All is Grace because of God!
Isaiah 63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2-7; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:33-37
Every single day, with the vicissitudes of light and darkness, dusk and dawn, change makes itself inevitable. The change that seems most perceptible to us is the ubiquity of sin, the inadequacies we notice in ourselves, and the world around us. We seek for the just and the ideal, we rather experience iniquity; we attempt to work for a better society, a better tomorrow, yet our actions contribute to the wrongs we see, and not the good we desire. In a nutshell, humanity is broken, and its ability to do good has suffered much incapacitation: where has our original blessing gone, the blessings of God at creation?
There is only one truly Christian solution to sin, it is hope! Hope sustains the present and makes it livable. Hope looks towards the future with confidence, that the concatenations of events have a Master behind them, that God is the Father of all; if God is Father, then he is the Creator of all, within and in control of all. Hope tells us that it is not over until it is all over. Indeed, God is hope, the power that convinces humanity that all is not lost yet; in fact, that all can never be lost because God has a purpose for his creation, and no one can hijack that purpose – salvation.
Advent, is the liturgical season of hope. It reminds us, according to our first reading, that hope makes the greatest sense in a situation of dependency that sin creates between a loving and caring Father and his creatures. Hope reminds us that it is the human need for God that brings God closest to his creatures. If any thing, the reality of the Babylonian captivity alluded to in our first reading reminded Israelites of their dignity even if they found themselves as exiles in Babylon; their hope in a Father-God who saves lifted their gazes to the distant future, where a ray of light announces a dawn of justice and peace, an anticipated liberation and joy; a reinstatement of the glory of God and his power.
Hope comes with the courage to confess one’s wrong-doings and the desire to embrace a second chance as a gift from God. The acknowledgement of sin – “There is none who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to cling to you; for you have hidden your face from us and have delivered us up to our guilt” – is a first step towards repentance and reconciliation. Confession is the most powerful of gifts related to hope because it conjures up the humility which we must embrace on account of our sins, because sin is possible, because we thought we could do it alone without grace, that is, without God assisting us. But when we realize and admit that God is necessary in and for our lives, then we experience the return of God, a change that is based on grace because all is grace, and we were created in grace – God is all, man is nothing, according to François Libermann.
The moment exiled Israel confessed her iniquity, she experienced God differently; she says, “Yet, O Lord, you are our father; we are the clay and you the potter: we are all the work of your hands” (Isaiah 64:7). “All is grace” is the Christian language of human dependence on God for salvation. The analogy with the clay recalls humanity’s second creation story, where human beings came from the clay of the earth, fragile, yet alive with the breath of God in them. The “clay” explains God’s creativity to bring to live what is lifeless and to create and recreate human beings despite their sins. The malleability of the “clay” suggests the human willingness to respond to God’s initiatives. Yes, as long as the human person realizes its fragility, dependence on God, and reaches out to God in humility, all will be well again because all is grace, a free gift from God.
Certainly, hope is more than a wish, more than the figment of human imagination. Christian hope is concrete, real, and palpable. Hope comes to us, Christians, as a human being – Jesus Christ – our hope for salvation. This is what Isaiah means, in our first reading, when he cries out – “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, with the mountains quaking before you, while you wrought awesome deeds we could not hope for, such as they had not heard of from of old. No ear has ever heard, no eye ever seen, any God but you doing such deeds for those who wait for him”. “The mountains quaking” is reminiscent of the giving of the Ten Commandments and the sign of a new covenant to come. “That you would rend the heavens and come down” is the expectation of God’s visible presence among his people and not the shekina of God. This is finally achieved at the birth of Christ, the preparation for which this season convokes us.
The invisible God of the gospel reading posits the human person as the image of God on earth. It speaks of God’s trust and confidence in the human ability to do good, as his image on earth. The call to “vigilance” is a call to activity and reciprocal trust in God, who now becomes present through human actions. In other words, the journey of God or his visible absence offers human beings a stage on which to act out the presence of God. Simply put, Jesus will never be born again as a human being, but children are brought into the world everyday through human and divine cooperation. Likewise, human and divine cooperation will continue to be the mode of God’s presence to and among his creation. The birth of Christ, every day, passes through good human actions and activities.
Henceforth, hope becomes human activities for good, in order to bring about the presence of God upon earth. Hope eschews laziness and slothfulness. Salvation now wears a new look: it is human activities that will bring it about. The realization or failure of salvation will be evaluated on the basis of what human beings either do or fail to do! Through the very first coming of Jesus Christ, humanity has shared in the divine nature in a concrete way; so, human beings stand and walk tall as the images of God on earth. According to St. Paul, in our second reading, “God is faithful, and by him you were called to fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord”. The fellowship/communion we have with God, through Christ, is our identity as children of God, and we can call God our Father. Yes, the highest form of grace is the gift of adoption as sons and daughters of God. In you and me, God is made visible to the naked eyes every single day, when we do good, and when we embrace humility to confess our iniquities with firm resolution to be better images of God.
Assignment for the Week:
No matter what you are going through, don’t give up hope.