"The days are coming,' declares the LORD, 'when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David's line; he will do what is just and right in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: The LORD Our Righteousness."
What a promise! Jeremiah served the Almighty and ministered to the people of Judah at a time when the glories of David and Solomon were stories of past glory. The kingdom was long divided and Israel to the north had been shattered by the Assyrians. Judah now was on the verge of falling to the armies of Babylon. In the midst of all this bad news comes this prophecy of hope; A righteous ruler will arrive on the scene and Jerusalem will be safe and secure. Many (if not most) today are sensing a similar dread as they skim The Drudge Report or listen to the news. We seem also to be living in a time of despair where our rulers are evil atheists and our enemies are at the gates. Yet the promise made 2,600 years ago is ours to hold onto in Advent. Our deliver is coming! There is hope in Advent!
Almighty God, in your love you gave your servant Nicholas of Myra a perpetual name for deeds of kindness both on land and sea: Grant, we pray, that your Church may never cease to work for the happiness of children, the safety of sailors, the relief of the poor, and the help of those tossed by tempests of doubt or grief; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Very little is known about the life of Nicholas, except that he was the bishop of Myra, on the southwestern coast of Asia Minor in what is now Turkey, and that he suffered torture and imprisonment during the persecution under the Emperor Diocletian. It is possible that he was one of the bishops attending the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325 (though he is not in any of the early lists of bishops present at the Council). Tradition holds that he was a defender of orthodoxy against Arianism. According to one legend, he was censured by the emperor Constantine after he dealt Arius a blow to the head during a session of the Council of Nicaea, his patience having been sorely tried by Arius’ behavior during the Council.
He was honored as a saint in Constantinople by the late sixth century by the Emperor Justinian, who in 580 dedicated a church to Nicholas in that city. His veneration became immensely popular in the West after the supposed removal of his body to Bari, Italy, in the late eleventh century (the three ships in which his relics were brought from Myra to to the seaport of Bari play a role in the Christmas carol, “I saw three ships come sailing in on Christmas Day in the morning”). In England almost 400 churches were dedicated to Nicholas, and there have perhaps been more churches and chapels dedicated to him throughout the world than to any other saint.
Nicholas is famed as the patron of Russia and Greece, the guardian of virgins and poor maidens, the protector of travelers, sailors, and merchants. He is also the patron of many towns and cities, including Bari, Venice, Freiburg, and Galway. In modern times he is perhaps best known as the protector and benefactor of children. One of the best known of the legendary narratives which demonstrate Nicholas’ love for God and for his neighbor is the story of his provision of dowries for three unmarried young women. The story is told that the father did not have money sufficient for their dowries, so on three successive nights Nicholas threw a bag of money through an open window, thus providing dowries for the man’s three daughters and probably saving them from lives of shame and prostitution.
adapted from the Oxford Dictionary of Saints, and the St. Nicholas Center
Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come. It's like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with his assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch. "Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back--whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: 'Watch!'"
Today as we consider Christ's first Advent, we have the luxury of of seeing it in hindsight. In our rear view mirrors, we see a wind-up of three or four millennia before the incarnate Son of God burst upon the human scene. Though this is true and many actions of this Advent were set in motion early on, very few saw it coming and fewer still were proactively waiting its appearance. Outside of shepherds "keeping their folks by night", and saints like Anna and Simeon were all but blind to the baby born in Bethlehem.
In the season Christ's Second Advent, it is also possible for us to have such an earthbound focus that we're lulled into a walking spiritual coma. Its for this reason that our Messiah calls for our spiritual alertness.
"Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the LORD's hand double for all her sins."
I'm coming to see Advent as a season of solemn joy and expectation, a time of "happy seriousness". This is especially true for me in the season of Christ's second advent when I consider that seeing God will be the pinnacle of our existence. Yet at the same time, there will be that reckoning when I stand before him, talents in hand to give my report.
"And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel."
Advent's seeds, though envisioned in the depths of eternity past, were fist scattered in fragrant Eden moments before Adam and Eve were evicted from paradise.
Believing in the omniscience of the Almighty, I have to believe that even in the deepest mists of the cosmic past, the Trinity that saw the coming rebellion of angels saw that the the chief usurper Lucifer successfully entice our first parents. With this knowledge, They already had a plan to pay the price for the couple's disobedience and redeem humanity from the dark night of eternal death. Which brings us back to this promise in Genesis 3.
Our first parents, standing in the presence of deity and feebly trying to hide behind irritating fig leaves have not only lost their home, but were silently beginning to die. Yet in this, Eve was promised that one of her progeny would face down the progeny of this serpent, defeating it once and for all.
Mel Gibson gave us a powerful, albeit extra-biblical, image of this encounter in his "The Passion of the Christ". In this, Jesus after encountering a viper in Gethsemane, stomps its head and destroys it. The true encounter would occur some hours later on the brutal Roman cross.
ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.
In spite of the yard displays that are visible from space, the plethora of pre-christmas sales and the like, it isn't Christmas. No, its Advent. Its the first season on the Church Calendar and that period where the Christians consider the three comings of Christ. These being His first coming to a foul stable on a cold night in Bethlehem, His coming into the lives of all who fall at his feet in repentance, and that final coming when He'll break onto the world's scene suddenly and finally.
