Understanding our Faith

Advent: ‘Until he comes’

As mentioned briefly last week in this series of articles, what Jesus came to do is as yet incomplete. Everything we do, we do ‘until he comes’, as we say frequently at Mass.

In some ways we have neglected this aspect of our Christian faith. Probably because the biblical language in which Jesus’ final coming is expressed seems rather indecipherable to us. This language is called apocalyptic language. It is an imaginative language in which the biblical authors express what they think will happen when God brings everything to a close. It is indeed imaginative language used to project on to the future the certainty that God will be ultimately victorious. 

Fundamentally what the Lord Jesus came to do is unfinished. Why unfinished? Because he was rejected and his way of seeing things and doing things was set aside and considered of no use. 

This did not cause the first Christians to set aside their conviction that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, the One anointed by God to come among human beings. So, we are in this ‘in-between’ time, this time when Jesus has already come but his work is incomplete. 

This Jesus has not left us as orphans however. His promise is that he will be with us as he promises in the very last verse of St Matthew’s gospel: ‘I will be with you always, even to the end of the world’.

Jesus keeps coming to us and among us. Do you notice that at Mass we refer to him as ‘he who comes in the name of the Lord’ (during the Holy, Holy). He is always coming to us and gives that coming form in the Eucharist, in his words that we keep listening to, in the gathering of his faithful people at Mass. That people who are, as St Paul tells us, his body. He comes to us in moments of our lives when our faith and Christian conviction are strengthened. He seeks to come in people and events in which we can see the echo of his words and his ways. 

And so, we keep praying that he will keep coming and instil his presence more firmly among us. Advent constantly calls us to be alert and watching for the moments of his coming. And ultimately, as one of the Advent prayers says, we are called to be alert and watching when he calls us to his side and welcomes us into the kingdom of heaven.

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin