Advent - 2024; Week Four

Advent - 2024; Week Four

The time of our restitution promised by God from the very beginning of human history is now upon us, the days are close when we shall see the promise of God for his wayward sheep in the baby who waits to find those who came from the hills, from lands far away, and each of us waiting to view the Glory of Almighty God lying with the simple flock of needy souls.  

Christ will raise us up “on the last day;” but it s true that, in a certain way, we have already risen with Christ.  For by virtue of the Holy Spirit, Christian life is already now on earth a participation in the death and Resurrection of Christ.  (CCC 1002).

The birth of Christ, following the Incarnation, is a reminder that at our birth our existence is only a temporary life and as in the funeral rite, In the waters of baptism (name) died with Christ and rose to new life .  May he/she now share with him eternal glory.  (from the rite of funerals).

From the Liturgy of the Hours:

Ant; The fullness of time has come upon us at last; God sends his Son into the world.  

He devised a plan, a great and wonderful plan, and shared it only with his Son.  As long as he preserved this secrecy and kept his own wise counsel he seemed to be neglecting us, to have no concern for us.  But when through his beloved Son he revealed and made public what he had prepared from the very beginning, he gave us all at once gifts such as we could never have dreamed of, even sight and knowledge of himself.  When our wickedness had reached its culmination, it became clear that retribution was at hand in the shape of suffering and death.  However, he did not show hatred for us or reject us or take vengeance;  instead, he was patient with us, bore with us, and in compassion took our sins upon himself.  (From a letter to Diognetus).  

The birth of Jesus was to end in the Crucifixion at Calvary, yet that was his plan to redeem us.  The tree that made the stable became the tree of victory as Christ overcame sin and eternal death as he said; “It is Finished,”  (Jn 19: 30).

Ralph B. Hathaway