During the four weeks of Advent, we prepare to celebrate the anniversary of Jesus’ birth 2,000 years ago by looking forward to his coming again at the end of time. Faith in what God has revealed in Christ brings us into a world that now interacts uneasily with the everyday world of sin and corruption. The world of faith will become the everyday world when Christ returns in glory at the end of time; but in the meantime, in our time, things aren’t always crystal clear. Our vision, now shaped by faith and lived in love, will be perfectly clear only in the Beatific Vision of heaven.
On earth, the church keeps us connected to this heavenly vision through the preaching of the Gospel, the celebration of the sacraments and the love experienced among the faithful gathered around pastors who govern in Christ’s name. Faith is neither a set of rules nor an abstract formula for service, although moral living flows from belief. Faith is first of all, however, a condition for relating to God and others in Christ. Faith is a trusting response, made possible by God’s grace, to the truths that entered our world with the Incarnation of God’s eternal Word in Jesus of Nazareth, born of the Virgin Mary. Jesus, now risen from the dead and sitting at the right hand of the Father, uses his church to introduce himself to the world. He cannot be separated from his church. Those who would do so lose him. Those who come to hate or disdain the church will find themselves separated from Christ himself. They will lose faith, its vision and its relationships.
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