Day: December 12, 2021

“Thy word is a lantern unto my feet, / and a light unto my path”

Strange as it may seem our Advent text from the psalms is even more appropriate for the Third Sunday in Advent. The readings for this Sunday highlight two interrelated themes which challenge us in very direct and important ways. First, we are being called to account about our faithfulness, especially the faithfulness of the ministry. Have we been “ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God”? Secondly, we recall the ministry of John the Baptist as attested to by Jesus in a series of repeated questions which underscore his significance and place in the economy of salvation. The questions of Jesus about John the Baptist highlight the darkness of our world and the idea that Advent brings light to our darkness, not the least of which is the uncovering of the things which in human pride and perversity we would like to keep hidden, if not from one another, then from God. Yet the light of Advent is greater than the darkness of the world; a point which finds its fullest expression in the great Christmas Gospel. “The light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended (or overcame)  it not.”

The Gospel is very much about the witness of Christ to the witness of John. John points us to Jesus while Jesus points us to John. Can anything better be said and suggested than this interplay of the twin themes of repentance and rejoicing?

In our parish teaching programme this Advent, we are focusing on the Advent saints of Andrew and Thomas whose feast days formally complement and, to some extent, frame the Advent season. Without taking away from their symbolic and theological significance, the greater saints of Advent, to whom they would readily defer, are John the Baptist and the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Advent mantra, par excellence, is “repent ye for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” To be sure, but that reaches its highest expression in the Angel Gabriel’s salutation to Mary, “hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee”, remembered in the Advent Ember Days this week. And while Mary is “troubled at this saying, cast[ing] in her mind what manner of salutation this should be”, it signals the note of profound joy heard and felt in the ancient introit for this day which, in turn, is the Epistle for the Fourth Sunday in Advent. “Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again, I say, rejoice.” Hence this Sunday is sometimes known as “Gaudete Sunday,” meaning rejoice.

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