COMMENTARY ON THE LITURGY OF THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Collect
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 thy 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 liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.
O Lord, raise up, we pray thee, thy power, and come among us, and with great might succour us; that whereas, through our sins and wickedness, we are sore let and hindered in running the race that is set before us, thy bountiful grace and mercy may speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost, be honour and glory, world without end. Amen.
Readings
Fil 4,4-7; Jn 1,19-28
"It is He who, coming after me, is preferred before me" (Jn 1,27). The reason for our hope is contained in these words of John the Baptist. God precedes us in giving us his salvation.
The Collect of the fourth week of Advent recalls the second letter of St. Paul to Timothy, written from his imprisonment, in the awareness of imminent death: «I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day" (2 Tim 4,7-8). But as this liturgical prayer reminds us, running can be extremely tiring, and can be not without stumbling blocks, sometimes ruinous falls, due to sin and our weakness. The Lord, however, comes to meet us, with his grace and his mercy.
From the very first act of distancing from the Creator we see in the book of Genesis a God who seeks his creature, calling her through the garden: "Where are you?" (Gen 3,9). Even after the departure of man from Eden, God speaks to the patriarchs, as to Jacob, in the dream of the ladder by which the angels ascend and descend from heaven. Here God promises him "I am with you and will protect you wherever you go... I will not abandon you" (Gen 28,15).
Advent and Christmas season are the time when we are most called to recognize the presence of God among us. Paul's letter to the Philippians describes the wonderful exchange of natures that takes place in the mystery of the Incarnation. An ascending and descending circular dynamic, just like that of the angels on Jacob's ladder. For this reason the ancient Christian literature, in the East, speaks of theosis and kenosis, divinization and dispossession: divinization of man, through the dispossession of God. The apostle Paul affirms this with eloquent words: "Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it a robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross" (Fil 2,5-8). There is a deep connection between the incarnation and the passion.
God stripped himself, assuming our nature, our misery, so that there could no longer be any region of the human being classifiable as a foreign land, "without God". In order for all the distinctions between "sacred" and "profane" to be skipped. So that each of us could exclaim, like Jacob, awakened from his prophetic dream in a foreign land: "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it" (Gen 28,16). Let us wake up from sleep, then, and recognize the God who has come to dwell among us.
- Rev. Dr. Luca Vona
