Day: December 11, 2022

“Art thou he that should come?”

The questioning of John the Baptist about Jesus as the Messiah is complemented by Mary’s questioning about the Annunciation to her which is about Christ’s conception. “The Lord is with thee” the Angel Gabriel said. “Art thou he that should come or do we look for another?” John asks in prison, sending two of his disciples to Jesus. Mary, as we will hear in this week’s Advent Ember Days, “was troubled at the Angel’s saying” wondering “what manner of salutation this should be”. It leads to her question recalled in the great pageant of Advent Lessons and Carols, “how shall this be seeing I know not a man?”

These questions highlight Advent as the season of questions opening us out to the kingdom of God and reminding us of the darkness of doubt and uncertainty. John the Baptist and Mary are the outstanding figures of the landscape of Advent. Their questions point us to the radical meaning of the coming of God’s Word in judgment and hope, in grace and salvation, in Word and Sacrament, and, ultimately, as the Word made flesh. That coming is at once in the body and in the mind. Holding the intellectual and the sensible together in creative tension is the meaning of faith: “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11.1). By way of John the Baptist and Mary we learn about the nature of our spiritual lives in faith. It is very much fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding. And that requires repentance and rejoicing. Such is the witness of John the Baptist and Mary.

And such are the spiritual principles that define our souls in the pageant of Advent. “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”. “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel”, the refrain of the Veni Emmanuel exults, echoing the Introit Psalm for this Sunday, “Rejoice in the Lord”. But how? Through Mary. Only so is Christ “Emmanuel”, God with us who comes in the very substance of our humanity as the Word made flesh. Yet only so through Mary’s ‘yes’ to God, her strong affirmation of what defines faith: “Be it unto me according to thy word”. Mary’s Magnificat belongs to the high note of rejoicing on this Sunday known traditionally as Gaudate Sunday, one of the Latin words for rejoice. We repent with John the Baptist in looking towards and learning about the need for a Saviour. We rejoice with Mary in the mysteries of God’s coming to us. Both belong to the ministry of the Church in preparing and making ready God’s way to us and in us. How?

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