Vigils Reading

THE COMING OF THE LORD

From a sermon by Blessed Guerric of Igny2 ◊◊◊

Come…Lord, save me and I shall be saved. Come and smile upon us and we shall find deliverance. We have waited for you, be our stronghold, our deliverer in time of trouble… Abraham, our father, was full of joy to see the day of Christ. He saw it – but in the lower regions – and rejoiced. In that day the coldness and hardness of our hearts will be greatly punished… if we do not look forward with joy of spirit to the anniversary of Christ’s birth… In fact Holy Scripture seems to insist we have such joy so that our spirit, lifted out of itself, may run to meet the arrival of Christ in transports of joy, and, straining forward impatient of delay, may strive to pierce the future even now…

I believe that when we are admonished in many places in Scripture to meet the coming of Christ it is not only the second coming that is referred to but the first also… Because just as in the second coming we shall go to meet him, our bodies rising up in exultation, so we must greet his first coming with hearts straining with desire and leaping with joy. For you know that in the resurrection, when we have put on new bodies, as the Apostle says, we shall be caught up in the clouds to meet Christ in the air, and so we shall ever be with the Lord…

In this fashion it may happen that before his actual coming the Lord may come to us, and before he arrives for the world in general he may pay us a friendly visit. “I will not leave you orphans,” he says, “I will come to you.” And indeed, be it for a person’s merit or ardent striving, that coming of the Lord to the individual is frequent in this middle time between his first coming and his final coming, conforming us to the first, preparing us for the last. He comes to us now of course so that his first coming will not have been in vain nor his last in anger against us. In this coming he is intent to reform our spirit of pride, making it conform to his humility which he manifested in his first coming, so that he might also refashion our lowly body, making it like to his glorious body which he will manifest when he comes again the second time… For “God loves mercy and truth; the Lord will give grace and glory,” granting grace through his mercy, conferring glory through his truth…

Into what a sweet and happy state of absorbed admiration of himself does he plunge and keep the soul contemplating him; all the inward man exclaims: “Lord who is like you?”…

Since then the first coming brought grace and the last will bring glory, this one indeed partakes both of grace and of glory; for in it, through the consolation of grace, we are given a foretaste of future glory… Utterly wonderful and lovable it is when God, the Love of the lover, is grasped even in the senses, when the Bridegroom embraces the Bride and they become one in the Spirit, as she is transformed into the same image in which as in a mirror she sees the glory of the Lord. How blessed are they who because of their burning love have already merited to receive this privilege. Blessed too are they whose holy simplicity leads them to hope for it… We who have not had experience of such a wonderful consolation are in the meantime encouraged by firm faith and a pure conscience to wait patiently for the coming of the Lord… that is, of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever