Mark 13: 33-37

As I speak, and as you listen, the final coming of the Lord Jesus gets closer. In reality, Advent is not a passing season of our earthly sojourn: it is the definitive appearance of Jesus as Judge of history and of mankind.  Advent does not mean “our preparation”, but “His coming.”

Still and all, one might wonder how it is possible that, even now, he hears the prayer of everyone who calls on him in a given moment. Must it not mean that he is already close, very close to us all?

If that is so, how can we speak of his coming closer still, of his Advent, of his final coming?

In catechism class we learnt that God is everywhere, but that he is present in different ways: his presence in a glorious sunset is not his presence in the gurgling smile of a baby. His presence in the human conscience is not his presence in the Blessed Sacrament.

If you like, there are grades, degrees or colors of his presence, like a great mosaic of presence, the greatest of them being, in our era, his substantial presence in the Holy Eucharist.

These forms of his presence are never like the presence of inanimate objects. His presence is not a phenomenon like the wind, coming and going in heedless anonymity.

His presence is always a personal presence: he is present as someone knocking on the door, seeking to be acknowledged and welcomed by the presence of other persons, that is, by you and me.

Unobtrusive he may be, but still he longs for our attention. As a lover seeks the attention of the beloved, the Lord is unceasingly trying to attract us to himself. He abhors loneliness and so seeks to engage our company, our conversation, our curiosity, our love.

We can mistake his silence for his absence: but God can no more be absent than a square can be a circle.

Still, he can be silent.

He is silent when our lives ignore or reject his presence, just as he was silent before those who mocked him and despised his love. He is silent when we would manipulate his presence only to satisfy some passing crisis and then again shut him out of our hearts.

Therefore, he can -ever so reluctantly- be silent, but he can never be absent, for if he were absent he would not be the Lord – he would simply not be at all.

We may complain with the prophet Isaiah. Why, then, if he is present, does he let us sin? Why does he let us harden our hearts to himself? Why does he not stop the tsunami, the terrorism, the hunger, the wars? Why does he not “tear open the heavens and come down”?

The experience of our misery makes us cry out with anger to God: if you are so present, then why do you seem so absent? These cries may seem justified, but in truth they are faithless and ungrateful.

For God only seems absent to the one who has in fact absented himself from God. God gave us freedom to walk with him in the cool breeze of Eden, but we chose to wander the earth far from him like Cain in murderous anger.

If individually and socially we live our lives practically ignoring the Lord’s presence by our sins, how can it be right that we then blame God for the evils our sins bring about?

The disorder we find in the world is not the work of the Creator who created everything and “found it very good.” It is the work of our own hands, of our own godless freedom, of our own absence from God.

The sinner lives in a dream world fantasizing that things are the way his egoism would like. Such deception, however, causes chaos, not in his dreams, but in the real world.

The sinner is like the sleep-walker who dreams he can fly, but in reality crashes to the ground. Similarly, the sinner awakens from sin to the nightmare of reality, and realizes that the magical fascination of evil has in fact wreaked havoc in and around him.

The Lord does not live in our dreams. He lives in our waking reality, and the real evil we do makes him ominously silent. He withdraws, as it were, from the center of our lives and stands on their edge, knowing he is not welcome.

Once he did tear open the heavens and came down to die for all, for the forgiveness of sins so that we might live in his presence. He slept in death that we might awaken from our sinful dreaming and live for ever in his presence.

He will come again, not to die, not to forgive, but to judge. Those who in this era have stayed awake in his presence by loving and living in the reality of his forgiveness will go with him to the Father’s house.

Those who have preferred to sleep in their own illusions of happiness and grandeur will continue their sleep into the definitive absence from his presence. For them, his silence will indeed eventually become his absence.

The Christ who is coming, then, is not Christ the child, but Christ the Judge.

In his mercy, Jesus, in our Gospel Reading today, gives us advanced warning of what he will expect of us: that we be alert, awake in doing good, in repenting of sin, in keeping our feet firmly planted in the reality of his manifold forms of presence, focusing and shaping our entire lives towards the expectation of his final coming.

That coming will involve a transformation of all the forms of presence by which we now know him to be with us. Then, his presence will not be implicit and hidden, but explicit and manifest. The dark glass through which we now see him will be shattered and we shall see him face to face, to our shame or to our glory.

When he comes, there will be no more Eucharist or Bible, no more sacraments or Pope or ecclesiastical trappings. While these things are necessary in this era, they will fade into oblivion in the face of the blazing glory of his presence.

When he comes in glory to judge the living and the dead, the time for repentance will be over and each of us will be revealed before him and before one another in the full truth of our being. His presence will light up with total transparency the heart of every human being.

There will be no more secrets, no more places to hide, no more excuses.

Then, some will wish they had lived as the Gospel readings taught them, Sunday after Sunday, year after year. Others will be confounded by their own stupidity and vanity.

Hopefully, the vast majority will be able to rejoice in the good they have done by his grace and will experience the full embrace of his divinity in their very bones.

This selfsame Jesus is substantially present in the tabernacle of every Catholic Church. He anticipates his final coming at every Mass when we receive the consecrated host and wine.

Given the reality of his presence here, one must ask the question: Are we truly making the best use of our time? Should not our lives be lived as if focused on the tabernacle, as the Muslims live their lives focused on Mecca?

What has happened to our sense of urgency that we do not come and spend some time with him during the week? Is he likely to turn us away when we come to him with love and earnest faith with our problems and our hopes?

Let us not then ask, “Where is he?” when we know very well that he is here before us in humility and tenderness.

And why wait for the Last Day for judgment when, in confessing your sins to the priest, Jesus already anticipates that judgment by absolving you from those sins?

Have your sins absolved now lest your judgment then shame you in the face of all humanity and in the sight of God.

My brother and sisters, it is not Jesus who must tear open the heavens and come down: it is we who must tear open our hearts and our minds for him before our sins destroy them.

This Advent, let us awaken our whole being to the ever closer presence of the Judge and be filled, while we still have time, with the glory and the majesty of his saving love.

Msgr. Peter Magee

Sunday, November 27^th, 2005

Annunciation, DC: 11.30 am