God is Patient

Friday of the Second Week in Advent A-1

Entrance Antiphon Behold, the Lord will come descending with splendour to visit his people with peace, and he will bestow on them eternal life.

Collect Grant that your people, we pray, almighty God, may be ever watchful for the coming of your Only Begotten Son, that, as the author of our salvation himself has taught us, we may hasten, alert and with lighted lamps, to meet him when he comes. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Scripture today: Isaiah 48:17-19; Psalm 1:1-4 and 6; Matthew 11:16-19

But to what shall I liken this generation? It is like children sitting in the market place calling to their companions and saying: we have piped to you, and you have not danced: we have lamented, and you have not mourned. For John came neither eating nor drinking; and they said “He has a devil.” The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they said: “Behold a man that is a glutton and a wine drinker, a friend of publicans and sinners.” And wisdom is justified by her children. (Matthew 11:16-19)

God is Patient A constant prompt for religion in the heart of man and in society is the need and the cry for salvation. It could be salvation from hunger or any one of a number of threats man faces in a threatening world. He appeals to the powers above for salvation. The Christian appeal is the one that God himself has educated man to make. That appeal is for salvation primarily from sin. Not only is sin totally disastrous for man in a way that any other threat is not, but sin is especially offensive to God. God has revealed — and man intimates as much — that if man wants to be saved and to be regarded well by the One on whom he totally depends, then he must take action against his own sinfulness. But effective action against sin is impossible for him because — of himself — he is simply under its power. He needs the saving action of God. He needs divine grace and that grace has been won for us and bestowed on us by the Son of God made man, Jesus Christ. So it is that the Christian religion involves not only man’s appeal for salvation but God’s initiative in both educating man as to what true salvation is, and responding to this appeal with a superabundant life, a share in the divine life itself. But there is one feature of this that ought to be remembered. All this involved a history. God entered history and over a long period of time did his work for us and our salvation. Our salvation entailed a salvation history starting remotely in the past, taking definite shape and with more decisive divine interventions leading to the greatest step imaginable: the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Christ our Redeemer. Now, there has been a notable characteristic of this history of salvation. It has been divine patience, and this divine patience has been inventive. God has not given up on his people despite their inveterate sinning. He has been patient, trying one thing after another, like the potter ever starting again when the work fails.

Something of this is referred to by our Lord in our Gospel passage today. He refers on the one hand to his own “generation”, and on the other hand to the “wisdom” of God in its saving action. “To what shall I compare this generation? It is like children who sit in marketplaces and call to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, but you did not dance, we sang a dirge but you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is vindicated by her works” (Matthew 11:16‑19). God tries one thing, and he tries another. He sends the prophets, and John in particular, but that does not gain the response he is seeking. He sends his own Son with a very different manner and method, but that likewise gains little response. We are reminded of the cry in the book of Isaiah the prophet, “What more could I have done for you that I have not done?” God has tried everything, and our Lord himself in his public ministry tries everything, as it were, but to little avail. However, there is hope in his words in our passage today: Wisdom is vindicated in her “children”, in her offspring, in her issue. God will most certainly succeed in his saving work. The preaching, the cross and resurrection together with the establishment of his Church on earth will most certainly gain the victory. And so our Lord’s lament and hope passes on to the Church and the Church’s children. The Church, generation after generation, continues to send out to the world her ministry and her missionaries despite generation after generation of seemingly dim prospects. The world always wants something different and is never satisfied by the Church, nor indeed by Christ himself. But Christian optimism never flags, just as a holy optimism never flagged in the heart of Christ himself.

The wisdom of God is justified by its works. The fruits of God’s work and of his patience and unwearied inventiveness, will be justified in the event. Salvation has come through the death and resurrection of Christ and is manifest in the abundance of saints in the history of the Church. It will attain its full flowering in the age to come. All this will be, despite the response of so many. Let us then pray for the grace to respond to the smallest invitations God extends to us, and let us bring this same grace to our fellow men, immersed in the chores of everyday life.

(E.J.Tyler)

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