The Nearness of Salvation

Propers: The First Sunday of Advent, A.D. 2019 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

In the year 1632, Nicholas Herman was 18 years old. He grew up as a peasant, poor and poorly educated, in a country that no longer exists, during the Thirty Year’s War, which was one of the most destructive conflicts in all of human history. He joined the army because it was the only place that he could find a decent meal.

And he later wrote this about his youth:

The winter I was 18, I stood looking at the bare branches of a tree. I realized that in time the leaves would grow again, and then flowers would bloom on the branches, followed by fruit. My awareness was suddenly opened, so that I saw God’s great strength and care.

That realization has never since been erased from my mind. This new understanding cut my ties to the world, and it lit in me such a great love for God that I cannot tell whether it has increased over the course of the more than 40 years I have lived since that moment when I stood looking at the tree’s naked branches.

Nicholas was wounded twice in that war. The second left him lame for life. But his fellow soldiers and even his enemies marveled at his bravery, his selflessness, his fearlessness. He had indeed cut his ties to the world, living ever in the love of God. And people noticed. After his time as a footman ended, he joined the Discalced Carmelite Priory in Paris—a monastic community of hermits—where he served first as cook, then cobbler. And with this new life came a new name: Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection.

Brother Lawrence was never ordained as a priest or a bishop. He possessed no position or power to speak of. Yet his humility, his joy, the peace that poured forth from his character, attracted people to him from all walks of life, who all wanted to know the secret to his holiness. He was one of those people who radiate divine tranquility, with openness, wisdom, a nonjudgmental and loving heart. Some have even called him a Christian Zen Master. How had he achieved this spiritual state, with no learning, no training?

And he told us that it was really quite simple. The presence of God, he said, is always with us, around us, within us. We need only surrender to Him: to let go of self and ego, let go of worldly attachments to possessions and to power, let go of any hope of personal gain, in this life or the next, and just plain love everyone with complete trust in God.

This from a man who grew up in one of the most violent ages of one of the most violent continents; a man who had witnessed untold horrors; a man scarred and lamed for life. Yet every day he constantly prayed, “Make me according to Your heart, God. Make my thoughts Yours.” It was hard at first, he said, with the mind always wandering, always trying to escape. But after 40 years of focusing on God’s immediate presence in everything that he did, every task, every challenge, every meal, every sandal—now for him it was impossible not to think of God always. And the result was sheer joy.

Thus he did not worry about the life to come, about Heaven or about hell. He had God here and now, joy here and now, trust here and now. And he needed nothing else. Brother Lawrence lived to be almost 80, which for a seventeenth century peasant is astonishing. He was a cook and a repairer of sandals. And the stories of his lifetime of love have traversed continents and centuries to still amaze us today.

This, my brothers and sisters, is the season of Advent, the season of Christ coming to us; not only in the manger at Bethlehem, from the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary; but also in the community of the Church, in Word and in Sacrament, in the wonders of Creation, and in the love we share with our neighbors; and finally at the end of time, when all shall at last be set right, and God shall be All in All.

In Advent, Christ is our past, our present, and our future. He is forever arriving, forever abiding, and forever returning. Or, to be a bit pithier: God comes to us as Christ Jesus in history, mystery, and majesty. That’s why we read these Endtimes texts, these “little apocalypses,” on the very first Sunday of the Western Church’s year; not to scare us, but to comfort us, to inspire us; to assure us that the end has been written, and it will set right all that has gone before. “Only You, Lord, can mend my mistakes,” Brother Lawrence prayed.

But I think there’s something scarier than the notion of God’s judgment coming at the end of time, or even at the end of life; something more threatening because it is more immediate, more disruptive. And that is the very nearness of salvation. Brother Lawrence’s story inspires us, certainly, if we think of him as a uniquely holy man, one of a pantheon of special saints kept safely up on a shelf, out of reach.

But Brother Lawrence wasn’t some special wonderworker miraculously singled out from birth. He was a peasant who saw God in a tree. He was a wounded veteran who worked in a kitchen. There’s nothing he did that we couldn’t do. All he did was surrender. And that’s scary. Because it means that all we have to do is surrender: surrender our egos, our ambitions, our selfishness, our expectations, our pride and our plans; surrender to God, trusting that come-what-may He is with us, He loves us, and that even illness and death can be doorways to life.

We don’t want to do that. We are sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. We want to forge our own destinies, be our own gods. We like our stuff, and our plans, and even—God help us—our anxieties, our appetites, and our fears. They are our own. Who would we even be without them? Am I not my desire? Am I not my will?

Brother Lawrence is scary because he makes religion real here and now, not something far off in the distant future or distant past, not something relegated to theory or to abstraction, but he makes the mercy and grace and love and presence of God real, right now—and that’s terrifying. God is in the tree. God is in your veins. And if we just let go, we shall know peace. We will know joy. We will be free. I’ve lived my whole life as a slave to sin, to wrath and envy and gluttony and pride. I’m scared to let go, scared that I’ll die, that who I think I am will die—even though I know you have to die to rise again. I just didn’t think it would be today.

But that’s the message of Advent, and of Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection. It’s always today. It’s always now. God is here, not stuck in the pages of a book, not only showing up for an hour on Sundays, but He is in the need of your neighbor and the love of your friends and the fears that keep us anxious and up at night. God is always here and now. So although it does frighten me, I have to admit, nevertheless we must pray as Brother Lawrence did: “Make me according to Your heart, God. Make my thoughts Yours,” silently, stubbornly, constantly.

This is no simple task. The mind will wander. It will try to escape. But if we persevere—if we look to Christ and Him crucified every day, and to the Holy Spirit poured out into us from that Cross—if we shepherd our mind to focus on God for 40 years and more, then we too shall be as Lawrence, for we too shall be as Christ. In the words written for us by St Paul: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit.”

I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not saying it’s worked yet for me. And I’m not saying that joy is the same thing as happiness. But there is a truth here that I cannot escape. And it is this: Christ is coming into our world right now. How does that change the very next thing that you will do?

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Anamchara Books