The final days of Advent are the most important before we embrace the coming of our Lord. Children around the world anxiously count down the days until Christmas, and as we get closer to the day, we become more anxious. That excitement for Christmas day is far more intense in the context of worship than it is for a mere public holiday because we are finishing up the season of Advent, which is entirely focused on preparing us for Christ’s coming. On the last seven days of the Advent season, we hear some of the most important Adventide prayers during the Gospel acclamations at Mass, which we refer to as the “O Antiphons” since they all begin with an exclamatory O. These are the prayers that are said during Vespers on these days, too: when the Advent season comes to an end, we increase our calls for Jesus to come to us by invoking those titles of his that are most indicative of his identity as the one who comes.

One of the O Antiphons is particularly unique: we call upon Christ to come by invoking him as the Key of David. We may be familiar with his other Adventide identities, such as the root of Jesse, the king of the nations, or Emmanuel, but the Key of David is a unique one. Specifically during the Mass, we hear, “O Key of David, opening the gates of God’s eternal kingdom: come and free the prisoners of darkness!” This prayer is based off of Isaiah 22:22, which interestingly is not in reference to a king or a master, but a servant who is given authority, symbolized by the “key of David.” What he opens, no one will shut, and what he shuts, no one will open. This specific passage from Isaiah, along with the imagery of keys as a sign of authority, should immediately call to mind the figure of Peter, who is given the “keys to the kingdom” by Christ as the one who is to be the foundation of Christ’s Church. Christ also tells Peter that whatever he binds on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever he looses on earth will be loosed in heaven - what he opens, no one will shut, and what he shuts, no one will open. With this in mind, are we calling on Peter to come and free the prisoners of darkness? No. Peter is not the key, he is given the key by Christ. Christ is the Key to the Kingdom. Christ is the Key of David who we call upon today. He never gave to Peter a literal set of keys, nor did Shebna, the master of the palace in Isaiah 22, give to his servant Eliakim a literal key. It is Christ’s authority that is given to Peter. Christ gives himself, which is fully realized on the cross; in that moment, Peter was the foundation of the Church representing the Church based on the authority given to him, and Christ gave his entire self to his Church.

Through Christ as the Key of David, the gates to God’s Kingdom are opened for us, but they are protected and held by the authority of the Church. Christ desired that we be inheritors of the Kingdom because he wanted to free us from the darkness of our sins simply out of love for us. According to the gospel of Matthew, Christ fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah at the beginning of his public ministry when the ancient prophet said, “the people in darkness have seen a great light.” In his divinely inspired canticle, Zechariah claims that the mercy of God shines on those in darkness and in death’s shadow, guiding them to peace. Christ gave himself to his Church first in the symbolism of a key, then in his sacrifice on the cross. This was an act of divine mercy, which has been a light guiding us out of darkness. We are this much closer to the light as we approach his coming.

When we imagine the Apocalypse, we immediately begin to picture destruction, fire and brimstone, doom and gloom, and the end of the world. This imagery most likely comes from the destructive imagery found in the book of Revelation, where the word Apocalypse is used to describe the book as a whole. The word Apocalypse is Greek in origin, and can be translated literally as “from the covering” which means a “lifting of the veil”. The focus of apocalyptic literature is not the destruction or the end of the world, but rather the literal revelation of knowledge and understanding that was previously veiled to us. The role of Scripture is to be this “lifting of the veil” - to allow us to understand the reality of God and his hand in our lives. What exactly is this veil and how is it lifted to reveal what it originally concealed?

The connections between the Old Testament and New Testament are fascinating; in this passage from the book of Isaiah written hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, we are explicitly told exactly what this veil is: “On this mountain he will destroy the veil that veils all peoples, the web that is woven over all nations; he will destroy death forever.” This veil is death, and it has not concealed the Truth we are seeking after, but instead conceals our own eyes from recognizing that Truth. In the book of Revelation, all of these points are reiterated and the veil is decisively destroyed by the one who overcame it - Jesus Christ. This is not merely a “lifting” of the veil, but a destruction. It has lost all of its concealing power. This is also seen in a literal way the moment Christ dies and the veil that concealed the Holy of Holies is immediately torn in two, opening up the concealed presence of God to the world. He destroyed the veil of death by removing it from us and bestowing it upon himself, the only one who death could not conquer.

The apocalyptic lifting of the veil was not done only at the crucifixion and resurrection. Christ showed the reality of God’s power over death repeatedly through his public miracles. In the Gospel, Jesus feeds a crowd of 4,000. The writers of the Gospels carefully made sure to emphasize, through the use of numbers and repetition, that this was a separate event from the feeding of the 5,000. This was done to show that Christ’s miracles were not one-off events; they were repeated for emphasis. And they were never done merely to show his divine power; they always carried a message underneath the act itself. In this case, Jesus feeds them not because they are hungry, but because they are on the precipice of death from their illnesses and weaknesses. He heals them of their ailments, then gives them spiritual and physical nourishment - the things we need to stave off the veil of death.

The Church plays a significant role in Advent. If we remind ourselves that Advent is a season in which we are preparing ourselves individually for the coming of Christ, we should also be aware that it is only through the Church that we are able to adequately prepare. Our salvation is not something we can attain for ourselves; it can only be found through Christ, and his message has always been clear that it is through his Church that he grants it to us. We must also wrestle with the idea of what this looks like in a detailed manner - in what way does the Church offer us a path of preparation for the coming of Christ? Why can we not follow Christ on our own outside of his Church? What does it look like to be an active member of this Church?

The book of Isaiah, a book of prophecies about the eventual coming of the Lord, focuses on the eternal city that will be established by the Lord in due time. This is a place where the holy and the just will be invited into the life of the Lord, while those who walk in darkness will find themselves outside of its walls. This description of a strong city in Isaiah ends with an acknowledgement of the power of the Lord: Isaiah calls him an eternal rock. A rock is something strong and stable, unmoving and worthy of building upon. Christ is eternally strong and stable, and in fact he is the only one who is eternally unmoving. We have no other way to find the eternal stability and contentment we so desperately seek outside of him. Christ also uses this imagery in the Gospel, comparing his true followers to a wise man who builds his house upon a rock, rather than a fool who builds his house upon sand. The only way in which we will be protected from the storms of life that surround us is if we engraft ourselves to Christ, the eternal rock. However, notice the power of Christ described throughout Scripture, from the prophecies of Isaiah to his own teachings in the Gospel: does not the omnipotent God have the power to share in our humanity, not only by becoming human himself, but also choosing other humans to maintain and to build upon the rocky foundation he himself came to establish through the Church?

Whenever you hear the term “rock” in the context of the teachings of Christ, this should always bring you back to the moment when Christ took Simon aside, and said to him: “You are Rock, and upon this rock I will build my Church.” The name Peter means “rock”. Christ passes on his eternal “rock-ness” to Peter so that his Church may remain for humans while under the protection of this humble human person, so that we may always remain faithful to his word before he comes again. Christ himself tells us that it is not enough to call him “Lord” and to acknowledge him for who he is, as so many who consider themselves Christian do today. We must keep his word down to the very letter; if we do not stay faithful to the Church that is built upon the eternal rock of Christ through Peter, we begin to easily muddle Christ’s words, which we see throughout history in the form of various heresies. If you want to be well-prepared for the coming of Christ, it’s quite simple: remain faithful to his Church, because it is only his Church that has remained faithful to his word. To do anything else is to prepare your house for his return on sand, rather than on rock. Our Church, through Peter, was built on the eternal rock. 

Our existence has a beginning, but it does not have an end. We were created by God at a specific moment and for a specific moment, because the world around us during the time we live on earth has exactly what we need to grow into the person we ought to be in the presence of God. In other words, we came into this world born with Original Sin, imperfect and blemished. However, we were created to be with God in perfection. God wants us to be with Him; therefore, He chose this specific time and this specific place for us to live so that we can utilize what is available to us now in order to learn and grow, to perfect ourselves, and to sanctify and prepare ourselves for when we eventually face Him at our judgment. 

This notion, that we are imperfect creatures who need to be perfected before we become united to perfection itself, is the basis of the concept of Purgatory. Whether it is in this life or the next, we simply are not perfect. It would be impossible for imperfection to enter into the perfection of God in Heaven. So what does purgatory look like? First, we must get ourselves into the mindset of preparing ourselves through penance and prayer for the coming of Christ while we live in this world. This is the same essence as Purgatory; Purgatory should be seen as a gift that God gives us so that we do have the opportunity to be ready for Him. This is also seen in the season of Advent. Part of living out Advent is also studying the book of the prophet Isaiah very closely; Isaiah describes the perfection of Heaven that awaits us, but he also seems to indicate that there is a need for perfection within ourselves before we can inherit God’s kingdom. The holy way, the path to Heaven, cannot be taken by those who are “unclean”. As he says, “it is for those with a journey to make”. The life of a Christian is a journey, hopefully taken by means of this “holy way”, but the journey is filled with difficulties, sorrow, suffering, and agony. Why? Because the pain of being a follower of Christ forges us into individuals who model Christ perfectly, especially in the suffering he underwent for our sake. Purgatory is that pain and suffering experienced on the holy way, but it is a pain and suffering that we embrace. Christ embraced his cross, just as we are to embrace the redemption that is only possible through purgatory.

Remember that the actions you do now, namely penance and prayer, will be done with perfect devotion in the face of immense suffering in purgatory. It will be a beautiful experience, because we know that Heaven is awaiting us, perfected for God just as a bride works tirelessly to present herself to her bridegroom as beautifully as she can on their wedding day. For now, we know that Christ is coming soon. But he is not here yet; therefore, we wait, we pray, we fast, we repent. We prepare ourselves for the moment he returns, and we do as much as we can to perfect ourselves before then. Ultimately, only He who is perfect can make us perfect; however, Christ expected two things of individuals before he restored them to new life - they had to seek him out as a sign of love, and they had to repent of their sins as a sign of their desire for perfection. In every case, God perfects us if we put in the work to perfect our behavior for Him.

Advent is personified in John the Baptist, who prepares the way of the Lord, Jesus Christ. There are incredible similarities between the two figures, but both are also quite different. Ultimately, John was the last and greatest of the prophets, and one of Jesus’ three offices was prophet, as well; they both spoke in the style of the prophets and shared the same message as the prophets, to repent and turn back to God. But as individuals who both amassed large groups of followers, their dispositions were very unique from one another. John was a strange and intense man who lived in the desert, wore camel skins, ate locusts and wild honey, and offered a very demanding message to those who wished to follow him. Christ, instead, was a man of the people who simultaneously went to those in need where they were at while also demanding that same message as John: to turn away completely from sin.

The book of the prophet Isaiah is also a guide to the season of Advent because so much of Advent Theology is found within this prophet’s words. This part of Isaiah is filled with well-known passages because it is so important to the Advent season: it is a prefigurement of the relationship between John the Baptist and Jesus, which means it also is an explanation of the relationship between Advent as the period of preparation and Christmas as the moment in which the one we have waited for has finally arrived. We know that this passage from Isaiah speaks about John because the Gospel says so: he is the “voice crying out in the wilderness” whose message is to “prepare the way of the Lord.” John is the one who goes up and indicates to Zion, “here is your God,” “behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” John chose to call Christ the lamb of God because he must have known deep down in his soul this passage from Isaiah, which does not call God a lamb, but a shepherd: “Like a shepherd, he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, carrying them in his bosom.” Why do we imagine Christ as a Lamb? Why does the book of Revelation depict Christ as a lamb? Why, before receiving communion, do we acknowledge the Eucharist as the lamb of God? Because John said so, and he said so because of this passage in Isaiah.

Christ should be seen as a shepherd. In fact, he is the good shepherd referenced in Isaiah who gathers us in his arms, carrying us in his bosom. But the shepherd did not remain a shepherd distanced from his sheep; it was not even enough in his expression of love for his flock to merely care for them. Rather, he became one of them. He became a lamb, but was still set apart as the Lamb of God, the one who the flock had waited for since our own fall. John was the first to publicly announce the coming of Christ as one of us when he said, “Behold the Lamb of God.” During the season of Advent, we must go back to John, listening to that voice crying out from the wilderness with a message of warning. That same voice will be the one who identifies Christ when he returns. John was an intense man, fear-inducing and strange to the people of his age; but he was good. His goodness was enough for others to think that he may have been the Messiah. But the true Messiah was not one who people approached out of curiosity; instead, he approached us, taking on the same identity as ours. The shepherd became a lamb.

In a world that is more consistently eschewing beauty, artistry, craftsmanship, and motivation for materialism, consumerism, and immediate self-gratification, it should come as no surprise that atheism is on the rise. This rise of atheism ultimately leads people down one of either two paths. The first path is the more dangerous: if our life is full of distractions with material wealth or personal pleasures, we have no curiosity to seek out God, to find something more meaningful, or to live selflessly. Those who go down this path are more likely to become apathetic, to not care if God exists or not. This is the “lukewarm” type that Christ condemns in the book of Revelation. The second path is different: if there is no beauty in the world, no focus on artistry or effort to create something otherworldly, we will never come to understand how we could have been created, and we will never acknowledge our Creator.

Those who cannot understand why God would create the world tend to be atheists, but there is hope for them. All that is needed is for them to understand why God wanted us to exist alongside Him despite the hurt, the rejection, and the turmoil that His creation causes to Him. God did not have to create us; He did not have to give us free will, either, but He did. Why? In order to understand this, we need to dive into the mind of an artist. If we are living in a world that is moving away from art and beauty for consumerism, this becomes more and more difficult to do. However, truly good and beautiful art still exists today because there are artists who still understand the role of the Divine within creating something. When an artist begins a creation, whether it is a painting or a song or a novel, he must ask himself one question before proceeding: does the world need this? When the artist can affirm that his art offers something that the world is currently lacking, he should then ask himself why the world needs it. This simple line of questioning provides all the motivation in the world for an artist to continue working. Every brushstroke, every note, every sentence is subsequently constructed with intentionality and care. When the masterpiece is finished, it satisfies a societal need that affirms its worth. It may have taken the artist years to complete, time sacrificed, resources used up, emotions drained, but he delights in his creation when it is finished because the world needed it.

In this passage, the prophet Isaiah wonders why the Israelites claim that God does not care about them, that He does not know what they do or how they are doing. But, says the prophet, see who has created all things, calling us all by name. God is the Divine Artist and we are His masterpiece. Every soul is a single brushstroke, a single note, a single sentence, created with intentionality and purpose, and whose absence directly affects the whole. In our formation as part of His masterpiece, we waste His time with our selfishness, we abuse His other creation, and we hurt Him every time we sin. Still, He delights in every single one of us equally as both part of His masterpiece and individual masterpieces in our own right. Why? Because He deemed that the world needed us. If we rid our lives of beauty and art, we can never appreciate how God sees us - as a beautiful and elegant piece of His own doing. Any beauty in the world is a reflection of Him, and He has empowered us to be creators of our own. When we trust in God and allow Him to work through us, the natural beauty of His touch is bound to be found in our own work because it is actually His work. As Christ tells us, this is easy. But it requires us to first bring back to the world truth, beauty, and goodness - the pillars of God’s creation.

In Paradise, Adam and Eve lived in God and oriented themselves directly according to the very thing for which they were created. The fall from Grace was a fall from this Paradise, a fall from the place where we could get closest to God, and a fall from what we were created for. If we were to imagine Paradise as a summit, then the fall of man caused us to tumble down the mountain that leads up to Paradise. Now, in a state of sin, we are faced with two options: we can begin again the arduous ascent to where we were always meant to be, or we can give in and tumble further down towards our own demise. Either way, great suffering and trials are in store for us; it is up to us whether we want that suffering to be done for our own good, or for our own destruction.

Humanity’s sin requires expiation. Creation, because it was made by God out of His goodness, cannot remain in a state of sin or corruption. It must be corrected. Because we were the ones to corrupt it in the first place, it is our responsibility to correct it. However, not everyone wishes to participate in this correction. In this passage from the book of Isaiah, the prophet shares with the nation of Israel the message from God that, although they were not worthy, God would help them. If we continue reading this passage, along with the rest of Scripture, it becomes very apparent that God will offer help without question to those who, despite their weakness, ask for it. If anyone decides that they do not need help from the Lord, God will grant them that wish and will refrain from helping them. This was ultimately the role of all prophets: to share this specific message to God’s chosen people and to warn them of what would happen should they decide to go on this journey alone. John the Baptist was the last prophet to share the message of help before help finally came in the person of Jesus Christ. Still, many rejected this help, and many continue to reject it today. 

Without the help of Christ, there is no way for us to ascend the mountain towards God. We should remember that Christ sincerely wants to help us because he wants us to be with him more than anything, to be where we were meant to be. This does not make the journey any easier, but God has already offered expiation for our sins. We can participate in this expiation for the sins of humanity through martyrdom, through persecution, through purgatory, or through personal sacrifice. It is our opportunity to give back to God what he gave to us through His Son. We may have fallen down the mountain, but together with the help of Christ and his Church, we can slowly ascend on the arduous path towards our home, where we were created and where we are called to be.

The prophecy of the Messiah found in the book of the prophet Isaiah is rightly at the forefront of the Sacred Scripture presented to us leading to Christmas because it describes at length the identity of the Messiah who is to come. It is through these descriptions in Isaiah that we begin to understand the identity of Jesus Christ, written hundreds of years before his eventual coming. One of the most recognized lines from Isaiah is at the beginning of Chapter 11: “But a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom.” Jesse was the father of David, and through this passage, the Jews believed that a new king like David would descend from this genealogical line. The “stump” refers to the previous chapter of Isaiah, in which the “Lord of hosts is about to lop off the boughs with terrible violence [and] shall hack down the forest thickets with an ax.” 

Combining the earlier passage with this passage from Chapter 45 in Isaiah, we are told something that should make us very uncomfortable: the Lord says he “forms the light” but also “creates darkness.” He “makes well-being,” but also “creates woe.” With the additional understanding that it was his allegorical axe that brought Jesse down to a stump in the forest, one cannot help but feel as if God is admitting that he is the source of evil and suffering in the world. This is by far the most ancient argument against the goodness of God, and it has been refuted by the faithful for as long as it has been posed. God did not invite sin into the world; humanity did. But God created humans primarily to love, and it takes a truly free will to assent to love. If we were forced to love or confined to be good, we could not properly choose love. It is within God’s power to eradicate “darkness and woe,” but he does not do so because we have freely chosen to invite those things in. Instead, he permits darkness and woe. And in His infinite goodness, God works through the darkness and woe and extracts a greater light and well-being from them. 

We can understand this a little better from the words of the prophet Isaiah later on in chapter 85: “Let the clouds rain down the just one, and the earth bring forth a savior.” Our embrace of sin is like inviting a great and powerful storm upon the earth, with torrential rains, destructive lightning, and boisterous thunder. But it is through the rain from this storm that plants can begin sprouting up from the ground once the light of the Sun is revealed. It is the same with Christ - the storm has brought rain, and the tree of Jesse has been reduced to a stump, but once the light of God reveals itself to the earth, a shoot sprouts from the stump and a bud blossoms. Christ came to us from among us by the light of God, through the storm of sin. Throughout Advent, we must be on watch for the bud to blossom.

The Roman philosopher Boethius defined a “person” as an individual substance of a rational nature. There are three aspects of this definition that are worth focusing on: first, persons are individual from each other, emphasizing their uniqueness and value; second, rationality (often considered the likeness of God in which humans are created) is what makes a person a person; and third, that rationality is not measured on the individual level, but whether it is part of one’s nature. Nowhere in this definition is personhood defined by age, size, or ability. And if we take this definition seriously, all human beings, regardless of their age, size, or ability, are persons. But if all humans are persons worthy of protection and dignity, when does a human being become a human being?

This question is at the forefront of many people’s minds today, but as a Church, we are blessed with a very clear and very objective definition based in truth - life begins at conception. God expresses in the Old Testament that even before we existed in our mother’s womb, He knew us and loved us. If our humanity is characterized by the soul created lovingly by God and the physical body by which we are united to each other here on earth, there is no other point in which we could possibly claim a human being exists than when our bodies and souls meet at conception. This is when personhood begins and this is when the person must be protected and treated with dignity. There are many things we do to aid in the cause for an end to a culture of death, the protection of unborn children, the care of mothers, and the care of those most in need, but nothing is more powerful than our prayers and petitions to God.

It can be difficult to determine how prayer helps us achieve concrete goals. But if we were to assume that we can only protect those who are most vulnerable in our society through our own work, we will inevitably fail. Protecting society’s most vulnerable requires conversion of hearts, trust in good will, and a tangible belief in the saving power of love; these things are only possible when we allow God to work through us. And God will only work through us if we invite Him to do so. We will defend all human life, we will pray unceasingly, and we will petition those around us so that every person’s dignity is respected, from conception until natural death. We may seem to be out of our minds to others by doing so, in the same way that Jesus was seen for acting according to the Spirit. But by operating primarily through the Spirit like Jesus did, no matter how strange it may seem, we allow God’s will to be done. And God wills that we fight for the protection of all persons.

Christ establishes his physical presence among us in two ways: through the Gospel and through the Eucharist. The reason we read from the Old Testament, the Psalms, and from the Epistles is because these give context and point to the identity of Christ that is revealed plainly in the Gospel. This is also why we behave and orient our bodies differently when the Gospel is proclaimed - Jesus is now truly present in its proclamation. But we emphasize Christ’s presence in the Eucharist because it encapsulates the humanity of Christ better: the Word became flesh in the same way the bread becomes the body of Christ. He is now with us in a tangible way that allows us to receive him into our own bodies.

But if you were to go to a church on Good Friday evening or Holy Saturday morning, you will find the body of Christ missing. The tabernacle is empty. There is no Mass to be said nor any consecration. Any hosts received by the faithful were previously consecrated. This presents a stark difference to what we are used to about church; no Mass, no Eucharist, and a feeling of uncomfortable difference. During the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, we commemorate the Institution of the Eucharist as it happened, and after the faithful participate, the Eucharist is moved to a location outside of the Church. On Good Friday, we commemorate the events that happened the day after the Last Supper. We call it Good Friday because salvation was achieved for us on this day. In the same way we relive the Last Supper by participating in the Eucharist before Christ’s body was removed from the church, we relive the Passion and Death of Christ through the Gospel. After Christ’s presence is absent through commemoration of his death, we are left with an image of his body on the cross. On this solemn day, his lifeless body is what we are left with to venerate, embrace, and cherish. Receiving the Eucharist on this day is a reminder of his sacrifice, and the absence of the consecration should reorient our focus on what receiving the Eucharist actually means.

There will be a detail in the Passion that might be overlooked. Before we commemorate the death of Christ, we hear from the book of Isaiah, specifically the Suffering Servant passages. This is the clearest indication within the Old Testament of what God had planned for Christ and how His will would be fulfilled. We might be able to relive the Passion and Death of Christ in the Gospel, but the reading from the Old Testament will remind us why Christ offered himself for us. He had to take upon himself the sufferings of humanity, and by doing so, exemplified perfect servitude to both his Father and his own followers. The fact that we knew this long before Christ was even born demonstrates just how important this was for God’s plan to be executed. He suffered for us and served us, simultaneously. We should joyfully embrace suffering now out of service to him. When we approach the crucifix, remember this as you embrace him.

God has chosen to see us, humanity most properly expressed through the Church, as the Bride of Christ. We were always meant to be united to Him in the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, the marriage of Heaven and Earth. Christ is a perfect bridegroom. He expresses his deepest love for us, not only in his sacrifice on the cross, but in his continued presence among us; however, like any marriage, we occasionally encounter difficulties in our relationship with him. Unlike every other marriage, though, in which both husband and wife occasionally fail to live up to the calling to which they assented, it is only we as the Bride of Christ who fail. Our failing is sin. Despite the fact that we have a perfect bridegroom in the person of Christ, we individually neglect our duties for the sake of selfishness. Considering Christ’s infinite goodness and our incessant proclivity to sin, Christ is entirely justified to leave us to ourselves. However, the message of the Gospel is that he never leaves us - he came into this world knowing full well how he would be treated and rejected by us, yet he continued to love us faithfully regardless.

Quite clearly, though, our relationship with God is still not perfect. Were it to be perfect, we would have returned to the same state that Adam and Eve were in in the garden. Our sins against God have led to pain, suffering, unnecessary sacrifice, and more than anything else, a feeling of abandonment. We hear it all the time: how could a good God allow bad things to happen to those whom He loves? Consider instead the famous verse within the Gospel of John: for God so loved the world, that He gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish, but have eternal life. Despite our imperfections and our sins, God gives not only Himself to us, but also the very essence of His identity as a God of relation, embodied in the Father offering His Son. The mystery of this love and its magnitude can never be fully realized by humans in a state of sin. However, we can at least understand the very simple fact that we have been an unfaithful bride, and He has been a perfect bridegroom. To those who approach Him with sincere remorse and penance, He immediately forgives. The pain, suffering, unnecessary sacrifice, and feeling of abandonment is not caused by Him - it is caused by our own shame and despair. 

Our faithful bridegroom wants us back. He doesn’t want us to despair in our faithfulness because he knows that our hearts deeply long to reciprocate his love; we can never do so, but he loves us regardless. He doesn’t want us to feel shame, but he does ask that we acknowledge our failings and leave them behind. Jesus Christ had every reason to bring destruction to the world when he first came, but he instead offered love and forgiveness to all who asked for it, from prostitutes and tax collectors to the few scribes and chief priests who were humble enough to recognize him for who he was - the Heavenly Husband described in the book of Isaiah. For a brief moment, he has hid his face from us, and we prepare during Advent for the moment we see it again. God describes this as an outburst of His wrath, but His wrath is not like ours. It is not temperamental nor is it rash. It is perfect, justified, and appropriate, because the hiding of God’s face from us is exactly what we need in order to long after Him, to seek Him for forgiveness, and to fall back into the tenderness of His embrace. Seek Him and ask for forgiveness. He is faithful to us, and offers us the chance to become faithful to Him again.

The prophets of old were the mouthpieces of God, who utilized them so that His message was conveyed in a clear and honest manner in the way in which we as human beings best receive information: through other humans. The primary message of the prophets was a message of repentance, that the world needed to turn away from its sin before experiencing the wrath of God. Often, this was a very direct message to a very specific group or nation. However, the prophets played a far more important role that was incredibly subtle to the ages in which they lived: they were slowly preparing the world, not just the Israelites, for the coming of the Messiah. In their messages, one can find the entire identity of Jesus Christ.

The most important prophet for understanding the person of Christ in the context of the Jewish faith is the prophet Isaiah. In the first penitential season of the year, Advent, we read often from the book of Isaiah because this prophet spoke so eloquently and clearly on the near arrival of the anointed one. When we are in the other penitential season of the year, Lent, we take the essence of the Advent message of the arrival of Christ and we start to apply it to the preparations we are undergoing for his death and resurrection. The prophets, especially Isaiah, had laid the groundwork thousands of years ago for our understanding of who Christ was to be and why he came into our world. As the mouthpiece of God, the words spoken by Isaiah were meant to be heard by the faithful as words coming directly from the mouth of God, only being made manifest through the prophet. This passage is a perfect example of this: we hear a beautiful analogy of the fruitfulness of these prophetic words, that they are like rain and snow coming down from the heavens, giving life and nourishment to what belongs to the earth below, only to be taken back up to the heavens. This is a pleasant and comforting thought at face value, and the Jews of the time would have read them precisely in this way. However, in the context of Jesus Christ, all we need is to look at the beginning of the Gospel of John to see just how prophetic these words of Isaiah actually were. John unpacks the philosophy of Jesus as the Word of God, who was in the beginning with God and was God, who became flesh and dwelt among us, and who went by the name of Jesus. Now by applying that understanding to the message of Isaiah, we are told about the mission of Christ: the Word came down from heaven from the mouth of God to this world to nourish us and give us life. This Word did the will of the Father and achieved the end for which the Father sent it. The Word did not return to Heaven until it did all of these things.

We were told hundreds of years before the birth of Christ that he would come down to us and give us life. We were told that, just as the rain and the snow, he would return to the Heavens when his work was complete, leaving behind seeds for those who sow and bread for those who eat. He left us with the instruments necessary to carry out the will of the Father, and sustenance for the arduous journey of being his follower. We were prepared, told, and encouraged of these things long before Christ actually came. This ought to empower us to use our lives of penance to express our gratitude for the magnitude of what is about to come - complete and total victory over sin and death, and the fruits that flow from it.

The name that we give ourselves and to our faith is indicative of one of the most fundamental aspects to the mission of Christ: we are Catholic, which means “universal”. When we look at the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament, this aspect of his mission becomes very apparent. The Old Testament was written by Jews for Jews. It is Jewish Scripture, intent on showing that God did in fact choose the people of Israel as His chosen people. The New Testament is meaningless without the Old Testament; it builds upon that which already existed, namely the relationship between God and humanity, and it contextualizes everything in the person of Christ. Just as Christ told us, he did not come to abolish the past or the promises of the Old Testament, but to fulfill them. In both the Old and New Testaments, this understanding is revealed to us quite clearly: God had always desired that the whole of humanity be able to access Him and for all individuals to choose to be considered children of God, but He also worked first through the people of Israel to enter into our world as truly one of us.

The prophet Isaiah is perhaps our best opportunity to learn how God planned to enact Salvation History through Israel. Isaiah lived seven hundred years before Christ, and his book (a compilation of his written and spoken word) was put together 200 years after that. Isaiah had no perfect vision of who Jesus was or would be; his prophecies were not descriptions of the person Jesus Christ, but a harmony between the religion of the Israelites at that time and the promises of the eventual Messiah. The very last line in this passage are words given by God to Isaiah: “Others will I gather to him besides those already gathered.” Who are those who were already gathered? Who are those who will be gathered? When we apply this message to the universality of the Catholic Church and God’s salvation, it’s clear: those who were already gathered into God were those of the Old Covenant, the one established through Israel, and the impetus for the eventual coming of the Messiah. The Messiah was not exclusive to the Old Covenant, but he had to work within the promise of the covenant; through those who were already gathered, Christ began to work on gathering those who had not yet been. 

So the words of Isaiah fulfill our understanding of universality; in a prophecy given 700 years before the coming of the Messiah, we are told that the invitation is shared with us all regardless of our race, ethnicity, where we were born, or when we were born. But we cannot simply ignore the Old Covenant; we must understand exactly how it was fulfilled. The prophets are the personification of the Old Testament because their whole purpose was to share messages emphasizing the period of waiting for the coming of the Messiah. As the last and greatest of the prophets, John the Baptist shares in this personification, though his role is to unite our understanding of the Old Covenant with our understanding of the New Covenant. John bridges the Old Testament with the New Testament. Through him, we begin to see exclusivity be transformed into universality. More than that, his work as prophet, preparer, and bridge-builder between the Old and New is affirmed and validated by Christ himself - the Messiah at the heart of both the Old and the New Covenants. As Christ tells us in the Gospel, John did profoundly important work, but his testimony is greater than John’s. It is a testimony open to all and for all.