Genesis 15:1-6,21:1-3 Hebrews 11:8.11-12.17-19 Luke 2:22-40
Today is the last day of the year. We could do worse than to hear the Canticle of Simeon read out in the Gospel. In the Liturgy of the Hours, this Canticle belongs with Compline, the last prayer of the day, recited or sung just before bed-time.
Mum was quite specific about what she wanted me to emphasise to you - it was what she wanted me to say to everyone gathered for her Mass in the parish Church of Our Lady of the Assumption in Birmingham last Thursday. It was one thing. To pray for her. To pray for the repose of her soul.
No eulogy – simply an exhortation to pray.
“The day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then with a roar the sky will vanish, the elements will catch fire and fall apart, the earth and all it contains will be burnt up.”
A striking feature of prophecy in Holy Scripture is its tendency to pass back and forth between weal and woe; between consolation and rebuke; between joyful promise and terrifying threat. This feature also marks the Advent season, which more than any other is a season of prophecy. Advent prophesies, or prepares us for, the coming of Christ.
Three times in today’s Gospel Jesus calls on us to stay awake. Here we are, once again, at the beginning of Advent: so once again we have a new start, and with it a new wake-up call. Advent issues us a new summons, or a new invitation : to sharpen our focus, to break out of our spiritual sloth; to direct all our attention ever anew towards Jesus.
Through the parable of the Royal Wedding Banquet we hear the thrilling invitation of Jesus: Come to my feast! Put on your glorious attire! Enter into my joy! This is God’s invitation to us to enter eternal life; to clothe ourselves in the incomparable dignity of divine Sonship; to join the communion of all the Angels and Saints in heaven, eternally rejoicing. And yet: this parable does not make us feel at all comfortable, and it’s not meant to; any more than it was meant to make the Scribes and Pharisees feel comfortable. For the weight of this story falls not so much on the invitation, as on the refusal of those invited. It ends uncompromisingly, on a note of harsh condemnation: Bind him hand and foot and throw him into the outer darkness.
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