Remorse is always a prisoner of the past; it does not shrug its shoulders and forget it. The past is present; the fault is ever before the eyes, but there is no way to undo it….
Repentance is also self-reproach, like the other states, but it is never sterile; it lays hold of the past by undoing it through penance. Both Judas and Peter denied Our Lord, but Judas repented unto himself, which was regret and remorse, and took his own life; Peter repented unto the the Lord, which produced a new man
Fulton Sheen , On Being Human, Garden City, 1982: 73
The prophets are not always prophets of doom, they also proclaim the message of hope to Israel, in the midst of exile, when times look dark, they are to wrap the cloak of integrity around themselves, and put the crown of the glory of God upon their heads. It is the message of trust, trust in God alone as the source of our hope, the only rock on which to build a life of faith.
As the people of God we are to trust in and to live lives which prepare for the second coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as our Saviour and our judge. To be a Christian, then, is to live a life where our love for each other, and for God, increases day by day as St Paul puts it. We are to grow in virtue by being virtuous - it’s simple, practical and fairly un-glamourous. It takes prayer, a lot of prayer, undertaken by all of us.
In this morning’s gospel we see the last of the prophets, John the Baptist, the son of Elizabeth and Zechariah, as he prepares the way for the Lord. He proclaims a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins: calling the people of Israel to turn away from the ways of selfishness and sin, to turn back to God. He is a prophet who fulfils prophesy, what Isaiah looks for is fulfilled in John the Baptist In our baptism we promise to turn away from sin, the world, and the devil; we turn away from what the world thinks and does, because our baptism makes us pure and blameless, following the Commandments of God, and shown to us in the life of Jesus Christ. We turn away from the world and we turn to Christ. We are in the world, but not of it.
The church, then, must be a voice crying in the wilderness. What we proclaim may well be at odds with what the world thinks we should say and do, but we are not called to be worldly, to conform ourselves to the ways of the world. We live in a fallen world, which is not utterly depraved but which falls short of the glory of God, but the church exists to conform the world to the will of God. To say to the world, come and have life in all its fullness, turn away from selfishness and sin, to have life in all its fullness in Jesus Christ.
Now, the world may not listen to us when we proclaim this; it may well choose to ignore us, to mock us, even to persecute us. We have to be prepared to do this regardless of the cost, to ourselves or indeed others. We must bear witness to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and their saving work even if it means shedding blood, of losing our lives, because it says to the world: we trust in something greater than you, we know the truth and it has set us free, we are free to love God and to serve him, and to invite others to do the same, to be baptised, to turn away from the world, and be fed by word and sacrament, built up into a community of love, offering the world a radical alternative, and holding fast to the truths which the church holds dear, since they are given us by God.
It’s a big, a daunting task, which, if it were up to us individually, we would have no chance of achieving. But it is something which we can do together, as the body of Christ, and relying upon God alone: it is his gospel, his church, and his strength in which we will accomplish this. Too often we trust in ourselves and fail, we need to trust in God and ask him to bring about the proclamation of the Gospel through us. We need to be like John the Baptist, preparing the way for the Lord who will come again as our Saviour and our Judge.
This is what we await in Advent: the coming of Our Lord as a baby in Bethlehem and his second coming as Our Judge, bearing in his glorious body the wounds of love, borne for us and our salvation. So let us prepare to meet him and live lives which proclaim his saving love and truth to a world hungry for meaning and love and thereby honour God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the consubstantial and coeternal Trinity, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just all might, majesty, glory, dominion and power, now and forever.
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