One of the most beautiful and favorite classical music of Western Advent, this holy season of preparation for God’s Incarnation that we call the Nativity Fast, is Bach’s popular cantata “Sleepers awake!” The title refers to a common theme of the Scriptures and the Orthodox Faith, that of readiness to meet the Lord when He comes again. This theme of the Second Coming, the meaning of the word, Advent, means “coming,” is also part of the Church’s teaching on Christ’s Incarnation-in-the-flesh, and so, is particularly poignant during this season of preparation. The theme of watchfulness to meet the Lord in Bach’s cantata is based on Christ’s Parable of the five Wise Virgins from Matthew 25, who in contrast to the five foolish virgins, keep their lamps lit.
The early Orthodox Church lived in a constant state of alertness, readiness, to meet the Lord at His Second Coming, putting Christ first and before all things the world had on offer. Our Orthodox forbearers knew that at any moment they might be arrested, tortured, and martyrd.
Christ having ascended in glory, we now live in the last epoch, that is, “the last days.” We who are here today are even closer to that final day that will begin the day that has no end, which is the heart of the message of every Vespers where we sing the Gladsome Light. We’re called to live with eternity before our eyes, to put away the temporal distractions that lull us into spiritual slothfulness so that we can be ready for the Day of Christ’s Second Coming, the day without no end. Advent is never just about looking to the past; it is also always a looking forward to that second Advent, that of Christ’s glorious Second Coming. St. Cyril of Jerusalem writes, “We do not preach only one coming of Christ, but a second as well, much more glorious than the first. The first coming was marked by patience; the second will bring the crown of a divine kingdom.”
That we may be ready when Christ comes again and make the most of this holy season in spiritual preparation for “the Winter Pascha,” Holy Nativity, we’re called to vigilance in how we live our lives—now, how we prioritize our life in Christ in His Church—now. Our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned that we be watchful, “awake”, alert, to the needs of our souls, of our need for life with Him because He knows and reveals to us that this is the difference between true life and a living death. Do we know and are we in communion with Him who is Life itself or do we preoccupy ourselves with the things of this world to the neglect and lethargy of our eternal souls?
During Advent, we’re called to heed the prophets’ warnings, to rouse ourselves from spiritual lethargy, and renew our zeal for life with God, the only true life. St. Paul admonishes us in Ephesians 5:14, “Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” This is the choice before us: life with God or death without God. The fast is given to us that we may learn to choose the true life in Christ over life lived in and for the impulses of the flesh.
Modern man is particularly challenged to keep these words of spiritual action because we so easily live in the relative comforts and distractions of our work-a-day world, where we seek to surround ourselves with material safety, which serves to ‘numb’ the hunger of our souls for more of our life-source for whom we are created, God, our Creator and Savior Jesus Christ. Most of the time, people don’t ‘appear’ to ‘need’ God because their days are filled with such distraction and entertainment; their physical or material needs are met and they live in relative ease.
Repeatedly, Christ’s Gospel calls on the faithful to “redeem the time, because the days are evil.” People walk around, busy in their lives, and forget God. Evil ensues, by definition. Without God, evil happens. Where God is, there is true love, light, peace, truth. Where He’s forgotten, there’s no accountability or bounds to human behavior. We’ve seen how this plays out writ large in the events of the 20th century and, now, sadly, continuing to our own day. As Fyodor Dostoyevsky puts it in Brothers Karamazov, “If there is no belief in the immortality of the soul, then everything is permissible.” (Youth of the Apocalypse, p. 20).
For this reason, St. Paul warns us, saying, “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret.” We are returning to a pagan era, but not one that is as “religious” as pagan Rome. Instead, “religion” comes in a new guise, that of secular humanism and nihilism, which prides itself on being “free” of the constrains of the religions of the past, and yet is, ironically, enslaved to its own false belief that mankind is always improving itself and that each generation is wiser and more “evolved” than the one that came before—a dangerous precedence that can lead us to repeat the evils of the past in prideful reliance on self and evolving ‘morality’.
Because God loves us to such a great extent, more than you and I can fathom, He warns us, beckons us, to redeem the time, that is, to learn to number our days, to make use of them for repentance, to shake off our spiritual lethargy, to flee from the immorality around us, to ready ourselves for His awesome and glorious Second Coming.
To do so, it’s incumbent on us to continue to become more and more Christ-minded; so much so that we turn to Christ whenever we sin, and then, whenever we’re tempted, and then, whenever and at every time and season as we progress in the life in Christ. It’s not man that saves man, no government, so society, no so-called ‘progress’; it is God alone who saves mankind and calls him back to His first beauty through the life in Christ and communion with the Holy Trinity.
Every Advent is a call to spiritual ‘arms’: Redeem the time, love the people of this fallen world enough to hold up to them the truth of Christ, a life of repentance; confess the vices and sins that the world no longer has knows to confess. Speak the truth in love and strive with all your heart to live out that truth of Christ in your daily life. Model the faith humbly, vulnerably, to all those around you. Share with others, all skeptics, those who have given up on the Church, the godless following the way of the culture and its secularism and hedonism, the truth of what Christ God is doing in your life, forgiving, healing, renewing you, giving you joy grounded in Him who is Eternal Life by virtue of His Incarnation, life-giving death and resurrection in the flesh.
Make Christ God the priority this holy season as we prepare for His holy Incarnation: pray, fast, rejoice, share the Good News of Christ’s coming, redeem the time. As you do so, you are also doing what is necessary to prepare for Christ’s Second Coming as well. Keep before you the words of St. Paul, “Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday, 26 November 2017
Epistle: Ephesians 4:1-6
Gospel: Luke 13:10-17
