Bound in Love

In the 1950s musical West Side Story, the lead character Tony sings a song called “Something’s Coming” which shares the sense of excited expectation we should have on the fourth Sunday of Advent. Tony sings, “Something’s coming, something good. Something’s coming, I don’t know what it is but it’s going to be great.” Here in the last days of Advent, we know what is coming, and we know it is going to be great. Jesus is coming.

The whole season of Advent is to prepare us for the coming of Jesus. The word “advent” means “coming.” The readings from the first Sundays of Advent focused on the coming of Jesus as Judge at the end of time. The readings last Sunday were about John the Baptist heralding the coming of one who was much mightier than him. And today’s reading is the conversation between the archangel Gabriel and Mary announcing how God would become incarnate and be named Jesus.

All this week, the verses said before Mary’s song during Evening prayer have been Old Testament titles for Jesus, the coming Messiah. The Church in its evening prayer has spent the week longing for the coming Christ. These are known as the “O antiphons” because they all start with the word, “Oh.” While we might not pray the O antiphons during Evening Prayer this week, we probably know them because they are the verses to the familiar Advent hymn, “Oh Come, Oh Come Emmanuel.”

The coming messiah is “O wisdom from on high.” He is O Adonai, the leader of the House of Israel, who will extend his right arm to redeem us. He is O radix, the root of Jesse’s stem, to whom all the nations will pray. He is O Key of David, the one who opens and shuts the door and leads us from darkness to light. He is the light, the bright Morning Star that pierces the darkness, and he is O King of Nations who will save the human race he fashioned from clay. He is God with Us: Emmanuel, the hope of the nations.

Jesus is the hope of the nations because he is the answer to our questions and the source of our solutions. He is coming at Christmas with the innocent arms of a baby. He is the beautiful baby born in a manger surrounded by shepherds who heard the angels singing. The incarnation is the happy birth of the savior. The name Jesus means, “God saves.” Unto us a savior has been born.

The savior’s saving act is not the incarnation. The son was given to us by our loving Father to right the wrong we did in the Garden of Eden at the dawn of time. We turned away from God, and we were never able to turn all the way back by our own power. So God sent his Son to turn us to our Father. Jesus stretched out his little arms as a babe in the manger, and he will stretch out those same arms as a grown man on the Cross of Good Friday because he loves us. The Son is Love personified, he is the sacrificial lamb. A lamb should be born in a manger, and Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Our Christmas joy should be joy at the happy birth in Bethlehem of a healthy boy. Our Christmas joy is also the joy of the Paschal Mystery. Jesus comes on Christmas morning to make Good Friday good. Jesus comes at Christmas in his humanity to die on Good Friday and rise on Easter morning. It is all one coming. It is all one Advent.

Our Christmas and Paschal joy should remain in our hearts, for Jesus comes to us there as well. Our hearts are where our prayers come from. In naming the source of prayer, Scripture speaks most often of the heart. The Catechism explains that the heart is our hidden center, that place beyond the grasp of our reason and of others. Only God can fully know the human heart. The heart is the place of decision, the place of truth, the place of encounter with God. Our English word ‘core’ comes from the Latin word for heart, which is ‘cor.’

Advent is therefore a time of preparing for God to come in at least three ways. He comes as a baby, the Word made Flesh, born of Mary and raised in the family of Joseph the carpenter. He comes as the Christ, anointed by God to save all the nations. He comes as our savior into our hearts so that we will know him in the dwelling place where we truly are.

In this Advent season, let us open our innermost selves to receive our God and Savior who wants more than anything to be the God of our hearts. Our God does not want to be remote from us. He wants to be God with us, Emmanuel. He yearns for us to open our hidden center where we make decisions and embrace truth. This is the greatest Christmas present of all. Open it.