Find the smile that sets us free
Advent is a time of hope and joy. We eagerly make the round of company and family parties; we get excited buying gifts for others (and wondering, perhaps, what they will be giving us); we look forward to the arrival of family and friends with whom to share the peace and joy of the day.
We have also seen these last fews days that it is also, and principally, a time of preparation, and sharp are the warnings for the unprepared. These warnings can put a damper on things, and so we tend to mask them with songs about holiday cheer, commercialism, and all the rest. This is a serious mistake: in bringing things into sharper relief, the warnings increase the possibility of real joy. We could say that during Advent, we are preparing for the return of the King by preparing to celebrate his first arrival, the advent of mercy. When we rely upon his mercy, all is well.
But this is no passive reliance. The words of today’s Gospel are sharp: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” Then the Lord proceeds to tell us that the one who does the words is like a wise man who builds a house on a rock, whereas the the one who does not is like the fool who builds upon sand, and when the storms come,…
Action turns the sand into rock. Both the wise and the fool have faith: faith is not enough. It behooves us, then, to know what is the Father’s will. It behooves us to know what action to take.
The first reading from Isaiah gives us an important clue: “Trust in the Lord forever! For the Lord is an eternal Rock.” When we act, the Lord himself undergirds the action and the faith, even if it’s rough sledding — as we know it can be. Isaiah’s command, repeated throughout all of Scripture, perhaps finds its summation and fulfillment in Jesus’ “Come to me, all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest! Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
If the yoke is not easy and the burden is not light, then it is not the Lord’s, or else we are fighting it.
We have been fighting it from the beginning. The command was simple: “don’t eat that fruit.” Curiosity, vanity, and pride, as well as FOMO (let’s be honest), led to catastrophic consequences. We can say that underlying the entire catastrophe was a lack of trust in the Lord and in the goodness of his command. Undergirding the disobedience was the mistaken belief that God had somehow deprived us of something that was our due, and that we were right to try to take it on our own.
The yoke we assumed, the yoke of sin and death, was and is far heavier than obedience to that simple command. The great French bishop and preacher Jacques Bégnigne Bossuet sees in our creation the image of the Blessed Trinity: “like the Father, man has being; like the Son, he has intelligence; like the Holy Spirit, he has love.” In disobeying, our first parents lost immortality, the infused knowledge of God, and the ability to love disinterestedly. The Trinitarian image of God in man is wounded — mortally so. Peace, power, and purpose were lost to what Matthew Kelly calls “the three-headed inner tyrant — fear, inadequacy, and shame.” Adam and Eve thought they could hide from God, and they thought they needed to. We might scoff at this a little bit, enlightened as we are, but don’t: we think we can hide from God all the time, and we try to.
Still, in that very first conversation after the Fall, God promises Adam and Eve Redemption, by promising a Redeemer. This is the famous Protoevangelium, which we will shortly consider. For now let’s note the consequences of the Fall, the promise of salvation, and Adam and Eve’s acceptance both of the consequences and of the promises. They would struggle for the rest of their lives, and we will struggle, too. But they would struggle in hope, not despair; and we can, too.
In our folly we try to recreate for our own enjoyment the peace, power, and purpose we first possessed, and we go about it all wrong. We seek to live with purpose, so that we have a reason to develop power (because developing power is hard, and so we need a reason), so that in turn we can purchase us peace, the sense of well-being that comes from relative material security, an ability to provide for ourselves, those we love, and those things we care about. But Jesus tells the Apostles after his Resurrection, that first, he gives them peace; then he tells them they will receive power; and then he gives them their purpose — to go to the ends of the earth preaching the Gospel. Everything we need, we receive as gift.
If we are in grace, we already have peace; we already have the power to keep the commands — for “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control” —; and we already have purpose: “whatever you do, do all for the glory of God.” In fulfilling our purpose, we are indeed spreading the Good News to all the world.
Matthew’s Gospel has already given us a series of commands we are meant to obey; the words of today’s Gospel come from the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Perhaps today a re-reading of those chapters will give us the lights we need to make ready the way of the Lord. Why does Jesus insist so adamantly that we obey the commands? Disobedience wrought disaster, and obedience is our way of cooperating with God in its repair. Obedience is also the way we begin first to discover and then to live the peace, power, and purpose we lost in the Fall and which Christ has recovered for us.
Let us make haste for Bethlehem, setting aside anything that hinders the journey. The smile of the Babe’s face will set us free, and as long as we live in the presence of that smile, doing the things that arise as a consequence of it, at the end of our days, we will be greeted with another smile and the words we long to hear, “well done, good and faithful servant: enter into the rest that is prepared for you.”