Advent 2016
by
Fr. Courtney Krier
Veni, Veni, Emanuel! Captivum solve Israel.
O Come, O come Emmanuel! and ransom captive Israel. This Advent Hymn, which has been sung by Catholics since antiquity, has encompassed not only the spirit of longing for the Messias within the heart and soul, but also to present to the mind the teachings of Scripture concerning the Messias and both His Divine and Human Natures. The hymn takes the “O” Antiphons that are recited by the major clergy during the week before Christmas which provide the seven titles of the Messias found in the Old Testament: Wisdom, Lord, Root of Jesse, Key of David, Orient, King of the Gentiles and Emmanuel. The following is a reflection upon the first Antiphon.
The Church prays: O Wisdom, who camest out of the mouth of the Most High, reaching from end to end and ordering all things mightily and sweetly, come to teach us the way of prudence. Our Lord is the Eternal Wisdom spoken of in Proverbs 1:7-20:
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother: That grace may be added to thy head, and a chain of gold to thy neck. My son, if sinners shall entice thee, consent not to them. If they shall say: Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood, let us hide snares for the innocent without cause: Let us swallow him up alive like hell, and whole as one that goeth down into the pit. We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoils. Cast in thy lot with us, let us all have one purse. My son, walk not thou with them, restrain thy foot from their paths. For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood. But a net is spread in vain before the eyes of them that have wings. And they themselves lie in wait for their own blood, and practise deceits against their own souls. So the wage of every covetous man destroy the souls of the possessors. Wisdom preacheth abroad, she uttereth her voice in the streets...
Who Saint Paul can address as Wisdom, and justice, and sanctification, and redemption after proclaiming Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God (cf. 1 Cor. 1:30, 24). The world is created by the Word of God, the Wisdom of God, which is so ordered to accomplish all that God wills in His creation. Paul reminds the Corinthians that what seems foolish in how God established all things to work for His greater glory is only so because the Wisdom of God is eternal and not a transitory object. The whole mystery of the Incarnation is the incomprehensible reality that God took a human body that limited Him Who is infinite, that He takes a finite form that makes Him a slave. One does not want to envision a Christ that lives in a world that is not real—as though He possesses only a Divine Nature—because Christ enters into time and lives in a material world and has a physical body (cf. Phil. 2:7). He becomes dependent upon a woman, upon eating and sleeping and using eyes to see and ears to hear. He requires to be carried by His earthly mother to get from place to place until He crawls and afterwards must walk. Even though He knows the course of the Universe He cannot even speak until His human mind has developed sufficiently to give expression to even the simplest of words. Is this to show that Christ is human? Yes, without taking away that He is also God. Is this to show that Christ is divine? Yes, without taking away that He is also human.
Being Eternal Wisdom He can do all things possible that are possible and He found it possible to become Incarnate: And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (cf. John 1:14). It is divine Wisdom that mankind adores in acknowledging Christ is God and man (cf. Matt. 2:11; John 9:38). It is divine Wisdom that the angels adore in acknowledging Christ is God and man (cf. Heb. 1:6). Therefore, it is Christ, as God, that one believes in: Simon Peter answered and said: Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answering, said to him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven (Matt. 16:16-17; cf. John 20:31). That is, it is not Christ, as man, that one believes in: This is he that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ: not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit which testifieth, that Christ is the truth (1 John 5:6; cf. 1 John 2:22).
Human wisdom, dependent upon experience, cannot humanly grasp that someone who is in the world created the world. For how can someone in the world create the world of which he is a part? Only someone outside the world and before the world can create the world. Human wisdom, dependent on experience, understands that success is rising and failure is falling. No one naturally wants to lower himself when he has risen, as he would be losing that which he has striven to obtain and there is no benefit to loss. Human wisdom, dependent on experience, judges by what the senses perceive as true: I know something is because my senses tell me it is, that is, water is water, a tree is an apple tree because it produces apples, man cannot fly because he does not have wings.
Divine Wisdom, knowing all things, can create the world and enter into that world. Divine Wisdom, knowing all things, can lower himself and yet be exalted because He does not take from Himself but takes to himself. Divine Wisdom, knowing all things, does not judge by appearances, but with Truth and Justice. That is why He can say: This is My Body… This is My Blood and it is His Body and it is His Blood. The appearance says it is bread and wine to human wisdom; Divine Wisdom has changed the bread into His Body and the wine into His Blood. This is why Saint Paul, in speaking to the Corinthians, tells the listeners to his words:
For the word of the cross, to them indeed that perish, is foolishness; but to them that are saved, that is, to us, it is the power of God. For it is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the prudence of the prudent I will reject. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world, by wisdom, knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness of our preaching, to save them that believe. For both the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and unto the Gentiles foolishness: But unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (1 Cor. 18-25)
In returning to the Incarnation, one can, with faith, understand the Eternal Wisdom chose to come into the world not according to the wisdom of Man—which is the foolishness of God—but in the Wisdom of God that accomplishes the Will of God: the salvation of those who believe in Him that no flesh should glory in his sight (cf. 1 Cor. 29). Those who would want to make Christ a man who possessed only the “spirit of God” in as much as He was able to preach God and God was able to work through Him and is, therefore, one of mankind, deny that He is God and that He came to unite mankind to Himself not in an earthly union, but in a divine union. This former is the position of many in the Conciliarist Church who adopt the Arian heresy, that is, trying to rationalize the Person of Jesus Christ. They hold basically the same denial which is expressed clearly by the Mohammedans in the words of Mohammed: God neither begets, nor is He begotten (Koran, 112). They hold basically the same denial which is expressed by the Jews who repeat God is one, agreeing with their shema. Christ, to the neo-Modernist, is not God as God in the absolute sense, but metaphorically, that is, possessing the attributes of God such as Wisdom. Christ is the medium God creates to show humans His Will. Christ is not one Who is adored equally and with the Father, but through Him the Father is adored. Christ is not one who can say absolutely, This is my Body, and it is His Body, but only symbolically. The neo-Modernists have the wisdom of the world--rationalism, but they do not have the Wisdom of God.
As the Latin Church was faithful in holding to that faith which Saint Athanasius would succinctly express in his profession of faith known as the Athanasian Creed, so today may faithful Catholics still hold fast to that faith, which though it may seem especially foolish to the world, a faith that believes the Creator of all was born in a stable unknown to His own (cf. John 1:11), as though to the wise of this world if Christ were God everyone would receive Him. May faithful Catholics hold fast to that faith that this is the eternal Wisdom of God they adore—consubstantial with the Father, the desired of nations Who is longed for and which the faithful still sing: Veni, veni Emmanuel—yes, God dwells with us—that He come to us in grace, in holy Communion, in His Second Coming!
For such faithful Catholics unable to assist at Mass due to the times we are living in, holy Mass will be especially offered for you on Christmas Day and it is hoped you will unite both in the Advent spirit and in the Christmas Masses.
Personally, I also wish also to thank all who have continued to support those engaged in defending the Catholic Faith, to the readers of Einsicht and the members of Freundeskreis der Una Voce. Wishing all a blessed Christmas and asking Our Divine Saviour to bestow His blessings upon all during the coming New Year.
In His Service,
Father Courtney Edward Krier
|
