Advent is a blessed
season in which we prepare both for celebrating Christ’s Nativity (Christmas)
and his eventual return in glory at the end of the ages (Parousia). It is a
brief season dealing with profound things. Its brevity is part of its power:
both Christ’s first and second comings are events that happen suddenly, with
little warning.
Christ’s Second Coming has become something of an
embarrassment to many modern North Americans, what with so many charlatans, mountebanks,
and grifters capitalizing on the gullibility of some believers and others who are
easily frightened. As a result, many in the so-called “progressive” forms of
Christianity have dropped almost all sense of the Second Coming as anything
beyond being a metaphor for something bland and trivial, like “doing the right
thing.” This has resulted in a corresponding decline in vision in these Christians, who are tempted to substitute ideological purity or organizational loyalty for the breadth of the Gospel found in many parts of our world today and over the course of the centuries.
Instead of this kind of tiresome either/or mentality, we
need a total reappraisal of how Christian eschatology relates to missiology. In
other words, why a lively belief in Christ’s return provides the savor for
living out the Gospel in lives of clear discipleship and humility.
The early Christian period held this synergistic wholeness
regarding the Second Coming. Apart from some groups clearly found to be
heretical, the Patristic period understood the Parousia as being intensely
linked to the contemporary moment in the Church’s ministry. There was simply no
division. The liturgies of this period derive much of their power from the
linkage of the “Supper of the Lamb” on that
day, with the ministry of the Kingdom’s truth, love, and justice in this day. Only when this linkage is broken
later on do we drift into the miasma of replacement “purposes” for the
Eucharist (sacrifice, memorial, flat-bed car for agendas) and all sorts of
millenarian tomfoolery.
One of the great joys of a Classical Anglican way of living
the Gospel is its determination not to enter into the distortions abounding
around this issue. We keep to the word of Scripture and the teaching of the
Undivided Church…and are thus free to embrace the season of Advent not as the
trailer for some sort of coming horror movie, but as a season of hope, joy, and
urgency. Hope, in that our Lord has not forgotten us and gives us a mission to
live and share; joy, because we may experience even now in worship, service,
and fellowship the fruits of that mission; and urgency, because each day, life,
and action is precious to God—in spite of what the world would say.
Below is a reading widely associated with this point of view
and coming to us from the Patristic era of Christianity. St. Cyril’s work here
is to introduce his hearers to the distinctions between Christ’s two comings.
It is also an entrance into the mindset of a classical Christian sense of the
linkage between these comings.
We, who live in the “era of the Church” between Christ's first and second Advents, are privileged to
know something of each of Christ’s comings, and to feel no need to fixate on or
deny either in order to conform ourselves to a world that is, we know, passing away.
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We do not preach only one coming of Christ,
but a second as well, much more glorious than the first. The first coming was
marked by patience; the second will bring the crown of a divine kingdom.
In general,
whatever relates to our Lord Jesus Christ has two aspects. There is a birth
from God before the ages, and a birth from a virgin at the fullness of time.
There is a hidden coming, like that of rain on fleece, and a coming before all
eyes, still in the future.
At the first
coming he was wrapped in swaddling clothes in a manger. At his second coming he
will be clothed in light as in a garment. In the first coming he endured the
cross, despising the shame; in the second coming he will be in glory, escorted
by an army of angels.
We look then
beyond the first coming and await the second. At the first coming we said: Blessed
is he who comes in the name of the Lord. At the second we shall say it
again; we shall go out with the angels to meet the Lord and cry out in
adoration: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. The
Savior will not come to be judged again, but to judge those by whom he was
judged. At his own judgment he was silent; then he will address those who
committed the outrages against him when they crucified him and will remind
them: You did these things, and I was silent.
His first coming
was to fulfill his plan of love, to teach men by gentle persuasion. This time,
whether men like it or not, they will be subjects of his kingdom by necessity.
The prophet
Malachi speaks of the two comings. And the Lord whom you seek will come
suddenly to his temple: that is one coming. Again he says of another
coming: Look, the Lord almighty will come, and who will endure the day of
his entry, or who will stand in his sight? Because he comes like a refiner’s
fire, a fuller’s herb, and he will sit refining and cleansing.
These two
comings are also referred to by Paul in writing to Titus: The grace of God
the Savior has appeared to all men, instructing us to put aside impiety and
worldly desires and live temperately, uprightly, and religiously in this
present age, waiting for the joyful hope, the appearance of the glory of our
great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Notice how he speaks of a first coming
for which he gives thanks, and a second, the one we still await.
That is why the
faith we profess has been handed on to you in these words: He ascended into
heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come again
in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
Our Lord Jesus
Christ will therefore come from heaven. He will come at the end of the world,
in glory, at the last day. For there will be an end to this world, and the
created world will be made new.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem [386]
from The Catechetical Instructions
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