Opening Prayer:
The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us – Romans 8:18
Lord, as You taught us to pray together:
Our Father Who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily Bread;
And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Amen.
Upcoming major holy days: We are in Week 3 of Advent. Christmas Dec 25. Octave of Christmas Dec 25 to Jan 1.
Octave: Dec 25 Christmas, Dec 28 Feast of Holy Innocents, Dec 29 Feast of Holy Family, Jan 1 Mary, Mother of God
TODAY: Because this is the last class of the month, all of our topics today center around the Coming of the Lord.
· Reading for the 4th Sunday in Advent (12/22) – Mary visits Elizabeth, Luke 1:39-45
· Advent Reflection #1: A Deeper Meaning of Bethlehem
· Advent Reflection #1: The New Heaven and New Earth
Quote of the Week:
As humans we tend to focus on the immediate. Yet all the while, God is orchestrating the entirety of our lives, using specific details, specific people, specific circumstances, specific words. We tend to look at one piece of the puzzle, while God sees the whole puzzle as well as the detailed graphics within each piece. We see things in black and white, while God sees the panorama of the entire color spectrum. – Tim Elmore, author, speaker, CEO of growingleaders.com.
Sunday’s Reading – (12/22) Luke 1:39-45 – The Visitation
Context: The visitation of Mary to Elizabeth was a journey from Nazareth to the hill country of Judea (near Jerusalem). Although our reading today only makes a brief reference to the trip, it is worth noting that it was about 70 miles as the crow flies. However, since Mary would have avoided Samaria and traveled south along the Jordan River, it would have been more like 90 miles. If she walked 30 miles a day (pregnant!), it would have taken her 3 days. Also note that the last 10-15 miles of the journey – from the Jordan River to Elizabeth & Zachariah’s house – would have been uphill and hilly/rocky.
Luke 1:39-45
Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariahand greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said,
“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy.
Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”
Exegesis – things of note:
Haste. Why?
- To share her own news.
- Gabriel told her the news about Elizabeth who was very old. Stunning news, her own interest and curiosity.
- To serve. Elizabeth was elderly and already 6 months pregnant.
- Her whole journey (3 days?) must have been full of wonder and anxiety.
Elizabeth’s reaction. What was noteworthy?
- Mary is often downplayed but not that the baby’s reaction is to hearing Mary’s voice.
- Elizabeth didn’t know about Mary’s pregnancy so clearly she was inspired with the news by the HS and screamed...
- Blessed are you (Mary!) and blessed is the fruit of your womb (recognize the Hail Mary words?).
- How is it the mother of my LORD (God) should come to me? – again, Mary.
- Blessed are you who believed! At the end of the day, it was Mary’s FAITH in God and then ACTION (cooperation, her “yes”).
- That is the example for all of us. Faith, then cooperation-action.
Advent… Given the season and the fact that we won’t be meeting the next two Tuesdays (Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve), it seemed like a good time to reflect on the Nativity scene in Bethlehem. Since God injects infinite meaning and symbolism into Scripture and into our lives, let’s see what we can find in Jesus’ Nativity.
Reflection #1: What does Bethlehem and the Last Supper have in common?
1. In the Holy Land, the Nativity scene is set in a cave, since the belief is that this was the traditional setting, not a wooden stable. What might be the symbolism a cave in the life of Jesus?
- Jesus’ tomb was also in a cave.
- Jesus’ purpose of being born was to die for us.
2. Mary wrapped Jesus in swaddling clothes (actually, “strips of cloth”). What does this remind us of?
- Jesus was wrapped in a similar way with burial cloths.
- The Magi also brought Jesus gifts, including myrrh. Myrrh was for anointing the dead.
3. The animals. An amazing quote from Isaiah 1:
“The ox knows its master, the donkey it’s owner’s manger, but Israel does not know. My people do not understand.” – Isaiah 1:3
Have you ever seen a Nativity Scene? Jesus is in an animal stable. The animals know him but Herod and the Temple priests don’t. They refuse to recognize the truth that has come to them. Who comes to Jesus? The lowly shepherds. Lowly means humble. We cannot recognize him from positions of arrogance. Even when the Magi come to Jerusalem and inform them about the Messiah, they will not recognize him. The Gentile Magi did because they humbled themselves before him. Later, when Jesus comes to them to forgive, heal, raise the dead, and calm storms, they refuse to recognize him.
4. Jesus was laid in a manger. The manger was a feeding trough. What might this symbolize?
- Jesus was meant to be food for humanity.
- “Truly, truly I say to you… he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day.” – John 6:54
- The Nativity scene is a sacrificial altar, a burial tomb, and a Passover Meal-Last Supper all wrapped into one.
5. Notice that Jesus didn’t ask the apostles to eat his human body that would be taken down from the cross; rather, they are told to eat the bread at the Last Supper into which he miraculously puts himself:
“This (bread) is my body, which is given up for you.” – Luke 22:19
“I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh!” – John 6:51
6. What is the meaning of Bethlehem?
- Bethlehem means “House of Bread.”
7. The Heart of the Bread.
Bread is the most basic food in the world and it was the essential food of the poor. We know how much Jesus lived and taught humility, right? Here again, we see him empty himself into the simplest form of food to give himself to us. This is why the Eucharist is simple. It is not Thick-cut Artisan Sourdough topped with Olive Oil, Rosemary, and Himalayan Sea Salt. It is plain, humble-nothing bread; this is the bread Jesus uses to renew, reinvent, and sanctify humans.
Conclusion
The death on the cross was necessary for the forgiveness of our sins, but it is the transformed bread of the Eucharist that points us to the love of God. The sharing of Himself with humans is the meaning of “Communion.”
Reflection #2: Joy. A New Heaven and New Earth.
At this midpoint in the season, we stand teetering between a fuller engagement of the real purpose of Advent or getting swept away in the usual overwhelming material preparations. Our reflection invites everyone to pause in the midst of this onrush of activity and breathe deeply. The material celebrations of Christmas come and go each year, but the deeper reason for it all does not. They are meant to plant roots, and water last year’s roots, as we become a Tree of Life. If we allow the depth of Advent seep into the core of our hearts, we can find ourselves freed to prepare more intentionally in the weeks ahead to be the Christians we are called to be and celebrate more fully with our family and friends.
The Second Advent
We discussed in the Book of Revelation that there will be a great tribulation before Jesus comes the second time and destroys all evil. This will usher in Judgment Day and all the follows. Since we won’t meet again until January 7, I wanted to make sure we discussed what the JOY of Adent is all about. It’s about what comes after Judgment Day. So let’s move quickly through Judgment Day so we can discuss what comes next.
When is the Second Coming of Christ and Judgment Day?
It could happen next week, next year, or the next millennium – as Jesus said, only God knows (Mk 13:32). But it is also tied to our individual deaths since time changes after that. A thousand years could be like a day (2 Peter 3:8). And what Jesus says about our own deaths is that it comes like a thief in the night, so just be ready all the time. You can’t change your choices then! As for being ready, that is exactly what you are all doing here, since talking about God, learning about His will for us, and engaging Him in our daily lives, is what being ready is about.
How will we be judged?
By our relationship with God. For instance, when we commit murder or other mortal sins, we fall out of relationship with God (although even these can be forgiven). Heaven is a state of being in relationship with God; therefore we need to have a relationship with Him to enter.
What is a relationship with God? Jesus not only defined this but showed us what it was when He was here.
1. Certainly it is prayer, for prayer is an elevated form of communication, and one can’t have a relationship without communications. Jesus prayed often himself and also taught us how to pray.
2. Certainly it is forgiveness, for that is the reason Jesus came here and died on the cross. But we must ask for it. Like love, forgiveness isn’t a one-off. We should seek forgiveness continually, for this is what opens us up to God’s grace and wisdom. We should make them as common as we say, “I’m sorry” to people in our everyday lives.
Equal to seeking our own forgiveness is our willingness to forgive others. Jesus links these together so we can’t have one without the other. If this is tough, remember that praying for your enemy is an act of love/forgiveness.
3. Finally, it is love of neighbor. And since love is a verb, it means action is required. When the apostles asked how to get to heaven, Jesus gave them a list of charitable examples/actions (Mt. 25:35-40), saying when you do these for the least of our brothers, we do them for Him. Our best actions are measured by their inconvenience vs convenience. The wealthy Pharisees putting a lot of money in the Temple treasury represented convenience. It didn’t really cost them. The widow who put in a penny was the hero; the point being it cost her. And we are not just talking money.
On Judgement Day, our bodies are resurrected and glorified. Then we will enter the New Heaven and New Earth. The Bible describes it this way because everything God does for us involves both body and spirit. If the material wasn’t important to God, He wouldn’t have bothered coming down here to save us. He would have found a way spiritually.
We won’t know exactly what’s in store for us as long as we are on this side of Heaven. But let’s see if we can break down “New Heaven” and “New Earth” based on what we do know.
The New Heaven – The Beatific Vision
When the Church talks about Heaven and seeing God, they often use the term Beatific Vision. The word beatific comes from the beatitude, which means perfected happiness. The Eight Beatitudes could more correctly start with, “Happy are those who…” instead of “Blessed are those…” Of course, the Beatitudes are primarily referring to our eternal happiness, although these may also bring us happiness here. What God is concerned about mostly is our eternal state (as should we).
Q: What is the Beatific Vision?
The Beatific Vision is the adventure of meeting God, a joy which only angels and humans can experience. It is our indirect, face to face, gaze upon God himself, with no intermediary. We say “indirect” because no created being can fully comprehend the omnipotence and omnipresence of God. Nevertheless, God reveals to us all that is possible for us to apprehend.
One small way of grasping this is by looking at God’s characteristics, such as perfect beauty, perfect truth, and perfect happiness and joy. So let’s look at these.
1) Beauty. Beauty is one of the gifts God already gives to humans – it is a mental-spiritual experience. Like music, beauty can lift our spirits off the ground like a rocket ship. When we experience incredible beauty in this life, it is a foretaste of Heaven. If you doubt that our apprehension of beauty is a spiritual gift, consider this picture:
Let’s see… Rocks. Hard to maneuver. Painful to walk on and real painful if you fall. It is compressed dirt.
Sand… Hot on the feet, sand in your clothes, gotta wash your feet off. It is just finer dirt than rock.
Water… Dangerous! People drown every day. Sharks are in there. Tsunamis are deadly.
Sun… Sunburn and skin cancer. And you see the damn sun every day, 360x/year, 30,000 times a lifetime.
Clouds… They block the darn sun, and they bring us rainy days, causing us to stay inside and be depressed.
Now, put these rocks, sand, water, sun, and clouds together and what do we have? Presto, BEAUTY!! My God, it’s so BEAUTIFUL I’m going to die! No wonder animals think we’re crazy.
But do you see, humans have eyes to see the spiritual quality of things, qualities much greater than their mere material components. God has given us a little bit of His own eyes!
Now, if you can imagine the most beautiful, awe-inspiring visions you have ever seen, coming into God’s presence will be a thousand times that. There’s a saying: “Perfect beauty is a beauty that borrows from nothing and no one, and to which nothing or no one can compare.” It will be a sensory experience that words have not been invented yet to describe.
2) Truth. Our second apprehension of the Beatific Vision is perfect truth (knowledge), and it comprises everything we may have ever had a reasonable interest in knowing. The first of these will include all the mysteries that the soul believed while on earth, because our minds will now be better able to apprehend the infinite. As humans, we always want to know everything, and so our minds will be filled with all that we have ever desired to know.
3) Happiness. Perfect happiness is a shared experience, and so we will be able to rejoice in the company of those who had been separated from us at death. This begins with those close to us – parents, siblings, relatives, friends – and also extends to those we haven’t met. You may be a big fan of Shakespeare, or Dante, or St. Peter, or MARY – well, now you will get to meet them and have a chat over a glass of brandy. This is because we are all a part of the loving community of saints, the body of Christ. There is no “us" without the “other.”
4) Joy is a form of love even greater than happiness. Thanks to Jesus who brought his humanity back to the Trinity with him on his Ascension, we are now part of the family. In this lifetime, we tend to see our relationship with God as a parent-child relationship since we have so much to learn. But in Heaven we will have graduated and our relationship with be elevated. God knows joy more than anyone and He wants us to know that joy. Most of us have had passing snippets of nearly-perfect joy here and there in our lives when everything was going perfectly, but just snippets. In Heaven, that will be our starting point. Let the good times roll.
If that wasn’t enough for you, then let’s tackle “The New Earth”…
“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him” (1Cor2:9).
What Paul means by this is that we cannot out-dream God. What is at the end of our personal and human journeys? Something beyond our wildest imagination.
A “New Heaven and a New Earth” is mentioned in Scripture as far back as Isaiah 65:17 and 66:22, and in the NT in 2 Peter 3:13 and Revelation 21:1. Heavenly places will be similar to our current places in this universe, only better.
As Jesus said, “I make all things new”– Rev 21:5
What is entropy?
It is part of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Entropy is nature’s tendency towards disorder, which we see in natural processes as they degrade, decay, or die. Stars explode, mountains erode, and the arc of all life moves toward death. We are used to seeing time through this lens. Take our ages, for example. Time and aging are inseparable.
We have also discussed that time is different in Heaven. There will still be events that happen, but they will not be subject to entropy (aging, death…). Similarly, there will be heavenly “places" also, but these too will be without entropy. The will be perfect. Scripture states repeatedly: the earth will be renewed/perfected. “Earth” means all of creation – the universe.
God was very clear that He made everything “good” (Gen 1), so it makes sense that he wouldn’t destroy everything and start over. Besides, how could we be happy in an entirely new/foreign environment? Part of happiness is tied to familiarity. So when Jesus says, “I make all things new,” one can assume he’s talking about the world we already know, and that there will be mountains, streams, beautiful skies, and even cities (Rev 3:13, 21:2).
Now, what good would these do if we didn’t have bodies to experience them? The resurrection of the body was a foundational belief from early Jewish times throughout all Christianity (Job 19:25-17, Isaiah 26:19, Daniel 12:2, John 5:28-29, 1 Corinthians 15:20-22, 51-52, 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17). We will receive them back – glorified – at the Last Judgment.
What will our glorified bodies be like?
Our glorified bodies will be the best version of ourselves physically and spiritually, except that, in addition to this, our spiritual minds will have more authority over our physical natures than we do now. Here, the physical laws of nature have dominance, but in the New Earth our spiritual natures will be dominant. Think of Christ’s glorified body after his resurrection. He walked through doors but was able to eat fish without it falling out of him. His spiritual nature had dominance over the material. Paul called Jesus’ resurrection “the first-fruits” of human salvation (1 Cor 15:20).
Just as Jesus did, we will be able to enjoy food and drink without getting full or drunk (and no waste – haha). And it will be better than anything we’ve ever had here (recall the stunning wine at the Wedding at Cana).
Forgive me for going on a limb here but it appears to me that we will be able to hike anywhere we want without any worry or fear, we can have cookouts, learn musical instruments, attend concerts, and then finish the day reading by the fireplace with a glass of the finest brandy from the south of France sitting next to Dante.
When Jesus said he came to offer us “life more abundantly” (John 10:10), what do you think this meant? Life to the full means our body at its healthiest that will never get sick, or broken, or grow old. And a body that finally listens to us when we want it to behave in a certain way!
“Life abundantly” doesn’t only refer to our bodies, but to our lives! It means living. It means we will have many things, activities, hobbies, gatherings, the arts, wine tastings – fill in the blank – to do, because it will be life to the full!
Ref USCCB: These divine promises will be fulfilled after the day of judgment has passed. The universe will be transformed by the reign of God’s righteousness and justice; Is 65:17–18; Acts 3:21; Rom 8:18–25; Rev 21:1.
A change in the New Reality worth remembering...
In the aftermath of Jesus and his cross, we should never define God’s supremacy or sovereignty by analogy to the kings of this world who have historically dominated, oppressed, exploited, and marginalized. Instead, we will be migrating to an entirely new universe in which old ideas of supremacy are inverted. This is not demoting God to some lower or weaker level but raising our awareness to a higher and deeper understanding of God as pure love and truth, with no shadows of violence, conquest, exclusion, hostility, or hate.
Can we fathom such pure love? Probably not, so strap on your seatbelts.
The closing prayer
Advent
We greet your coming, God, with wonder:
You come to be with us; yet you remain far greater than we can imagine.
You are near; yet your wisdom sets you apart from us.
You appear among us; yet we cannot describe your glory.
We had no true idea of what you are like; but now you have shown us yourself in Jesus Christ.
We felt our humanity of little importance to you; but you have shown otherwise by coming here as one of us.
We are aware of the gulf between us and you; but you have closed the gap with a bridge of love.
Hail Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee.
Blessed are thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.
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