Gospel Commentary: Waiting for Christ

By Fr. John Riley
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This week we begin the "new year" in Holy Mother Church’s liturgy. In the Sunday lectionary, the Gospel readings are presented in a three year cycle. Year "A" features the Gospel of Matthew, Year "B" focuses on the Gospel of St. Mark, and in Year "C," we proclaim St. Luke’s Gospel. We’ve just completed Year "C," so this Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent in Year "A," we turn our attention to the Gospel of St. Matthew.

It seems an unusual way to begin the liturgical year and this holy season of Advent. A person might expect to hear readings that are warm or comforting, or hopeful — something vaguely "christmassy." Instead, the readings continue along the same disturbing "apocalyptic" trajectory traced out by the readings at the end of the cycle last year … floods, devastation and disaster — and the sudden coming of the Son of Man. Advent is not the season of the babe in the manger, it is the season of His cousin.

Wandering through an arid, blighted landscape that imaged the spiritual thirst of a fallen world, with thought and perception seared by the fires of mystic vision, he came. Clad in camelskin, a leather belt about his waist, he took his place by a river whose waters flowed into a dead sea and waited. In time, the same Spirit Who drove this solitary figure out into the wilderness led others, misbegotten children of this wasted land, to listen and tremble at the herald’s thundering prophesies.

"You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Repent! The Kingdom of God is at hand!"

After four centuries without a prophet, the descendants of Israel burned with anticipation, wondering if this fiery seer who thrust them beneath the surface and pulled them sputtering from the waters of the Jordan was the One who was to come … the Prophet foretold by Moses? … Elijah returned from the dead? … perhaps the Christ?

"No," replied Johannan Ben Zechariah, called the Baptist, "I am not the Christ. The One coming after me is mightier than I … I am not worthy to unfasten His sandals. I baptize you with water. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire!"

Excitement mounting, they waited. Jesus Christ came, taking flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. In poverty, God became Man, brought forth from His mother in a shelter for animals, wrapped in rags, a feeding trough for His first bed.

Our tendency is to view the coming of Jesus Christ, the Lord of History, as past. Yet to leave it as this is to miss the full meaning of the liturgical season of Advent [which means "to come"]. Though Jesus Christ has already come, His coming is a constant and perpetual reality. He comes in grace, in the power of His Spirit, in His Word proclaimed, and most definitively, He comes upon every altar from the rising of the sun to its setting where any priest dares to take bread and wine in his hands and echo Christ’s own words, "This is My Body" … "This is the cup of My Blood."

Jesus Christ has come, is constantly among us, and will also "come again in glory to judge the living and the dead." In sacred Scripture, Jesus describes Himself as "a thief in the night," coming when He is least expected, and also as the "the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven." He is coming again, though we cannot know the day or the hour.

The Church, in her wisdom, constantly reminds us of this "second Advent," particularly in the words of the Mass. We are "ready to meet Him when He comes again," we look "forward to His coming in glory;" and we "wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ."

The liturgical year of the Church begins with Advent — the season of anticipation — where our yearly preparation of Christmas, the celebration of Jesus’ first coming in poverty and humility, dovetails with our anticipation of His coming again in glory.

The world as we know it is passing away. As Catholics we are called to live every moment of our lives in the light of this reality. Animated by the spirit of the Baptist, we are called to live in the wake of Jesus’ first coming and to be heralds of His Second Coming. And so we repent. … we anticipate … and we wait.

Fr. Riley is associate pastor of St. John the Evangelist Parish in Warrenton and professor of Sacred Scripture at Christendom College in Front Royal.

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