Loading...“That we may without shame or fear rejoice to behold His appearing.”
These amazing words will be repeated at every Eucharist we celebrate during this Advent season. It is a theologically packed, gospel-filled liturgical prayer.
The assumptions are staggering! The one who sprints towards His creation, crossing the finish line as he passes through Mary’s womb, has such passion for this world that he will not abandon it. It remains so much the object of His deep regard that He has promised a “rendezvous” with the object of His consuming love.
How do we prepare? I think the answer is both profound and simple: by loving what He loved and loving as He loved.
What He loved is this world described in one of our Eucharistic prayers as “this fragile Earth our island home.” This earth in its fragility is adored and visited in a costly embrace. As we work for environmental sustainability and an equitable and just health care system, as we engage the constant battle against hunger and deprivation at home and far away, we continue His project of bringing wholeness and hope to a loved yet fragile world.
As we share the faith that is within us – faith in the love that sprints towards us and holds us first in an embrace stronger than death, we will meet Him in those desperate to hear a message of hope and salvation.
We will meet and we will greet Him in the “Holy remembering” of the manger , and we will meet and we will greet Him in those who depend on our clear understanding that to care for one of the least is to care for Him.
We may meet Him if this is the year of the great consummation of all human history, and if that turns out to be delayed a bit longer as some say “If Jesus tarry,” we will meet Him in the bread and wine, in the Habitat for Humanity team and the mission group, or we may meet Him at the bedside of one who is closer than we might be to a “face meeting a longed for face” at the end of a human life.
If we have shared to the best of our ability the passion that races towards a wounded and wounding world, then rejoicing will trump fear now and in the moments to come. +Ted
