Advent V

Here is yesterday's homily from St Petroc Monastery, for the fifth and final Sunday of Advent.

THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT

This is the last Sunday before the celebration of the Holy Nativity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus the Christ of God, the last few days in which we might as a special effort of this season, prepare ourselves with fasting and prayer for the coming of the Lord. In a sense, we do this symbolically, and in another sense, we do it in all reality. We do not know the time or the hour of the Second Comin - any more than we know the time or the hour of our death. The preparation for both is exactly the same: We need to make ourselves painfully aware of our shortcomings from the ideal of us that exists in the mind of God.

That perfect “us”, which exists in His mind, is the perfection that we should strive for, however dimly we may perceive it. Attempting to reach that perfection is a lifelong preparation (however late in life we begin) for the real life which stretches before us throughout all eternity. A lifelong effort, a life spent in praparation. Not just our time at the Divine Liturgy, nor just our time spent in formal prayer to God, but the whole of our life is the praparation.

We humans however, are fitful and inconsistent in our efforts. We try a little, and then we are distracted and follow other thoughts. Again we try a little and all too soon, we are distracted again by the bright colours of life around us. We live in a society packed full of gaudy distractions, the possessions, the activities. All in themselves innocent enough, but for us, deadly in their effect of successfully distracting us from our proper concentration. Just as those innocent pastimes which distract a student from his studies are deadly to the object of passing exams, so too are our many innocent activities deadly to our hopes for the real future. Christians have always been accused of being kill-joys. After all, we have been put here in this beautiful God-made planet, ought we not to enjoy it - as God intended? Yes, if we are attaining to the state of innocence that God also intended. Yet we are obviously not so.

Just look around at the dreadful mess that we have made of large tracts of the once-innocent planet, and then look at the dreadful mess that we have made, generation after generation, of ourselves. We are not the innocent Children of God that we ought to be. Nor are we making the serious effort to achieve that state, that we ought to be making. That is why Christians down the ages have thought to set aside distinct periods each year to draw our attention back from the distractions of life, to the main chance, periods of fasting, reading the Scriptures and prayer - with an intensity greater than we normally manage in the course of our busy, distracted lives. The normal business of the Orthodox Believer: Family, children, earning a living, keeping an ordered, Godly household is his proper concern. If done in a context of frequent conversation with God, ascertaining His will and aligning with it, attending the Divine Liturgy and frequently receiving Holy Communion, and following the precepts that Christ taught, and with a good will, then the Orthodox Believer is following Christ’s Way, and is preparing himself for the life to come. Yet we know all this, the problem is keeping focussed upon it.