Dear Brothers and Sisters,
This year we begin Advent in good company. Throughout this season, and indeed the whole of this liturgical year we will be guided and fed by St Matthew’s Gospel. Matthew presents us with Jesus who is the great teacher. As the Patriarchs of old taught the meaning and the implications of the Covenant, so Jesus comes to introduce the New Covenant between God and the human race. Also the Prophet Isaiah walks with us through this four week period of preparation for Christmas, which is said to represent the four thousand years of waiting for the coming of the Messiah. Certainly we can’t leave out John the Baptist, whose message and way of life testify to the coming of the Promised One. And, of course, Mary, the faithful Virgin and Mother of the Son of God made flesh; she shines out as a sign of Advent-hope, prayerfully, obediently waiting, filled with the Word, pregnant with the Word, ready to bring that Word to the waiting world.
The scriptures that we will read during these four weeks are filled with a mounting expectancy, which, if we listen to them and open our lives to them, cannot help but make our hearts beat faster as the time of his coming approaches. Today the first Sunday we are invited to take part in the journey: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord…that he may teach us his ways so that we may walk in his paths…” But quickly comes the Gospel warning, lest we become complacent: “Stay awake, because you do not know the day when your master is coming.”
Next week, Isaiah himself will encourage us by giving us a glimpse of this new world which is to be established. “They do no hurt, no harm…..for the country is filled with the knowledge of the Lord.” But again we are advised through the voice of the Baptist to “Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight……He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” This same theme of the marvellous qualities of this new Kingdom are once more proclaimed on the Third Sunday: “Let the wilderness and the dry-lands exult, let the wasteland rejoice and bloom..….the blind see again, and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised to life, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor; and happy is the man who does not lose faith in me.”
As the Fourth Sunday arrives we are presented with yet another very important message from Isaiah and which is strongly endorsed and developed by Matthew. “…the maiden is with child and will soon give birth to a son whom she will call Emmanuel, a name which means “God-is-with-us. She will give birth to a son and you must name him Jesus because he is the one who is to save his people from their sins.”
While it is neither hardly possible nor right that we should remove ourselves from all the external and more peripheral preparations for Christmas during our Advent journey, at the same time it would be so sad if we forgot that through the Incarnation our God comes to us as “Emmanuel”, God-with-us; and “Jesus”, the one who is to save us from our sins. No matter where we journey, from now on our God is with us. There is no depth so deep, no height so above and beyond, no dark night so smothering and fearful, no situation so complicated and disturbing that our God is not with us. That is what Incarnation means; God is with us always, no matter where, no matter what. All we have to do is stretch out our hand and he is already holding us.
And he is “Jesus”, the one who saves us from our sins, no matter how terrible we or others might consider them. All we have to do is look towards him and we will see him already looking deeply into our lives; longing for us to return, to start again, to come home. This is the message of Advent, this is the message of Christmas, this is the Good News of the Gospel. Like Isaiah, Matthew, John the Baptist and Mary, we must proclaim it loud and strong not only with our voices but with our lives also:
“The Word was made flesh and lived among us and we saw his glory, the glory that is his as the only son of the Father full of grace and truth. A light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower……to all who did accept him he gave power to become children of God.” (From the Gospel of Christmas Day)
Come, Lord Jesus! Come Jesus Emmanuel!
Yours in blessed hope,
Bishop
+ Terence Patrick
Bishop of Middlesbrough