“Be watchful! Be alert!
You do not know when the time will come…
One of the great highlights in my life as a priest was my involvement with the 1987 Second Pastoral Visit of Pope St. John Paul II to the United States. As part of the preparation for this historic event, liturgical composers here in our Country were commissioned to write special music for the liturgical celebrations that were a center-piece of the visit.
Together with On Eagles Wings by the American priest composer, Jan Michael Joncas, there is probably no more beloved or familiar hymn than, I am the Bread of Life, by Sr. Suzanne Toolan. A less well-known hymn that she was commissioned to compose for the 1987 Pastoral Visit of His Holiness, is the hymn, Jesus Christ, Yesterday, Today and Forever.
I mention this moving hymn today as the Church enters a new liturgical year with this First Sunday of Advent, because in the simplicity of this refrain, we have captured the entire theology of the Advent Season.
This season of hope and promise has three temporal dimensions, past, present and future upon which the eyes of our heart are to be focused. We remember with gratitude the longing of our ancestors in the faith for that moment promised to them by God when the Lord would break into history itself and reveal the fulness of his presence in the one we call, Emmanuel – God is with us.
Yet, Advent is no mere experience of nostalgia, wedded solely to the past. We remember the present moment of our lives when the God of unfailing mercy and love continues to break into our lives sacramentally in the Church that is his living Body today.
While we cherish that divine presence in the present moment of our lives, Advent calls us to look to the future – to be watchful and alert -for when the Lord of all Creation will come again – to judge the living and the dead – and to transform all of created reality in his great Second Coming.
Past, Present and Future. We remember the past with gratitude. We celebrate the present with hearts filled with faith and love. We look forward to the future coming of the Lord with Hope. Jesus Christ, Yesterday, Today and Forever!