“Its commanding officer is there, sharing the smoke and the heat of battle.”

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The Roman Liturgy
Advent

“He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.”

In the last part, we considered the role of the “parousia” (Christ’s second coming in glory) in the season of Advent.

But even aside from Advent, does the second coming have the place in the popular Catholic thought and imagination that it deserves?

We profess our faith in it every Sunday and feast day in the Creed, and the general idea – that God is the rewarder and judge of our deeds – is considered be so crucial that theologians say it must be explicitly believed for a man to be saved.

Continues below.

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Photo from WikiCommons. This is an expanded and updated version of an article originally published at LifeSiteNews in December 2022, which was more categorical in places than this updated version.

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Fr Henry James Coleridge – a nineteenth century Jesuit – observed:

“[The second coming of Christ is] so spoken of from one end of Scripture to the other, so that we may almost say, that there is no one thing so constantly foretold and dwelt on as the last end of all things.”[1]

Coleridge gives examples showing that even when the Prophets speak more explicitly of Christ’s first coming in gentleness and humility, “they seem unable to restrain themselves from adding particulars which belong to His second Advent in power, majesty, and wrath.”[2]

This is not merely figurative speech, to be given its full and exclusive interpretation in the historical Nativity. Christ’s glory is indeed made manifest in his humiliations – but Coleridge shows that Christ and his Apostles, never cease to point to second coming in glory – even when Christ stood bound, humiliated and otherwise silent before Caiaphas.[3]

In other words, this second coming in glory is at the centre of the Catholic religion. The liturgical theologian Fr Johannes Pinsk made the striking claim that “the coming of the Lord” is even “the central idea of every Christian feast,” and that every feast – even the most “historical” in its focus – has some relationship with the advent of Christ.[4]

Applied to the liturgy, he writes that when the early Christians celebrated the historical events of Christ’s life, their gaze was turned firmly towards the future, which sustained them in their persecutions. Pinsk writes:

“Christian piety of the first centuries feels like a chosen army, sure of its triumph and of its future victory… The Christians of the first centuries looked forward to the coming of the Lord as a future reality… Ancient piety aspired to the second coming of Christ, to his definitive triumph: ‘May the form of this world disappear and the glory of the Lord appear’ (Maranatha). (Maranatha).”

Pinsk claims the “immense aspiration that runs through the whole liturgy of Advent” is found primarily in “the glory and splendor in which the [second] coming of the Lord is to be realized.” It is this, he claims, that drives the impatience that grows through the Season – manifested in the repeated calls for Christ to come, and the reassurances that he will not delay.

For example, this confidence in the closeness of Christ’s coming appears in the Communion of Gaudete Sunday:

“Say to the fainthearted, take courage and fear not: behold our God will come, and will save us.” (Is 35.4)

It appears with growing insistence in the celebrated “O Antiphons” at the end of the seasons – and the mnemonic “Ero Cras” (“Tomorrow, I will come”) which the antiphons spell in reverse order:

• O E-mmanuel (23 Dec)
• O R-ex Gentium (22 Dec)
• O O-riens (21 Dec)

• O C-lavis David (20 Dec)
• O R-adix Jesse (19 Dec)
• O A-donai (18 Dec)
• O S-apientia (17 Dec)

The tension between the knowledge that Christ is already so near, and the holy impatience for his actual coming, reaches a great height on Christmas Eve itself. This is epitomised in the repetitive Invitatory antiphon at Matins (as well as at the other offices and at Mass), speaking specifically of seeing God’s glory:

“This day ye shall know that the Lord cometh, and in the morning, then ye shall see His glory.” (Exodus 16.6-7)

The Apocalypse and the presence of Christ

This is very much the atmosphere of the book of the Apocalypse. In his book The Apocalypse of St John, the Dominican Fr H.M. Féret discusses “the near and very real presence of the Resurrected one and his universal mastery as king and judge of the nations.”[5] He writes:

“The very first impression we get from the opening vision as well as from the letters to the churches is that of his mysterious but very real and immediate presence.”[6]

After giving some examples, he concludes:

“The very tone of the letters drives home the impression of the resurrected Christ’s almost tangible presence in the midst of the Churches […]

“[T]he characteristic thing about St John is the frequency with which he insists on the actual presence of our Lord among the communities of believers who depend upon him. It is here on earth, and not in some distant heaven, that he sees him and shows him.

“[In St John’s Gospel,] Christ appears and disappears, and either makes himself known immediately, or on the contrary simply suggests his mysterious presence, in a progressively unmistakable manner. Briefly, those who share in the experience are aware of an unmistakable, exciting personal presence which is somehow not in conformity with the laws of the material presence of ordinary human beings. […]

“This is how it was at the time of the Apocalypse. He ‘walked’ in the midst of the Churches, ready to dispossess this one of its primacy or to intervene ‘quickly’ in the affairs of another threatening the woman Jezabel and those who are led astray by her with punishment or lingering behind the door, ready to sup with any who will have him.

“The Acts of the Apostles also give this impression of the vivid presence of the resurrected Christ, operating either in his own person, or in that of the Holy Ghost, to further the apostolate. But no other book in the New Testament stresses this so emphatically as the Apocalypse.”[7]

Féret summarises this in words recalling “The Call of the King” from the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius:

“We can see how comforting such an idea must have been. When a fighting regiment knows that its commanding officer is there, sharing the smoke and the heat of battle, that awareness has a far more tonic effect than a message of encouragement conveyed to the fighters by a general seated in glory in some distant palace headquarters.”[8]

We have seen how this confidence in the closeness of Our Lord appears throughout the Advent liturgy, and is summarised most succinctly on Gaudete Sunday, where the Introit and Epistle tell us:

“Rejoice in the Lord always: again, I say, rejoice.”

But why? Because:

“The Lord is nigh: be nothing solicitous.”

Do we have this sense today, in our ecclesiastical and civil crises?

Féret asks whether we commonly maintain this sense of Our Lord’s closeness – taking the Resurrection as a focus.

“If we examine ourselves honestly as to our faith in the Resurrection of Jesus, we may find that our attitude towards it scarcely differs from our attitude towards our own dead—by this I mean that it has scarcely more significance for us than our belief in the immortality of departed souls. We are not at all excited by it, and we scarcely ever think of dwelling upon its effect on the evolution of world events.

“Certainly we do not deny the survival of Jesus, any more than we doubt the continued existence of our own departed after death—but we go very little farther to distinguish their case from his.

“Like them, we picture him in a dis-incarnated, cosmic state, divine, perhaps, but beyond our horizon of imagination, where death puts men with whom, apart from remembrance and prayer, we have no contact until we are all re-united in our Creator at the end of time. There is no communication between the two worlds; they cannot return to help us in our affairs, whatever deeds they have left behind them, or whatever prayers they may offer to God on our behalf. Our dead are no longer personalities playing a part in history. Life goes on without them.”[9]

But this way of considering matters has consequences on the paradigm with which we view the world:

“It is to be feared that nowadays we have a similar conception of our Lord’s position in regard to our human affairs, and thus we practically deny the Resurrection. Like the women whom the Angel reproached on Easter morning, we go on obstinately looking for ‘the living among the dead’ though he has already gone before us into Galilee – that is to say, into the very heart of the world which is our living environment, the ‘here’ which the Resurrection has enabled him to re-enter triumphantly.

“By this we reduce the Resurrection to a mere episode of some vague tomorrow, which may perhaps inaugurate a personal triumph for the Crucified one, but has nothing whatever to do with the external progress here on earth of the work he came to do.”[10]

In our current time, there are many things that we would like Our Lord to do: to give us a holy Roman Pontiff; to destroy all heresies and schisms; to exalt Holy Church; to scatter his enemies; to break apart the emerging global tyranny; and to bring about a more just social order.

More than anything, perhaps, we want the world to be converted to Our Lord Jesus Christ and to be united to the Roman Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation.

But, how often do we think about the certain fact, that there is a living Man who is God, who is watching everything, and is able to act decisively at the moment he chooses?

How often do we think that even the wicked are only sustained in existence by his will, that he is closer to them than they are thenselves, and that he can give them the same grace which he gave to Saul on the road to Damascus?

The whole world belongs to Our Lord and King, who loves us, who has the power to come and to deliver us, and whom we know certainly will do so at the end of time.

But we could ask ourselves: Why would he intervene in the world today, on behalf of a people who do not really believe that he will do so, and do not really ask him to do so?

It is normal that we are in a sort of “survival mode”, trying to keep the faith and pass it onto our children. As such, perhaps we barely even think of victory. But as John Henry Newman wrote in an 1866 letter:

“Instead of aiming at being a world-wide power, we are shrinking into ourselves, narrowing the lines of communion, trembling at freedom of thought,[11] and using the language of dismay and despair at the prospect before us, instead of, with the high spirit of the warrior, going out conquering and to conquer.”[12]

Are these words not an horribly accurate description of our current situation, so dominated by “black-pilling”, mutual excommunications, ghettoisation, in-fighting and “purity-spiralling” over matters which (while important) do not pertain to the deposit of faith – all more or less at the expense of “going out conquering and to conquer”?

Féret explains what he thinks is the antidote to this malaise: a conscious devotion to the current presence of Christ, and to his return in glory:

“The Apocalypse teaches us that the real triumph of Jesus’s work commenced by virtue of his victory over death, the absolute mastery which gave him the keys of death and hell – and this he has brought back with him into the world. For this reason the resurrected Christ, now present, though invisible, is the foremost and the most active personality in human history.”[13]

This, as we saw in the first part, is the very spirit offered to us in Advent’s liturgical texts.

We might approach our current ecclesiastical and global crises differently, if we drank more deeply from the fountain of the liturgy, and really imbibed its fresh waters.

Unfair comparisons

But are these comparisons between the supposed piety of “the early Christians” and ourselves fair? Are they even based on true data?

We all know that appeals to antiquity are often used as a cover for suspect ideas, and that it is wrong to denigrate what we have received from our fathers (as if this handing-on has not been guided by the Holy Ghost). Speaking specifically of devotions and practices of piety, Pope Pius XII writes:

“All these developments attest the abiding life of the immaculate Spouse of Jesus Christ through these many centuries. They are the sacred language she uses, as the ages run their course, to profess to her divine Spouse her own faith along with that of the nations committed to her charge, and her own unfailing love.”[14]

But we do not need to concede anything negative about more recent modes of piety in order to acknowledge there may be something useful for us here.

It is just a fact that very few of us are devoted to, inspired by or hoping for the imminent return of Christ in glory. With a few exceptions, it is not the sort of image that today appears painted in our churches. It is not a theme that features strongly in popular Catholic discourse, or in conferences, or common exercises of devotion – including during Advent.

There are indeed many who are very interested in the “end times” – but the attitude seems to be more one of grim fascination (“We’re all going to die!”). Coleridge talks of “men who are not guided by the analogy of the faith and the instincts of the Church” who approach these topics in a way that he says is both unreasonable and uncatholic – and certainly without the joyful hope expressed in the Advent liturgy.[15]

Few of us want the Parousia – perhaps because we are aware of the terrible sufferings and persecution that will immediately precede it. But Pinsk explains:

“For the Church, the coming of the Lord is the ‘Gospel’ par excellence; it is, in fact, ‘the good news’. Indeed, the Church sorely misses the Lord; that is why, during Advent, the advent of Christ is spoken to us with such transports.

“If our age, as I noted in the introduction, regards the Last Judgment with fear and trembling, to such an extent that it hardly sees in it the character of ‘good news,’ St. Gregory the Great, in his homily for the First Sunday of Advent, points out its true meaning.”

Part of this sermon is read at Matins on the First Sunday of Advent:

“At the moment when the misfortunes of the world are multiplying and the shaking of the celestial powers announces the terror of the judgment, raise your head, that is to say, rejoice in your hearts; indeed, while the world ends, of which you are not friends, the redemption you desired approaches. […]

“Thus, those who love God are invited to rejoice with great joy because of the end of the world, because they will soon meet the one they love, while passing what they did not like. May the faithful who desires to see God be careful not to cry over the misfortunes that afflict the world, since he knows that these very misfortunes bring him to an end. […]

“He who does not rejoice at the approach of the end of the world affirms himself as the friend of the world, and is thereby convinced of being the enemy of God. […] For crying over the destruction of the world is fitting for those who have planted the roots of their hearts in the love of the world, who do not seek the future life, and do not even suspect its existence.”[16]

Conclusion

According to Pinsk and these others, Christ’s closeness to us – not just as a baby, but also as a glorious King about to win his final victory – is a central meaning of Advent. It need not be the only meaning of Advent, or destroy other aspects or approaches to this holy season.

But it may be a profitable way of approaching Advent in our current day, and it may help us to grow in love and awe at our divine Saviour.

Moreover: it might help us make sense of the terrible, catastrophic situation in which we find ourselves – with a Church in unprecedented crisis, a world wandering further and further away from God, souls falling into Hell, and a rapidly encroaching tyranny at our doors.

It might even help to sustain us with genuine hope and bravery, amidst so much chaos.

This will be the subject of the next part.

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Further Reading:

Fr Henry James Coleridge – The Return of the King – Discourses on the Latter Days
Fr H.M. Féret OP – The Apocalypse of St John
Dom Prosper Guéranger – The Liturgical Year

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[1] Fr Henry James Coleridge SJ, The Return of the King – Discourses on the Latter Days, Burns and Oates Ltd, London, 1894, 5

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid 6.

[4] This essay draws on the observations of Fr Johannes Pinsk (1891-1957). Fr Pinsk was involved with the twentieth century liturgical movement in ways that many readers would consider regrettable. However, his 1933 essay ‘The Coming of the Lord in the Liturgy’ and his book ‘The Cycle of Christ’ have a wealth of interesting information about Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, which I would like to share. It also contains some things which we, as traditional Catholics, would either reject or consider suspect. My purpose here is to present what is good, along with some comments, and so to help us pass a profitable Advent. Johannes Pinsk, ‘The Coming of the Lord in the Liturgy’, from Liturgische Zeitschrift Jahrgang, 1932-33 and reproduced in the Bulletin Paroissial Liturgique n. 1, 1938. This version is a DeepL translation from the Spanish version reproduced in El Que Vuelve, Vortice, Buenos Aires 2018, an available at https://engloriaymajestad.blogspot.com/2016/09/la-venida-del-senor-en-la-liturgia-por.html. Due to the difficulty of locating a physical copy of this text and giving correct page numbers, I will not clutter the text with references to it.

[5] H.M. Féret OP, The Apocalypse of St John, trans. Elizabethe Corathiel, Blackfriars Publications, London, 1958, p 59.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Féret 60-1

[8] Ibid 61

[9] Féret 61-2

[10] Féret 62

[11] It is abundantly clear from Newman’s other writings that “freedom of thought” here has nothing to do with the liberal conception of the idea. For instance, he wrote in the Letter to the Duke of Norfolk: “It seems a light epithet for the Pope to use, when he calls such a doctrine of [liberty of] conscience deliramentum: of all conceivable absurdities it is the wildest and most stupid.” I have addressed this at length elsewhere.

[12] John Henry Newman, Letter to Miss Bowles, 11 November 1866. In Wilfrid Ward, Life of Cardinal Newman, Vol. 2, p 127. Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1912.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Mediator Dei, 1947,  n. 50. Available at https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_20111947_mediator-dei.html

[15] Fr Henry James Coleridge SJ, The Return of the King – Discourses on the Latter Days, Burns and Oates Ltd, London, 1894, p 3

[16] St Gregory the Great, ‘Homily I’, taken from the Gospel of Luke Commentary, dated November 12 590, pronounced before the people in the basilica of St Peter the Apostle. Available at https://sites.google.com/site/aquinasstudybible/home/luke-commentary/gregory-the-great-homily-1