We have entered the final few days of Advent, which
ends on 24 December with Masses of Christmas Eve and the Christmas Day—which is
actually eight days long. The season of
Advent ends in time, giving way to Christmastide. But the end of Advent—the goal of Advent, its
fulfillment—is in God alone. Advent ends
in God. What is in God never ends in the
sense of passes away. It is and becomes,
and never ceases to be.
Every
creature has an end in time, because we have bodies; but our End is God. Our life’s story ends as the body dies, and
is laid to rest in a cemetery, or at sea, or as ashes buried on a mountainside,
beneath a lonesome pine. The story of
our life, in the sense of a body enlivened by soul, ends in time; but in the mind of God, one is alive
forever. In the One who brought us forth
from nothing, we who lost ourselves in time, find a home forever. What else could be the end of our human
longings, hopes, knowing, loving, but in God?
In
time, Advent blends into Christmas.
Waiting for God is ultimately fulfilled in eternity, but even as we
wait, we do so not in the void of nothing, but in the human condition of
in-between. Into our human lives God is
ever sending Himself forth, living in us and with us. If it were not so, our human lives would be
essentially empty and futile, or rather, nothing at all. All that lives and breathes, and all that
exists, does so in God, not in and for itself.
In every moment of one’s life, God is taking flesh, incarnating
Himself. Christmas shows us the essential
nature of each moment of our lives: God
being with us, in us, and for us. Advent
ends in God beyond time; Christmas is the celebration of God in time: “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among
us.”
Together,
Advent and Christmas mark our human condition as the in-between: the time of longing for God, and the time for
partial completion. Christmas is God’s
gift in time, for time and for eternity; our celebrations of Christmas pass
away in time. And yet, God’s action is
eternal, and the One who becomes flesh in time, is the One who inbreathes each
creature for all eternity. The
inbreathing is not of breath, for non-physical beings do not need breath; God’s
inbreathing is of life, love, wisdom, peace, and joy. All of these we celebrate at Christmas in
time, and share in forever beyond the limits of time in death. The One for whom every being hopes, the One
in whom all beings have their beginning and their blessed end, is the One who
is ever and forever giving Himself freely to each and to all. This is the true gift of Christmas, and it is
for now, for tomorrow, and for ever.
The
One for whom we long and hope is ever the One who is more present, more alive,
more real than we are ourselves. We
beings are the little ones whom the Almighty is ever indwelling. “And when this earthy dwelling turns to
dust,” our home is where it always was:
not here in this passing world, but in the heart and mind of God. So bury the body of your loved one where you
will, and honor the site where his or her life came to its end in time, but
know with wonder and love that the one whom you love is not there, not in that
grave, or confined to ashes and dust in the earth, but is forever in God alone,
where all begins, and all ends, and begins ever afresh.
LORD,
say to my soul, “I AM your salvation.”
