“To serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus, who hath delivered us from the wrath to come.” Thessal. i. 9, 10.
As we approach the season of our Lord’s advent we are warned Sunday after Sunday by our tender Mother, Holy Church, of the duty of looking out for it. Last week we were reminded of that dreadful day, when the Angels shall reap the earth, and gather together the noxious weeds out of the midst of the corn, and bind them in bundles for the burning. Next week we shall read of that “great tribulation,” which will immediately precede the failing of the sun and moon, and the appearance of the Sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And today we are told to wait in expectation of that awful Sign, serving the Living and True God the while, as is His due, who has “converted us from idols,” and “delivered us from the wrath to come.”
What St. Paul calls “waiting,” or “expecting,” or “looking out,” that our Lord Himself enjoins upon us, when He bids us “look up and lift up our heads, when these things begin to come to pass”; as if it were our duty to be on the alert, starting up at the first notice, and straining, as it were, our eyes with eager and devout interest, that we may catch the earliest sight of His presence, when He is manifested in the heavens—just as a whole city or country from time to time is found to sit up all night for the appearance of some meteor or strange star, which Science has told them is to come. Elsewhere, this frame of mind is called watching,—whether by our Lord or by His holy Apostles after Him. “Watch ye, therefore,” He says Himself, “for you know not when the Lord of the house cometh; at even, or at midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in the morning; lest, coming suddenly, He find you sleeping. And what I say to you, I say to all,—Watch.” And St. Paul: “It is now the hour for us to rise from sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we believed. The night is past, the day is at hand.” And St. John: “Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments.”
Passages such as these might be multiplied, and they lead to reflection of various kinds. The substance of religion consists in faith, hope, and charity; and the qualification for eternal life is to be in a state of grace and free from mortal sin; yet, when we come to the question, how we are to preserve ourselves in a state of grace, and gain the gift of perseverance in it, then a number of observances have claims upon us, over and above those duties in which the substance of religion lies, as being its safeguard and protection. And these same observances, as being of a nature to catch the eye of the world, become the badges of the Christian, as contrasted with other men; whereas faith, hope, and charity are lodged deep in the breast, and are not seen. Now, one of these characteristics of a Christian spirit, springing from the three theological virtues, and then in turn defending and strengthening them, is that habit of waiting and watching, to which this season of the year especially invites us; and the same habit is also a mark of the children of the Church, and a note of her divine origin.
If, indeed, we listen to the world, we shall take another course. We shall think the temper of mind I am speaking of, to be superfluous or enthusiastic. We shall aim at doing only what is necessary, and shall try to find out how little will be enough. We shall look out, not for Christ, but for the prizes of this life. We shall form our judgment of things by what others say; we shall admire what they admire; we shall instinctively reverence and make much of the world’s opinion. We shall fear to give scandal to the world. We shall have a secret shrinking from the Church’s teaching. We shall have an uneasy, uncomfortable feeling when mention is made of the maxims of holy men and ascetical writers, not liking them, yet not daring to dissent. We shall be scanty in supernatural acts, and have little or nothing of the habits of virtue which are formed by them, and are an armour of proof against temptation. We shall suffer our souls to be overrun with venial sins, which tend to mortal sin, if they have not already reached it. We shall feel very reluctant to face the thought of death. All this shall we be, all this shall we do; and in consequence, it will be very difficult for a spectator to say how we differ from respectable, well-conducted men who are not Catholics. In that case certainly we shall exhibit no pattern of a Christian spirit, nor shall we be in our own persons any argument for the truth of Christianity; but I am trusting and supposing that our view of Christianity is higher than to be satisfied with conduct so unlike that to which our Saviour and His Apostles call us. Speaking, then, to men who wish now to take that side and that place which they will have wished to have taken when their Lord actually comes to them, I say, that we must not only have faith in Him, but must wait on Him; not only must hope, but must watch for Him; not only love Him, but must long for Him; not only obey Him, but must look out, look up earnestly for our reward, which is Himself. We must not only make Him the Object of our faith, hope, and charity, but we must make it our duty not to believe the world, not to hope in the world, not to love the world. We must resolve not to hang on the world’s opinion, or study its wishes. It is our mere wisdom to be thus detached from all things below. “The time is short,” says the Apostle; “it remaineth that they who weep be as though they wept not, and they that rejoice as if they rejoiced not, and they that buy as though they possessed not, and they that use this world as if they used it not, for the fashion of this world passeth away.”