PaddlingPadre

In days to come, the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills, and all nations shall stream toward it. So speaks the prophet Isaiah in our first reading, and if we would understand this prophecy rightly, we must first understand what it is to which the prophet is referring. The mountain of the Lord’s house, of course, is Mount Zion in Jerusalem, the mountain, or to be more honest, the hill, upon which the Temple was constructed, where the presence of God mysteriously dwelt. This mountain, or, again, this hill, is rather modest. You can see far taller mountains in the distance when you’re driving down Cedar Bluff. But the prophet’s point is not that this mountain will be raised physically higher than these mountains – a new Everest is not going to erupt from Jerusalem – but instead, Mount Zion, the mountain of the Lord’s presence, will, because of the Lord’s presence there, be exalted far above all other mountains, and it will be recognized as such by all the nations, who will subsequently stream towards it saying, “Come, let us climb the LORD’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.”

Now the perplexing thing in this is that in Isaiah’s day, God was already thought to dwell on Mount Zion, and so surely the mountain was already for that reason exalted above all other mountains, and so we may wonder why Isaiah speaks of this exaltation as a future event. The answer, as with so much of Old Testament prophecy, lies with Christ, for in him, the Incarnate Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the presence of God comes to dwell among us in a way far surpassing that mysterious presence of God in the Temple that was merely a prefigurement of Christ’s advent (for which reason the Temple, in accordance with Jesus’s warnings, is destroyed as something obsolete once Christ has come). And so if the Temple, which was merely a foreshadowing of the reality that has come in Christ Jesus, was so great as to elevate the mountain upon which it sat above all the mountains on the earth, then how much higher and greater is the mountain upon which our Lord was lifted up, upon which he won for us our salvation in an act which is mystically made present to us at every mass? For thusly is the vision of Isaiah fulfilled: all nations come streaming to Calvary to behold their crucified savior, to walk in his paths and be instructed in his ways.

And indeed, this a vision that we help to make real through our presence here. For few of us, I imagine, belong to Israel according to the flesh. For most of us, our fathers, in ignorance and superstition, worshiped mute and worthless idols, or elemental powers, or even demons. And yet, Christ, once he was exalted on the cross, drew our ancestors to himself, such that we, their descendants, who have in our turn been drawn to him, worship now the one true God of heaven and earth in spirit and in truth, offering him the worship that he himself enables us to offer in this eucharist, which alone is fitting and pleasing to his majesty.

But more than this, or, rather, because of this, there is a personal element at play. For this eucharistic liturgy does not remain something extrinsic, but rather it reaches to our very hearts – we receive the body and blood of Christ and are transformed by the reception, and in a way that involves some urgency. For this is the reason that Christ left the eucharist as the sacrament of his body and blood: that by receiving him sacramentally, we might be transformed to be like him. It is this transformation, this sanctification, this deification, that constitutes the salvation which Christ won for us, that constitutes the way in which we are to be instructed and the path in which we must walk.

 And so, in fulfillment of Isaiah’s words, if we are truly to walk in that path and be instructed in that way, then we must become like Christ, we must take up our cross daily, loving with a sacrificial, self-emptying love, and be crucified with him.

And, again, there is an urgency to this work of transformation, because the time allotted for it, the time in which we might heed this invitation of Christ to take up his yoke and follow after him, is grown short, and every day it grows shorter. For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed; the night is advanced, the day is at hand. It is for this reason that the Church gives us Advent as a season of penance, for now, more than any other time of year, it is given us to contemplate the truth that Christ will come again, that the day will come when his glory will tower over every mountain and hill, and the wicked will cry out to the rocks “Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb.” And so, if we would not join in that despairing cry, but rather rejoice on the day when the Lord comes, then we must throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.

For as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. If the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into. So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.

No, we do not know on which day our Lord will come, whether it will be this very day or in another thousand years, but we do know that no generation of Christians has ever lived as close to that day as we do now, and that every passing moment brings us closer to that moment of judgement, whether it be on that final glorious day for which we hope, or else on that day when our own earthly dwelling returns to dust.

And so, how great is the urgency to prepare for the coming of Christ! The season of Advent is for this purpose, for we prepare not so much for the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, which in any case has already happened, but for that future coming which is unknown and yet assured.

As an aid in this, there are many opportunities here at All Saints for entering more intensely into this preparation, and I encourage you to take a bulletin and avail yourselves of those opportunities. In particular, I would direct your attention to our expanded confession schedule, and would encourage each and every one of you to make a good confession during this Advent season, especially if it’s been a while, for how can we prepare for Christ’s coming if we ourselves are weighed down by sin?

For now is the hour for you to awake from sleep. Jesus Christ is coming, and when he comes may he find us awake and waiting, so that we might rejoice with him on that day of glory.