Let Christ Be Formed in You
As God was physically formed in Mary, so he
wills to be spiritually formed in you. If you knew he was seeing through your
eyes, you would see in everyone a child of God. If you knew that he worked
through your hands, they would bless all the day through.… If you knew that he
wants to use your mind, your will, your fingers, and your heart, how different
you would be. If half the world did this, there would be no war!
Fulton
Sheen How to find Christmas Peace
It is the easiest thing
in the world to forget that Christianity is, at its very core, a radical and
revolutionary faith. We are charged with nothing less than the complete transformation
of the world: conforming the world to the will of God. We can, and indeed
should, look around us and see that things are not utterly terrible; but
equally we must be careful not to kid ourselves that everything is just fine.
We have to start with the expectation that the world is called to know God and
to serve him, that the world will come to the mountain of the Lord and his
temple, so that he may teach us his ways, not ours, and so that we may walk in
his paths, and not those of our own devising. We are called to the way of peace
and love, real, genuine, costly love. The vision in Isaiah’s prophesy is of a future
where humanity grows into a peace which comes from God, where instead of the
ways of the world, humanity, obedient to his proclamation, grows up, and lives
according to the divine vision of human flourishing.
It is a matter of urgency, something which should occupy the
Church: we are called to be people of the light and not the darkness. We are
not to live riotously, in drunkenness, in fornication and sexual immorality,
but instead to have put on Christ – through baptism, through being close to him
in word and sacrament, fed by him, nourished by him, strengthened by him, and
formed into his likeness, prepared to be with him. This is truly radical in the
eyes of the world, it represents a complete turning away from the ways of
selfishness, sin and self-indulgence, which people are now told is all that
matters.
That is why in this morning’s Gospel, Jesus starts with the
story of Noah – as a warning to people that simply carrying on regardless, as
if nothing is happening or going to happen simply will not do – this careless
existence cannot lead to life, and life in all its fullness. It is an urgent matter,
we need to be prepared. As a church we have a double preparation in Advent – to
prepare for our yearly celebration of Our Lord’s Incarnation, and to prepare
for his second coming, when as King of the Universe he will come as Our Saviour
and Our Judge. We need to be prepared both physically and spiritually, we do
need to look around us in order to try and work out when something is going to
happen: what we need to do is to live so that we are prepared at any time. We
need to prepare our hearts, our souls, our minds, all of our life, we need to
live and act, to think and speak like the people of God, fully alive in him,
having turned away from the ways of the world, to live fully in him, we are to
live this way, and invite others so to do, so that the Kingdom of God’s peace
and love may truly be found here in earth, where humanity is truly valued, where
violence, death, murder, and immorality are no more. God wants us to live like
this so that we can be truly alive in him, grown up, not childish slaves to
sinful passions, but rather walking in the light of the Lord, clothed with
Christ and ready to greet him when he comes again, so that he may find us and
all the world both ready and doing his will. We know that he will come, we do
not know when, but this cannot lead us to say, ‘Oh it doesn’t really matter, he’s
not coming yet, we’re all ok’ or ‘I’m
sure that God’s fine with …’ or ‘We don’t need to bother with that any more’.
For these are all symptoms of an attitude which doesn’t take God at his word, which
doesn’t take him seriously, which doesn’t truly value his word to us, and does
not want humanity to be fully alive in him, which prefers darkness to light,
which is not for God, but against him – turned in on itself, presenting itself
as modern and forward-thinking, but instead it is a manifestation of the oldest
trick in the book, one of turning away from God.
The time is short, the time is now, it really matters; we
need to come to the Lord, learn his ways and walk in his paths, living
decently, living vigilantly, preferring nothing to Christ, and inviting all the
world to come to the fullness of life in him. This is how we celebrate his
coming at Christmas and as Our Saviour and Judge, by following him, fed by him,
restored and healed by him, and sharing his church’s message with all the
world, so that it too may believe sing the praise of God the Father, God the
Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just all
might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
