward to.

 

When my daughter-in-law announced one evening at a gathering of the extended family that she was pregnant, the rejoicing was boisterous and raucous. Again, when a child is born, we rejoice not only on account of who this little baby is now, but also on account of the person we hope he or she will become in the coming years. Our joy is both in the present gift and the future promise.

 

When C. S. Lewis finally converted to Christianity after years of spiritual struggle, he realized that the final fulfillment of his longing—that unsatisfied desire more desirable than any other satisfaction—was none other than Christ himself. As Christians we discover that Christ is available to us here and now as both present reality and future hope. Knowing Christ affords greater joy than any earthly pleasure or happiness. Still, we also discover that, in this life, our joy in the Lord always retains something of this quality of unfulfilled longing and unrealized expectation.

 

Theologians describe the Christian life as lived in the tension between the “already” and the “not yet.” When we receive the Lord’s Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist, for example, we really and truly receive Christ himself here and now. Yet the sacred meal always points beyond itself as a foretaste of that heavenly banquet awaiting us in God’s Kingdom. In other words, our joy remains in large part the joy of anticipation rather than that of consummation and fulfillment. But, to quote C. S. Lewis again, even as an unsatisfied desire it remains “more desirable than any other satisfaction.”

 

Advent is the season when we anticipate our future—the new life awaiting each of us after death, and the new life awaiting all creation when Christ returns to inaugurate the Kingdom in its fullness. For this reason, Advent is a season of longing, expectation, and hope. But this Rose Sunday also reminds us that, like Advent, the entire Christian life, is also a season of anticipatory joy. Even amidst our present difficulties and darknesses, we dare to rejoice in the glorious future that God promises us in Christ.