III
We ourselves have the happiness of believing in this Light "which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world" (Jn 1:9). We live, moreover, in the blessed "fulness of time"; we are not deprived, like the Patriarchs, of seeing the reign of the Messias. If we are not of those who looked upon Christ in person and heard His words, those who beheld Him going about doing good everywhere, we have the signal happiness of belonging to those nations of which David sang that they should be Christ's inheritance.
And yet the Holy Spirit, Who governs the Church and is the first author of our sanctification, wills that each year the Church should consecrate four weeks in recalling to memory the long duration of the divine preparations, and that she should strive to place our souls in the interior dispositions in which the faithful Jews lived whilst awaiting the coming of the Messias.
You will perhaps immediately say: This preparation for Christ's coming, these longings, these expectations, all that was excellent for those living under the Old Covenant; but now that Christ has come, why this attitude which does not seem to be in accordance with the truth?
The reason for it is manifold.
To begin with, God wills to be praised and blessed in all His works.
All, indeed, are marked with His infinite wisdom: "Omnia in sapientia fecisti" (Ps 53:24); all are admirable both in their preparation and their realisation. This is above all true of those which have the glory of His Son for their direct end, for it is the will of the Father that this Son should be for ever exalted (Cf. Jn 12:25). God wills that we should admire His works, that we should return thanks to Him for having thus prepared, with so much wisdom and power, the kingdom of His Son amongst us: we enter into the divine thoughts when we recollect the prophecies and promises of the Old Covenant.
God wills also that in these preparations we should find confirmation of our faith.
If God gave so many different and precise signs, such numerous and clear prophecies, it was in order that we might recognise as His Son the One Who has fulfilled them in His person.
See how in the Gospel Our Lord Himself invited His disciples to this contemplation. "Scrutamini Scripturas", "Search the Scriptures" (Jn 5:39), He said to them--"the Scriptures," which then consisted of the books of the Old Testament:--search them, you will find them full of My name; for "all things must need be fulfilled which are written... in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning Me": "Necesse est impleri omnia quae scripta sunt in prophetic et psalmis de me" (Lk 24:44). Again we hear Him on the day after His Resurrection explaining to the disciples of Emmaus, so as to strengthen their faith, and dissipate their sadness, all that concerned Him throughout the Scriptures, "beginning at Moses and all the prophets": "Et incipiens a Moyse et omnibus prophetic, interpretabatur illis in omnibus scripturis quae de ipso erant" (Ibid. 27).
When, therefore, we read the prophecies that the Church proposes to us during Advent, let us in the fulness of our faith, say like the first disciples of Jesus: "We have found Him of Whom... the prophets did write" (Jn 1:45). Let us repeat to Christ Jesus Himself: Thou art truly the One Who is to come; we believe it, and we adore Thee Who to save the world didst deign to become incarnate and to be born of a Virgin: "Tu ad liberandum suscepturus hominem non horruisti virginis uterum" (Hymn Te Deum).
This profession of faith is extremely pleasing to God. Never let us weary of reiterating it. Our Lord will be able to say to us as to His Apostles: "The Father Himself loveth you, because you... have believed that I came forth from God" (Jn 16:28).
Finally, there is a third reason, one deeper and more intimate. Christ did not come only for the inhabitants of Judea, His contemporaries, but for us all, for all men of every nation and century. Do we not sing in the Credo: "Propter NOS et propter NOSTRAM salutem descendit de caelis?" The "fulness of time" is not yet ended; it will endure as long as there shall be souls to save.
But it is to the Church that Christ, since His Ascension, has left the mission of bringing Him forth in souls. "My little children," said St. Paul, the Apostle of Christ Jesus among nations," of whom I am in labour again, until Christ be formed in you" (Gal 4:19). The Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, Who is the Spirit of Jesus, labours at this work by making us contemplate every year the mystery of her Divine Bridegroom. For, as I said at the beginning of these conferences, all Christ's mysteries are living mysteries; they are not merely historical realities of which we recall the remembrance, but the celebration of each mystery brings a proper grace, a special virtue intended to make us share in the life and states of Christ Whose members we are.
Now, at Christmas, the Church celebrates the Birthday of her Divine Bridegroom: "tamquam sponsus procedens de thalamo suo" (Ps 18:6); and she wills to prepare us, by the weeks of Advent, for the grace of the coming of Christ within us. It is an altogether inward, mysterious advent which is wrought in faith, but brings forth much fruit.
Christ is already within us by the sanctifying grace which makes us children of God. That is true, but the Church wills that this grace should be renewed, that we should live a new life more exempt from sin and imperfection, more free from all attachment to ourselves and creatures: "Ut nos Unigeniti tui nova per carnem nativitas liberet quos sub peccati jugo vetusta servitus" tenet (Collect for the Feast of Christmas.) She wills above all to make us understand that Christ, in exchange for the humanity which He takes from us, will make us partakers of His Divinity, and will take a more complete, more entire, more perfect possession of us. This will be like the grace of a new divine birth in us: "Ut tua gratia largiente, per haec sacrosancta commercia, in illius inveniamur forma, in quo tecum est nostra substantia" (Secret for the Midnight Mass).
It is this grace of a new birth that the Incarnate Word merited for us by His Birth at Bethlehem.
However, we should remember that if Christ was born, and lived and died for us all: Pro omnibus mortuus est Christus (2 Cor 5:15), the application of His merits and the distribution of His graces are made according to the measure of the dispositions of each soul.
Consequently we shall only share in the abundant graces that Christ's Nativity should bring to us in proportion to our dispositions. The Church knows this perfectly, and therefore she neglects nothing that can produce in our souls that inward attitude required by the coming of Christ within us. Not only does the Church say by the mouth of the Precursor: "Prepare ye the way of the Lord," for "He is near," "prope est Dominus" (Invitatory of Matins for the 3rd Sunday in Advent); but she herself, like a Bride attentive to the wishes of her Bridegroom, like a mother careful for her children's good, suggests to us and gives us the means of making this necessary preparation. She carries us back as it were under the Old Covenant so that we may appropriate to ourselves, although in an altogether supernatural sense, the thoughts and feelings of the faithful who longed for the coming of the Messias.
If we allow ourselves to be guided by her, our dispositions will be perfect, and the solemnity of the Birth of Jesus will produce within us all its fruits of grace, of light and life.
