20 December 2006

Homily for Advent Vespers

[Text: Isaiah 40:1-11]

A voice said: “Cry!”

But the prophet is weary. He doesn’t see the point anymore. He says to the voice: “What shall I cry? All flesh is grass and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows upon it. Surely the people are grass.”

Which is to say: “What’s the point of prophesying? We’re all dying. Everyone of us. We grow old and we fade, whatever beauty there is in a human being time will wipe away. What’s the point, then? We’re dying.

And most shocking of all is when Isaiah adds: “When the breath of the Lord blows upon it.” Remember in Genesis 2 – the breath of God is what gave life. When God breathed into Adam’s nostrils he became a living being. But the life that is in God’s breath, in His Spirit, that is the life that Adam and all his descendents have rejected. God told them: “In the day you eat of it, you will die.” And so death came into the human race at its very head and spread downward with each generation doomed to the same futility of being born only to die; of being given a taste of life, only to have it snatched away. “Surely the people are grass.”

God’s breath from the fall of Adam and Eve is the breath of the All Holy One, whose holiness we do not share, and whose holiness is on our sinful flesh like a fire upon dry grass. And yet only in His breath, only in Him, is life. What a sad case we are in when Life itself destroys us. But that is what sin does to us.

But despite these melancholy thoughts of Isaiah, the Lord is not done speaking with him. The voice speaks yet again: “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever.”

What do you hear when you hear “Word of our God”? I suggest if you want to hear it aright, you need to visit John’s Gospel and remember how it starts: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And then a few verses later: “And the Word became flesh.”

The Word that stands forever in a life that never ends joins Himself to human flesh, takes from Blessed Mary’s womb a mass of humanity and makes it His very own. This is how humanity will be saved. He will take that which withers and fades under the breath of God, and yet in Him it will not wither and fade because that flesh is now joined to the Word of God who stands forever. United to that Eternal Word, our flesh upon His cross endures the blast of divine breath, the holiness of God that wipes out human sin. But here is the great joy! What would have destroyed us, does not destroy Him. Because He cannot be destroyed, being at once true man AND true God.

The result is that when the cross is finished, human flesh, OUR flesh, is raised from the dead NEVER to die again. Made absolutely incorruptible. He took our death into Himself and death itself was defeated when it encountered in His flesh, the Life that cannot end. He took our sins into Himself, and sin was burned right out of His flesh by the fire of divine holiness. And yet the flesh lives! For it is joined to the eternal Word of God.

And this is the Good News, then, that Isaiah announces to the cities of Judah! “Behold, your God!” Yes, you heard right. Behold your God. See Him! He is now IN human flesh, visible to your eyes, run to Bethlehem’s manger and look upon Him. He has come to be Your shepherd, to gently carry the young in his arms. The One who would have destroyed us in His sheer holiness, and apart from whom we were all dead and dying, found the most marvelous way to draw near to us and come to us without destroying us, instead, drawing near to us as LIFE.

“Behold, your God!” indeed, in the arms of the Virgin, asleep in the manger, wrapped in the swaddling clothes of poverty. How near can God get to us? He can’t get any nearer than showing up INSIDE our own flesh. Come to destroy the effects of sin, to wipe out death, to give into our “fading” flesh His undying LIFE! Now that IS something to cry aloud from the mountaintops - and not just to Judah, but to all the earth.

Glory to You, Lord Jesus Christ! Glory to You!

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