Our readings for this Fourth Sunday of Advent are pretty linear. We start with the prophecy in Isaiah about a virgin conceiving and bearing a son and naming him Emmanuel, which, in Hebrew, “God is with us.” From there we move to the opening verses of Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans where the apostle identifies Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of prophecies, like the one found in Isaiah.
It is important to note that contextually speaking, Isaiah is not alluding to the birth of the Messiah. This passage from Isaiah is an oracle for Ahaz, king of Judah, in a time of crisis. He is told that a child, to be named Emmanuel, would be born as a sign of God's presence and protection.
Given before the Babylonian exile, this oracle was meant to assure Ahaz regarding immediate threats from Judah’s enemies. It seems to indicate that these threats would be eliminated before this child becomes a man. Well, it didn’t work out that way- a different story for a different day.
Finally, we wind up in the first chapter of Saint Matthew’s Gospel. It is here that Christ is identified as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy- long delayed in its realization. It is here where the “righteous man,” Joseph of Nazareth, of the house of David, learns in a dream that his betrothed, Mary, has not been unfaithful to him or the victim of any assault.
Rather, Mary has miraculously conceived a child by the Holy Spirit. It is this child who will “save his people from their sins.” “Jesus,” or Yesh'ua, meaning something like “the Lord who saves.” Emmanuel comes to save God’s people from their true enemies: sin and death.
Our Gospel brings us right up to the edge of Matthew’s account of the Lord’s Nativity, which we will celebrate this week. It is a passage pregnant with anticipation, with expectation for the arrival of Emmanuel- God with us- Jesus Christ.
Since Advent, even on its final Sunday, bids us to live the tension between the already and the not yet (the time known as “now” or “today”), like Scrooge with the final ghost, let’s leap forward to end of salvation history. Specifically, to the penultimate chapter of Revelation.
As the holy city, which Sacred Scripture calls “a new Jerusalem,” descends from heaven to earth, “a loud voice” is heard to say,
Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them [as their God]1There is one covenant between God and man. What is “new” about the new and everlasting covenant isn’t that it’s everlasting. What’s new about is that through Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of all the prophecies, it is open to everyone and anyone who puts their faith in Him.
We ratify God’s covenant in every Eucharist. Towards the beginning of Eucharistic Prayer III, speaking to the Father, the priest says,
you give life to all things and make them holy, and you never cease to gather a people to yourself, so that from the rising of the sun to its setting a pure sacrifice may be offered to your name2My friends, we are the people God has gathered to offer sacrifice to Him. Through Christ and by the Holy Spirit, the sacrifice we offer God, symbolized by the gifts and bread and wine and the collection, is nothing other than ourselves, each of us and all of us together.
Of course, during the consecration in the Eucharistic Prayer, when consecrating the wine, the priest says, “This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.” Until the Lord returns, it is by receiving Holy Communion that God through Christ by the power and working of the Holy Spirit dwells not just with but in and through us, His Body, the Church.
Our Collect for today is the prayer for the end of the Angelus. In it, we ask God, at the beginning of this Eucharist, to pour His grace into our hearts. We pray this believing that it is only through the Lord’s Passion and Cross that we can “be brought to the glory of his Resurrection.”3
Indeed, it was through wood of a living tree that mankind fell. It is through the wood of a dead tree that we are redeemed. Salvation is paradoxical from beginning to end. Just so, the wood of the manger- a feeding trough- is also connected to the wood of the Cross, which makes it possible for us to receive the Bread of Life and Chalice of Salvation.
When we eat his Bread and drink this Cup,Again, without Good Friday, without Easter, Christmas means nothing.
we proclaim your Death, O Lord,
and profess your Resurrection, until you come again4
It is the next-to-last verse of the last chapter of the Holy Bible that gives us a fitting end for this reflection: Maranatha! “Come, Lord Jesus!”5
1 Revelation 21:3.↩
2 Roman Missal. Eucharistic Prayer III, sec. 108.↩
3 Roman Missal. Fourth Sunday of Advent, Collect.↩
4 Roman Missal. Eucharisic Prayer III, sec. 112.↩
5 Revelation 22:20.↩
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